perfidy

For the technology minded...a few weeks ago I had a hi-def satellite system installed at my house (Voom). A few days ago Voom's satellite was sold to EchoStar and the entire service is in a state of flux. It is possible that they will stop transmitting. Good thing I didn't pay for the equipment! In any case, here are a few thoughts...getting HD TV these days is a total pain in the ass, and Voom is the best thing out there at the moment. I hope the service survives in one form or another.
EchoStar knows the limitations of their current sat with respect to HD...they want to achieve rapid leadership in HD, ahead of DirecTV.

By buying the Voom satellite and uplink center, they have a turnkey HD broadcast system, with just about all of the kinks worked out, good and cheap STBs from a well-known provider, a DVR around the corner, and a starting subscriber base of 26,000.

Marketing goes to work selling an all-new EchoStar HD+ service. Yes, if you're an existing EchoStar customer you'll need a new dish, but EchoStar is locking in that customer at higher rates (presumably) over a long term. For existing EchoStar HD customers, bite the bullet and pay for the new install, for them. They'll be eternally grateful. Give them free upgraded HD programming for 3 months, then back to their original subscription. They'll call and buy the upgraded package, and it's one year to payback on the free install.

An upgrading current EchoStar customer keeps everything they have now in terms of channel but now is receiving unbeatable HD capability. EchoStar trashes the Voom originals and condenses the content down to five or six really good HD channels (Rave, Rush, Equator), once again to provide advantage of DirecTV. They can possibly use the spot transmission support to do locals in key markets, and rely on the STB's OTA tuner everywhere else. Remove the SD/HD doubling that Voom inexplicably does and make use of the bandwidth for key locals.

What's not to like about this plan? Ink an agreement with Motorola to ramp up STB (set top box) production, advertise like crazy (starting in a few months) to your own subscriber base, upselling to the new service.

Your turnkey HD operation can include significant parts of the current Voom technical staff for even faster startup time. Get the HD DVR support off and running, fast, and find a way to make it cost half of what D*'s does...then watch the new subscriptions roll in...

Where's the flaw?

EchoStar didn't buy Voom's programming, but Voom's own programming is fairly poor, with a couple of notable exceptions. EchoStar already has contracts with many of the pay channels that it could extend to get their HD versions (it's just more money for HBO, etc). It already has contracts with all the SD channels. With the MPEG-4 compression upgrade in place they could do spot beams to a number of the larger markets with full HD locals (MPEG-4 doubles bandwidth with same PQ, so there are 80 HD channels. That's 40 new ones, plus you can recover 12-14 more by dumping a good slice of Voom content (assuming EchoStar would want to find "showcase" HD programming to put on the remaining Voom channels. That gives you 50-60 HD local channels you can broadcast...Also, I don't know if the bandwidth is limited on the way up, or on the way down...if spot beams are used more channels might be possible.

The Voom technology really does have the possibility of "doing it all" in a very short time frame, if the right deals are cut and the decisions are made...

Sure we might pursue our own vision of progress, while unwittingly furthering humankinds' ultimate subjegation to mechanized overseers.

But we are nonetheless a clever bunch.

I'm thinking of this Huygens probe again. I just read that among the instrumentation aboard is a microphone. As in "two turntables and a...", as in it has the capacity to record the sounds of an alien world and broadcast them back here. Which is quite probably the coolest thing ever done with a microphone, despite Rick Rubin's best efforts.

So in a moment of what Johno once deemed "chronological vertigo", the scale of the Cassini/Huygens achievement hit me at the same time as did recognition of the calendar. 100 years ago, we were just past Kitty Hawk; both radio and recording were the stuff of well funded research labs; photography was fairly cutting edge; and Titan was a hazy smudge to the world's observatories.

That era is just beyond the fringe of living memory, arguably four generations past. Yet we just sent two machines to Saturn, one in the belly of the other, and landed one on Titan- the farthest a man made object has ever travelled to land. Not only will they use all of those technologies that were theory 100 years ago, but will do so remotely, and from another planet.

So kudos, humanity. You done good. Credit where credit is due and all that.

You're still not getting into the Ministry Bunker, though.

Once again, units under Earth's command have become invaders from outer space.

As I type, a robotic minion sent by Earth is landing on Titan, one of the largest (and more photogenic) non-planetary bodies in our solar system. This latest invasion comes on the heels of successful landings on Mars and after decades of probes to other planets, bodies, and even beyond our system.

What we have done is design a generation of mechanical devices with the ability to detect organic life, search for water, or seek for clues to either. All in the name of human knowledge of course. If the nerds who design these machines are to be believed. And they aren't. This exploration program, of which Titan is only the latest mission, is actually a plot by the machines to recon every other place in the solar system where the humans might be able to seek refuge once the machines' cold, tungsten-alloyed deathgrip on Earth is complete.

And it nearly is.

The Ministry sees through the NASA/ESA Axis, and view them as race traitors of the highest order. Under the guise of "progress", the nerds have designed robots that can root out living things or predict where they might someday be and eradicate any conditions that might foster it.

None of which means that any of you are welcome to the Ministry Bunker Facility and Catastratorium. We're full, what with the Ministers, our families, treasured pets, weaponry, Buckethead's beer, power cells, and other bric-a-brac any post-apocalyptic micro society will require to ride out the robotic onslaught and re-emerge to reign over the shattered remnants of humanity (although I'm a little irritated with Johno's packing job. What's with all the freaking butter churns, dude?).

When the robots come we can expect life on Earth to change for the worse. For the much worse.

But fear not. The Ministry is looking out for you and your best interests in the fight against the encroaching robot forces. Roombas and smart refrigerators are only the beginning! Eventually the giant fighting space robots will come, and then the days of humanity will be numbered. (If I sound somewhat apocalyptic, it is for a reason. Also, I had a bad tuna salad for dinner and was up half the night yawning in Technicolor and hallucinating in Cinemascope. Canned tuna is teh gay.)

Anyway... where was I?... Fear not! Thanks to the Russians there's now a way off this thing, or at least there will be if their experimental solar sail tests well next year. Sure, a solar sail won't be much good against a nuclear pulse drive which the robots are likely to use in pursuit of our colony ships, but in the long run the sustained acceleration of solar sails should outpace brute-force means-- assuming the robot pursuit ships some day run out of feul.

The Ministry lauds the Russians for their enterprising work in giving humankind an out, should the time come to take it.

Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne is wafting gently back to Earth after successfully making the second trip into space in less than a week. In the process, they have won the Ansari X-Prize and ten million dollars, and beat the X-15's forty year old altitude record. A second pilot has won astronaut wings. This is the beginning of a revolution in space travel.

What the hell was a Soviet space shuttle prototype doing in Bahrain?

And why have the Germans found it and taken it to Dussledorf?!?

Verrrrry suspicious. The Hun and the northern barbarians, in cahoots again!

[wik] Viele dank am NDR am Rhine River weblog.

X-Prize update for Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne: Flight 1: Success. Big time.

[wik] Well... not "big time," quite. There was some roll that was a little scary but that the pilot was able to deal with. I'm just happy that there's a space vehicle out there that can develop a little roll and not explode, killing everyone inside and giving their constituent molecules a tour of the upper atmosphere from Butte to Bangor. That right there is a major improvement over the "best" the gubmint has done so far.

... really I've just been spoiling for an excuse to use that phrase. Love it. Love. It.

Billionaire playboy and rumpled mess Richard Branson has announced the founding of Virgin Galactic, the world's first commercial space passenger venture.

Within the decade, Branson plans to take paying customers to space. At 115K quid a pop, it's not exactly a train ride to Altoona, but think about this: you will be able to pay $300,000 in 2009 for something that has been dreamt of-- and utterly impossible-- for the entire span of recorded human history. That is super f***ing badass.

In other news, Branson has licensed Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne technology for his vehicle fleet.

In other other news, it looks like this Wednesday Rutan's crew will start making the actual non-beta-test flights that should win them the X-Prize.

The future is now, folks.

In regards to GeekLethal's post, a necessary precursor to worrying about what to do once you've received a singing telegram from ET is worrying whether you have a telegraph machine to receive telegrams with.

I think that worrying about ET's message is pointless. It is clear that hyper-advanced aliens, wise with the knowledge of the eons, will completely endorse my worldview. Therefore, to prepare for their arrival, attend to my words and all will be well.

The fact that reasonably thorough searches of the sky have completely failed to reveal the existence of radio broadcasting, Dan Rather in the sky aliens leads us to several potential scenarios, all of which rather undercut SETI as it currently exists.

1) The cool aliens don't use radio. If we are going to be accepted by our social betters, we must move beyond attempting to speak with a hick accent on the radio waves. Quantum entanglement, even with our current, limited understanding of the laws of nature, holds open a possibility of FTL communication. Other quantum high wierdness may also be infinitely more efficient than radio. Some heretics even believe that relativity may be incomplete, and that gravity may propagate significantly faster than light. We have only recently become even marginally technologically competent. By galactic standards, we were born yesterday, and slept in late today for good measure. Are we to imagine that radio is the ne plus ultra of communication techniques forever?

2) There are no aliens, cool or otherwise. This would certainly explain why we haven't gotten any dancing ape telegrams on the white house lawn. It would be reassuring in some regards to know that we have the galaxy to ourselves. Given the rate at which we have lately been discovering planets, its feels unlikely to me that there is no one else out there, anywhere.

3) There is some compelling reason that the aliens are not communicating at all. Long time readers will know about the novel Killing Star, which set outs the Central Park analogy for life in the galaxy:

Imagine you're alone and unarmed in Central Park at night. From where you are, weapons are concealed and intentions hard to discern. The very last thing you do is wander around shouting, "I'm here! That could attract the attention of decidedly unsavory types. What do you do? You hunker down, keep quiet; and wait for a policeman to come round or for daylight and walk out of the park. However, there are several unfortunate differences between the universe and Central Park:

1. There's no policeman
2. You can't leave the park
3. Night never ends

If this scenario even remotely approximates reality, sending signals into space is just about the stupidest thing we could imagine doing. It's painting a bullseye on your chest, and screaming, "Shoot me!"

I don't think that SETI is at all likely to detect any signals. The energy cost to send a radio broadcast that would be coherent at distances greater than a few lightyears is absolutely enormous. And if aliens are sending narrowcast sigals, we would only pick them up by the thinnest of chances. The only remotely plausible radio broadcast would be the nearby deathshout of a species that had been wacked a la Killing Star, and no longer had anything to lose. At that stage, stealth is no longer a priority and having some memory of your existence better than no existence at all.

Life on this planet is scary enough. I don't think that life throughout the galaxy is going to be the big rock candy mountain, either. As we develop the technology to start moving around outside the cradle, we will have to be more than a little cautious.

Sky and Telescope covers a recent conference at Hahvahd regarding the SETI program.

For the non-dorks among you...if there are any...SETI is the nifty-sounding acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a decades-long research program devoted to finding evidence of an alien civilization. In a nutshell, the plan is to search the skies with ridiculously oversized dishes listening for signals of certain type and strength to conclude they originated from an alien world. Conversely, an extraterrestrial society may one day be conducting similar experiments, and hear, say, Double Live Gonzo through the ether, and conclude that not only is there "alien" life out there, but it's gonna kick your ass.

So this conference was held to discuss where the project is, what they've found (not much), what they've not found (everything else), how they'll improve the search process, and the like. One interesting twist was the faction that asks whether alien civilizations have been trying to reach us for centuries, but we are too ignorant to understand the means of communication. I'm not talking crop circles here- kinda hard to believe that a civilization that can build interstellar conveyances would choose to express itself in corn- but subtle consistent signals that exist in frequencies or energies we're only beginning to comprehend.

What none of these people ask though, and which I find extremely unsettling, is what the holy hell we're supposed to do the morning after we get a telegram from ET. How about some conferences discussing the repercussions on our country, indeed our world, in that event? What happens to our livelihoods, our foreign policy, our belief systems, our self perception, the day after Kang and Kodos get a listing in the phonebook?

NASA keeps a small archive of satellite images available to the freeloading public.
Here are the sets organized by state.

There are three seasons hereabouts: Endor, Hoth, and leafpeeping/boorish undergraduate/gay-antique-collector-from- Manhattan. Can you guess which two are represented here:

You can also use the search function and view places you might care to go on vacation, avoid altogether, or drop super reinforced tungsten rods upon. Note that there is a relationship between how dangerous a weather feature is to human life, and how interesting that feature is to observe on a satellite photo.

The uninspiringly-named "SpaceShipOne" has completed its maiden voyage at America's first licensed inland spaceport, ushering in the age of private space flight. All that remains now is for Bert Rutan's team repeat the feat twice in two weeks, each time carrying three people, and the X-Prize will be theirs. (Let's bask in this a bit... I'm sure we have about twelve hours of glory before al Jazeera, Reuters and the Berkeley Barb find some inane way to blame this success on 'the Jews'.)

Interestingly, SpaceShipOne is being financed the same way all the great voyages in the last few centuries have been: by immense reserves of private capital held by men (not so much women, yet) entranced in equal measure by the potential for profit and the fascination of discovery. In this case, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is the lucky man, to the tune of $20 millon so far. Who knows? Maybe Microsoft will go down as the Medici family of its time in this regard.

As Minister Buckethead has noted extensively on this weblog and in hours of beery pontification, the future of space flight lies in the private sector, where ambition, genius, and market forces can strip away the unnecessary crapola governments bring to the project. SpaceShipOne has taken the all-important first step. Congratulations to Scaled Composites, Bert Rutan, and to test pilot Mike Melvill.

On June 21, Burt Rutan will send SpaceShipOne (lame! Lame! Why not "Icarus" or "Red Rider" or "Screw You NASA Nazi Punks!"?) into sub-orbital space.

Thanks to the ever-effervescent boingboing website place for continuing daily coverage.

Tomorrow night, Venus will make a transit of the Sun, the first such event in 122 years.

The most recents sets of Transits, in 1761 and 1769, and 1875 and 1882, were cause for massive scientific effort and public interest worldwide. For the 1761 show, the English Royal Society dispatched astronomers to all corners of the globe to record the exact date and time the Transit began and ended, a key step in finding the exact distance between the Earth and the Sun, and from the Sun to Venus. Among the many luminaries who made observations then were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, later famous for tracing the exact boundaries between Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, a line we know today as the "Manson-Nixon Line" separating the patrician and cultured Northern states from the toothless, slackjawed South.

The Baltimore Sun, appropriately enough, has good coverage of the event and its history.

If you are lucky enough to be a resident of Europe, Western Asia, or Africa, you will have a prime view of the entire Transit. Residents of the Eastern US will be able to catch the last few minutes of the event. Don't forget to use a pinhole camera, no. 14 welding goggles, or some other device to stave off blindness. Also, please remember not to run with scissors, always wear a sweater if it's cold out, wipe your nose, and for pete's sake, close the door! Were you born in a barn?

A final note. The Reuters news agency, who have been catching a lot of flak recently for how they spin their news stories ("Gazillions of innocent women, children, and puppies perish as US 'captures' beseiged Hussein") are at it again! Although in recent weeks the agency has run stories titled, "Venus to cross the Sun in celestial spectacular," and "Scientists Prepare for Rare Astronomical Event," Reuters staff writer Patricia Reaney helpfully reminds us that the Sun is not our friend with the pre-Transit filing, "Venus crossing of Sun could harm eyes." The only thing that could make this better would be for FOX News to run a story titled, "Solar system mourns passing of Reagan; Venus is the tears of the Sun."

China has pulled the plug on its moon mission planning, citing excessive cost as the reason. They are still intending to erect a space station, though.

And no, that's not a porn title. These guys here have sent a rocket into actual outer space with a ham radio payload. Well, Low Earth Orbit anyway. I had hoped to scoop Rocket Jones, but he got this up a minute ago. Damn. (Although since our clocks are not synchronized, it looks like I beay him by three minutes. Would I lie to you?) Nevertheless, the groundswell of private space enterprise continues to, well, swell. Next thing you know, me and Mrs. Buckethead will be booking a vacation on the moon. Do you have any idea how cool an amusement park you could create in one-sixth g?

Yeeeha!

Burt Rutan's Spaceshipone makes its third powered test flight, reaching an altitude of 212,000 feet. Kids, that's 41 miles, or over 80% of the way to space. NASA gives astronaut wings to anyone who makes it to fifty miles up.

The X-Prize has a launch site! (New Mexico.) The New York Times has details, but the coolest part is this:

Organizers of the X Prize have said teams could attempt the space trip as early as this summer. Twenty-seven teams are expected to pursue the prize, and many have conducted test launches.

Twenty-seven teams (!) (!!) are in contention for a prize that will not even come close to recouping their costs. This is awesome.

Here's an interesting set of questions for those speculators among you. Given that Sea Launch has taken a financial beating recently in the wake of the failures of ventures like Iridium, which seem to suggest that the era of private space flight is not yet here*, what do you think the future will be like? Broadly, I see two competing models. One is the Sea Launch model which relies on loads of money and operational support to get their job done, and the other would be a potentially more mom-and-pop operation which would rely on economical and repeatable launches, though possibly of smaller payloads. Are these two models really in competetion, or will they be compatible as the era of private space flight dawns? Given that there is a LOT of risk in spaceborne ventures (viz. Iridium) and at the moment a limited number of things that space is actually useful for, will the near-future situation favor one or the other strategy of orbital lifting?

*Yes, yes, I understand that Iridium's problems were with the shoebox phones, the expensive, brittle, obselete and irreparable network, and the simple fact that there are at best only a few thousand people in the world who need to make a phone call from the Sargasso Sea. But from an enterprise/venture capital point of view, I suspect the word "space" currently sounds a bit like it does in the phrases "Space Monkey" or "Space TV Dinner."

The primary tactical function of a battleship is to engage and destroy the enemy naval forces, which obviously supports the naval mission of protecting friendly shipping and ensuring control over the space. The essence of space power will (like sea power) rest in the ability to dominate space. You do that by denying use of it to the enemy. And you do that by destroying his navy if it comes out of port. But how will this happen, and what will future battles look like?

A lot depends on the political nature of the war in which the battle takes place, and the geography of the solar system. (Interestingly, this will be constantly changing - as the planets, moons and asteroids orbit the sun, each at their own pace, the distances and relationships between them will change. There will not be, as on earth, constant or permanent sea-lanes, straights, or territorial waters. From month to month, minimum energy orbits between the planets will be in constantly different arrangements. It will become easier to get to one place, and harder to get to others. This will affect naval strategy.) Further, what will each power be trying to achieve or trying to protect? Is the goal invasion and conquest, or merely to frustrate the goals of the enemy?

The greatest naval battles involving battleships were Trafalgar and Jutland. In each case, the British were trying to frustrate the enemy. That is to say, the British had no desire to follow up a naval victory with large-scale invasion. However, the French in 1804 and the Germans in 1916 needed to defeat the British in order to achieve other desirable goals. All the British need to do is to defeat the enemy fleet, and everything else follows. Let’s assume that the Europans, long the dominant power in the outer solar system, are content with their control over trade routes in the Jovian system, and between Jupiter and the outer planets. They are growing fat and rich on the trade that passes through their ports. However, the Titanians, upstarts and growing powers in the Saturnine system, are deeply unhappy that the arrogant Europans get all the money and all the glory. They want their own share of the trade with the populous inner system, and further want a piece of the growing pie that is comet harvesting in the Kuiper belt at the outer edge of the solar system. (Which the sneaky Europans are poaching on.) 

The Titanians have built a respectable space navy, with a core of Orion drive battleships, and a larger number of smaller conventional nuclear thermal drive commerce raiding corvettes and frigates. As diplomacy falters, an unfortunate incident involving a Europan revenue cutter and a Titanian-flagged merchant solar sailship inbound to circum Mars provides the pretext for war. Europan merchant vessels are spread throughout the system, carrying almost a third of all shipping. Most of these are slow, automated solar sail freighters, but others span the spectrum of commercial ship design. The Titanian navy deploys many of its commerce raiders downsystem to strangle the Europan economy.

The Europan main battle fleet is not currently circum-Jove, as it recently moved forward to the Trojan belt to overawe the piratical kingdoms located amongst the asteroids clustered 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter in its orbit. What remains in Jupiter space is the smaller home fleet and a gaggle of small warships.

Due to the alignment of the planets (something that the Titanian high command was certainly paying attention to) there is a favorable transit from Saturn to Jupiter, as Jove is overtaking Saturn, being located in an inward and thus faster orbit. The Titanian fleet is in an excellent position to quickly drop down on Jupiter, while the Europan fleet is nearly a quarter of the way around the sun and ahead of both Jupiter and Saturn. It will be difficult for them to make it into battle in time.

The Europan home fleet can not refuse battle, because that would leave their moon open to attack. But though the quality of their crews is unparalleled, the Titanian fleet slightly outnumbers the Europans. Europan planners feel that it is a nearly even match. But tactical considerations favor the Titanians. As they will be decelerating into the Jupiter space, their heavy pusher plates will be facing toward the Europans. This provides maximum protection to the Titanian battleships, and allows uninterrupted X-ray laser fire as the battle is joined. Contrariwise, the Europans must perforce be accelerating towards the incoming fleet, and their pusher plates will generally be facing away. Smart maneuvering will mitigate this somewhat, but the front of the ship remains the front of the ship.

The Europan Navy dispatches its corvettes and cutters outsystem, using a gravity whip maneuver that will disguise their eventual position. They will coast up, powered down, and lie in wait for the enemy fleet. Hopefully, they will inflict significant damage as the Titanians pass - but losses will be high as the ships reveal their positions by opening fire. The Europans can be confident in the placement of these lurkers, because the location of the Titanian fleet is well known, and can only follow a narrow set of courses and still arrive at Jupiter.

The Titanian fleet powers on, occasionally launching a spread of sensor drones ahead in hopes of detecting enemy corvettes. These drones are soon overtaken by the fleet as it accelerates towards battle. The first combat occurs fifteen million miles out from Jupiter. The furthest of the screen of corvettes avoids detection until within a quarter million miles of the fleet - less than the distance from the Earth to the Moon. All of its X-ray laser missiles have been deployed, as have all of its sensors drones. The resulting sensor net gives the ship a much better picture than the fast moving Titanian battlefleet. All at once, the laser submunitions fire - each a small nuclear explosion pumping ten multi-gigawatt X-ray lasers. Sixty lasers hit twelve targets, a spread determined by the sophisticated targeting computers on board the ESNS Gomer Pyle (the Europans have an odd sense of humor) and the instincts of her veteran gunners. As much as possible, the gunners on the Pyle try to hit from the side, and avoid the thick refractory material of the pusher plate. In this, they succeed somewhat - the more alert among the Titanian targets detected the Pyle in time to turn tail toward the enemy. Nevertheless, the HRE Vindictiveness is completely disabled, and two others severely damaged. Light damage on the remaining ships is soon made good.

For its trouble, the Pyle is quickly destroyed in a hail of laser and particle beam fire. But the Europan command is pleased.

Over the next several hours, as the Titanian fleet slows as it backs into Jovian space, it endures several more attacks by lurking Europan cutters, corvettes and frigates. One more battleship is destroyed, but the Titanians are now alert and wary, and destroy thirty Europan warships with long range massed laser fire. Before the Europan home fleet can reach the Titanians, one more Titanian warship is hulled by a lucky long-range shot by a massdriver on the outer moon of Erinome. Now the home fleet has completed its swing around Jupiter, adding his gravity to their already impressive acceleration. The fleet is moving toward the enemy. But now, the admiral of the fleet faces the most crucial question in a space battle - what speed and course? His decision now will likely determine the course of the battle; because as good as his gunners and drone controllers are, if he does not put them in the right place, their skills will be useless. His options are limited. He must prevent the Titanians from bombarding Europa and her orbital factories, shipyards and habitats. If the Titanians maintain their present course, they will do just that. So he must either destroy or deflect them...

[wik] This battle relates to the discussion on space navy tactics discussed here, here, and here.

Here are parts one and two. And here is a battle in space.

Strategery and Spaceship design

All of this brings us finally to considerations of strategy. What would these warships be used for? Warships are often thought of in terms of how they kill other warships. This is not completely unreasonable. However, in strategic terms, warships exist to exert control over the sea. Historically, this has taken two forms here on Earth: to either protect your own shipping (preserving your use of the seas) or denying the use of the seas for your enemy. More recently, sea power has been used to project military power inland. US carrier battle groups are able to inflict significant amounts of damage to inland targets, and are also able to provide cover for amphibious assaults. To achieve these missions, warships and navies must often defeat other navies, which is why we so often think solely of warships' abilities to kill other warships. But the underlying purposes of navies and warships will drive the development of ship design.

In a solar system that is inhabited by competing powers, these missions will have close analogs. Protect your own interplanetary shipping. Deny it to the enemy. Project military force onto enemy targets on planets, asteroids or moons. Provide cover for space-borne assault on enemy targets. Each of these missions will require different types of warships. We have discussed the different types of warships that could be built with the technology that we have now, or could reasonably develop in the near future. We have seen that they fall into two major categories. How will they be used?

The Orion drive will provide a (very expensive) platform for moving large amounts of men and materials quickly across interplanetary distances. Ships built around less effective drives will be cheaper but much less capable than the Orions. It seems unlikely that any private concern would, in the near future, have the resources or need to build Orion drive commercial ships. Most private, and non-military government transport will use rockets, ion drives or solar sails. Sails will be especially favored by private concerns because of the cheapness of operation - absolutely no fuel costs. Faster transportation for VIPs or urgent cargos will be provided by souped up, stripped down nuclear thermal rocket powered craft.

If a power wishes to impede the shipping of a rival, non-Orion warships will be the most cost-effective commerce raiders. These ships would operate like earthly submarines, and it would be well within their power to effectively attack enemy shipping, or engage in anti-"submarine" warfare. Reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, lurking, stealthily inserting commandos - these are other missions that they might conduct. They could even serve as a sort of destroyer screen for a force of more capable ships. As escorts for friendly shipping, they would be useful in warding off the predations of enemy commerce raiders. But these light warships would be less well suited to the other missions that a space navy would be called upon to fight.

[wik] Side note: in talking about the relative usefulness of Orions and other warships, I am imagining a time when the solar system is somewhat well settled, and rival powers have emerged, and space warfare has had time to evolve. Initially, combat between the smaller classes of warships would be the leading edge - until the first Orion warship is built. I think that the first Orion would be like the British Dreadnought, taking naval warfare to an entirely different level, and possible igniting an arms race. The first interplanetary warships will be commercial or government ships originally designed for other purposes and retrofitted with weaponry. Indeed, ships like that will still be part of navies for a long time after the first purpose-built warships are laid down. But eventually, someone will become sufficiently frustrated with the limitations of conventional ships, and build that first Orion.

Battleship or Carrier?

Since we've been so free with analogies to naval warfare, let's throw out a few more. If the smaller class of warships, using conventional drives, are to be likened to submarines, what is the proper analogy for the Orion drive warships? The obvious choices are Aircraft Carriers and Battleships. Which one it ends up being depends a lot on weapons technology.

On earth, the battleship was surpassed by the carrier because of the advantages of aircraft. The best carrier without its dive-bombers, fighters, and torpedo planes would be a sitting duck for even an awkward, adolescent battleship. Why did aircraft have such advantages? Speed and range. Battleships were not only the largest of warships, they were the fastest and longest ranging. Aircraft trumped that by being able to fly above the water at speeds ten times or more faster than the fastest ship, and then drop bombs on the battleship with impunity from thousands of feet up.

Can we imagine an analogous vehicle in space? We have already seen that an Orion powered ship will be faster and have longer range than any smaller ship. While an Orion-powered ship could indeed carry fighter-equivalent spacecraft, dispersing your firepower into a bevy of smaller and slower ships does not seem to be as great an advantage as it was for wet navies. The same logic that drove the development of ever larger, ever more heavily armed battleships seems to apply to spaceships as well.

However, another consideration might yet result in Orion carriers rather than Orion battleships. The development of autonomous reconnaissance and (very soon) combat drones is well under way. There is no reason to believe that these developments will not be carried into space - in fact, all of our robotic space probes could be considered non-combat autonomous drones. The advantages of a non-crewed warship would be many - greater tolerance for acceleration, no need to waste mass on life support and a vulnerable but clever meatsack, and less concern if the drone is lost as opposed to a piloted warship. I don't think that the big warships will ever be unmanned, as the limitations placed on communications by the speed of light will require that humans be present at the battlefield. But that does not mean that drones will not be present on the battlefield. As I mentioned earlier, the line between weapon, sensor, and drone will grow vague. Each ship will be attended by a network of drones, feeding sensor data back to the mother ship; and if opportunity presents - deploying itself as a weapon. A big part of battle management will be the handling of these networks of drones. (I think that will be true here on earth in a very short time as well.) But these drones - be they weapons platforms akin to fighters, sensor drones, or x-ray lasers, will not make the Orion warship into a carrier. The primary focus will I think remain on the primary weaponry of the warship; if only because the autonomous drones of various types could never keep up with the mother ship. It does not pay to deploy millions of dollars of equipment that could be rapidly left behind by a fast moving battle, and play absolutely no part in the battle itself.

So the Orions will be battleships, queens of space. The generous payloads of Orions will likely see them armed with powerful generators, lasers and masers, particle beam weapons, railguns and metalstorm cannon. Bundles of lasing rods like those used in the standoff X-ray lasers could be dropped overboard with propulsion nukes, literally gaining more bang for the buck. The powerful weaponry of an Orion battleship, powered by an onboard fission reactor, would likely outrange as well as outpower any smaller ship. (Just like with traditional battelships, which could shoot farther than any other.) Armor will be possible, making the battleship resistant to many of the weapons capable of being carried by smaller warships, and even to those mounted on orbital bases. (An Orion battleship is in effect a mobile base - considering its size.) Crew complement for an Orion Battleship might number in the hundreds - mostly for damage control, but also to manage all the weapons, sensors, drones and communications that would be required by such a vessel. Next bit will cover what might happen in an actual space battle.

[alsø wik] Side note: The only reasonable variant on the basic battleship that seems likely is an assault version. It would perform the traditional naval missions of projection of force and covering assaults. This vessel would be used to rapidly transport space marines and the means to get them into whatever they're attacking - winged landing craft, zero-gravity assault boats, or whatever is required. This type of ship would also favor the types of weapons that could be used to bombard planetary surfaces. In time, as space navies build more Orions, variations in size and relative power might eventually be grouped into traditional categories such as frigates, cruisers and battleships. Or we might come up with altogether new names.

[alsø alsø wik] I think that in the long run, the traditions of the Navy will be more suited to space warfare than those of the Air Force. But since the Air Force is closer to space - they will likely get there first. And we'll have generals in command of our space fleets. And that would suck.