AHC: No Outer Space Treaty
- Thread starter Alternate History Geek
- Start date
I posted concerning this same topic a few months back:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=263100
The general consensus was that it prevented a huge money drain into space militarization programs that may have served negligible purpose. Basically, for all the starry-eyed visions of Orion battleships and Moon bases with nuke silos, both the US and Soviet Union had little real ability to successfully pursue these objectives given period technology and the treaty just closed a door that neither side really wanted to walk through to begin with. We did see some military space options from the Soviets with Almaz stations and the Soyuz-P and R interceptor and reconnaisance concepts, and the US Air Force certainly wasn't slacking off. Hell, just look at the X-37B and its potential.
Personally, aside from the whole new dimension of killing off the planet several times over, I too get starry-eyed at the possibility of a greater military presence in space.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=263100
The general consensus was that it prevented a huge money drain into space militarization programs that may have served negligible purpose. Basically, for all the starry-eyed visions of Orion battleships and Moon bases with nuke silos, both the US and Soviet Union had little real ability to successfully pursue these objectives given period technology and the treaty just closed a door that neither side really wanted to walk through to begin with. We did see some military space options from the Soviets with Almaz stations and the Soyuz-P and R interceptor and reconnaisance concepts, and the US Air Force certainly wasn't slacking off. Hell, just look at the X-37B and its potential.
Personally, aside from the whole new dimension of killing off the planet several times over, I too get starry-eyed at the possibility of a greater military presence in space.
Garrison
Donor
The flawed assumption there is that the US couldn't respond to such a move; or indeed beat them to the punch. Later this year the Falcon Heavy should fly basically giving the US the only launcher really capable of mounting an EOR/LOR lunar mission. Just because NASA is bogged down with the SLS doesn't mean the US is falling behind.
It's a matter of how far out from Earth orbit we'd be extending the military arm and the subsequent logistics train involved. The debate is going to swing between the pros and cons of manned versus unmanned military craft. Do we trust automated vessels to get the job done via remote control while taking time delay of transmissions into effect, or does military supremacy of space require a Mark One eyeball on the scene? Size is a major consideration as well; are we launching these vessels as is into orbit or is there an assembly area for constructing larger craft? Without taking anti-radiation shielding of a craft into account, what's the weapons/armor ratio? Any ship that wants to survive potential combat is going to be a hard hitter with lots of countermeasures to keep the opposing stuff at bay.
One idea I've been kicking around is having a pseudo-battlecarrier that can deploy unmanned point defense drones around it for defense while it engages targets.
One idea I've been kicking around is having a pseudo-battlecarrier that can deploy unmanned point defense drones around it for defense while it engages targets.