WI A militarized Cold War space race

Romulus Augustulus · Nov 27, 2005

CalBear said:
If you have military bases on the Moon it is even worse than it is for powers without orbital platforms. Can't shoot down the $%#%#$ Moon.

All you need to do from the Moon is throw rocks. Heinlien did a story based on that exact weapon (well it didn't start as a weapon, but...)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Earling · Nov 28, 2005

The advantage of space based weapons is in the area of warning time. The space based platform (or, even better, a web of individual MIRVed pods) avoids the launch signature, the climb into ballistic trajectory, and the majority of the transit stage. Your radar doesn't see the attack until it realized that the weapon isn't keeping it's predicted path. Warning drops to almost nothing. If you do it correctly, you don't even need to use an active weapon warhead (The U.S. has been rumored to be working on kinetic energy penetrator weapons. No bomb just a superfast ceramic/metal dart launched from orbit.) No warning = no retalitory strike. If only one side has space-based weapons, that side has all the options.

Well, this just sounds like making MAD even more extreme. Even less contact time to calculate if a detection device has made a mistake, anything suspicious has to be treated as the real thing and so on.

Thus when technical glitches/misreading of infomation could have lead to nuclear weapons being used (Im sure there was atleast one incident in OTL... if not more) they most definately will be in this TL.

Just how fast is "superfast". Im not quite sure how quickly a ICBMs can travel the distance, but I am confident if people thought these weapons were a reality, radar would be improved to ensure that any object which deviates from its predicted course is immediately detected and a suitable responce occurs. (Surely any object large enough to do significant damage after punching through the atmosphere would be easy enough to track(?))

That or the simple use of deadmans switches.. afterall, isn't that the idea of Submarine based weapons in OTL.

General_Paul · Nov 28, 2005

Actually, if we see SOME use of space based ICBM's, that could force the United States Air Force, and more over, NASA, to take some defensive measures to ensure securing american air space from soviet bogies. If I'm not mistaken, the Soviets had some plans on the books to place ICBM's in orbit to counteract the percieved "Missile Gap" in eastern Europe. If that occurs, and the Soviets place the launch platforms in orbit, we can see, in the least, minimal militarization of the space program. If this occurs, we can predict at least a partial snowball effect to take place, whereas the Air Force begins to retake some of the areas which it lost to NASA in the mid 50's, such as missile research, and satellite launches.

Romulus Augustulus · Nov 28, 2005

I personally can't see space-based nukes, but a spaceplane, operated by a nation's space forces, which could attack another nation's space-based assets or drop nukes from orbit could be plausible...

General_Paul · Nov 28, 2005

And why not space-based nukes? The soviets have the advantage in space throughout the late 50's, and into the mid-60's (in my opinion they loose their edge after the mid-point of the Gemini Program), and if they percieve that the Missile Gap is growing too large of a threat to national secuity, someone like Nikita Khrushchev is going to look to some cutting edge stuff to try to close the gap, and a space based launch platform could do just that. In the Mid 60's, the USAF was messing around with Blue Gemini, which theoretically could have been modified to launch nukes, so could the soviet counterpart. Now, if we have space-planes which could do that, the soviet Air Force could take it a step farther- "Why waste the valuable men and material with a Space Plane, when we could just put a launch platform in orbit and negate the need?"

Straha · Nov 28, 2005

whyn ot have both your orbital platforms AND space planes?

Romulus Augustulus · Nov 28, 2005

General_Paul said:
And why not space-based nukes? The soviets have the advantage in space throughout the late 50's, and into the mid-60's (in my opinion they loose their edge after the mid-point of the Gemini Program), and if they percieve that the Missile Gap is growing too large of a threat to national secuity, someone like Nikita Khrushchev is going to look to some cutting edge stuff to try to close the gap, and a space based launch platform could do just that. In the Mid 60's, the USAF was messing around with Blue Gemini, which theoretically could have been modified to launch nukes, so could the soviet counterpart. Now, if we have space-planes which could do that, the soviet Air Force could take it a step farther- "Why waste the valuable men and material with a Space Plane, when we could just put a launch platform in orbit and negate the need?"

There are challenges associated with dropping nukes from orbit. You can't just drop it; you need to brake it. Furthermore, it's not very accurate and orbital platforms are potentially very vulnerable.

The Soviets did have a FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) for a while, though.

A multi-mission nuclear-capable spaceplane would be a better bet.

MerryPrankster · Nov 29, 2005

Even if dropping nukes from orbit proves to be unwise, mass drivers (as others have said) would have worked nicely.

Scarecrow · Nov 29, 2005

Romulus Augustulus said:
You might find this link useful, to give you some idea of what kind of projects the Soviets and the Americans might have pursued. Ditto for this one.

thats the site! i was using the designs of the Blue Gemini, MOL and DynaSolar for my idea in NEME, which has died

Romulus Augustulus · Nov 30, 2005

Scarecrow said:
thats the site! i was using the designs of the Blue Gemini, MOL and DynaSolar for my idea in NEME, which has died

Yup. Deepcold is very, very cool.

Scarecrow · Nov 30, 2005

Romulus Augustulus said:
Yup. Deepcold is very, very cool.

its great. back to the topic. my POD for something similar to this was no NASA forming, and the USAF running all the space stuff in the US, but im not sure how to get a militerised USSR space program...

Soyuz · Nov 30, 2005

The actual problem here is how to keep both nations from going for long enough with such an extensive space program before they go bankrupt and collapse...

CalBear · Dec 1, 2005

Scarecrow said:
its great. back to the topic. my POD for something similar to this was no NASA forming, and the USAF running all the space stuff in the US, but im not sure how to get a militerised USSR space program...

You don't need to do anything to have the Soviet program be a military one. It always was military & political. EVERYTHING the USSR did revolved around those poles. Portect the State, demonstrate the superiority of the State. True research for it's own sake & individual accomplishment were not a concern, although they did occur. Hence the country's eventual collapse.

Romulus Augustulus · Dec 1, 2005

Scarecrow said:
its great. back to the topic. my POD for something similar to this was no NASA forming, and the USAF running all the space stuff in the US, but im not sure how to get a militerised USSR space program...

Maybe an asteroid hits the USSR and they become really paranoid?

Maybe they get wind of the USAF conducting space efforts earlier than in OTL (maybe they start seriously in 1953, the early space bomber projects being pushed through more quickly?) and decide to do something in response?

Oh...and in For All Time, my favorite dystopia, the US and USSR both end up using military spaceplanes, most prominently among them the Dactyl.

Scarecrow · Dec 1, 2005

Romulus Augustulus said:
Maybe an asteroid hits the USSR and they become really paranoid?

Maybe they get wind of the USAF conducting space efforts earlier than in OTL (maybe they start seriously in 1953, the early space bomber projects being pushed through more quickly?) and decide to do something in response?

Oh...and in For All Time, my favorite dystopia, the US and USSR both end up using military spaceplanes, most prominently among them the Dactyl.

ah, for all time...
i actualy had them both build military moon bases, then then the AH branched into2 tl

a) regular OTL collapse of the Soviet Union. eventualy NASA is created in the 1990's, and the Russians sell their moon base to the Chinese

b) nuclear war in the 1980's, destroying the earth. the Soviets on the moon escape to Mars, while the Americans collonise the Moon, and the small number of European and Japanese scientests on the US bases leave and go o the Trojen Asteriods.