List all weapons of SDI ?

[Forest Green]

I've always been bothered about the ease of aiming an NPB though, a phased array laser you could steer electronically.

 

[publiusr]

This is an interesting article that has good information on the Particle Beam weapon.

Budget Docs Show Pentagon Aims To Loft Particle Beam Anti-Missile Weapon Into Space In Four Years

After three decades, the Pentagon is betting big on their belief that a dream of the Star Wars initiative may now be closer to a practical concept.

www.thedrive.com

Apparently they did put up a test article that work successfully on a sounding rocket.

I think Bill Eoff's Magnum was also called "BMDO Launcher"

Magnum HLLV

Magnum HLLV

www.astronautix.com

Studied Space Shuttle Variations and Derivatives

During the lifetime of NASA's Space Shuttle, Rockwell International and many other organizations studied different Space Shuttle variations and derivatives. These studies included different ways to increase shuttle payload capability, crew capacity, and developing standalone reusable launch...

encyclopedia.pub

That was likely the ride for the full size version.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I've always been bothered about the ease of aiming an NPB though, a phased array laser you could steer electronically.

Coarse aiming is definitely by pointing the entire satellite, fine aiming is by magnetic fields at the muzzle before the particle beam gets neutralized.

 

[Firefinder]

And of course one of the ideas with the Particle beam was that it will not destroy it per say but utter ruin the electronics and likely the uranium/plotuimiun/whatever bits of the nukes.

Which was able to be done very fast, like in a same amount of time a radar beam will hit it while sweeping back and fore fast.

Allow the system to just swept left and right basically repeatly.

How well that will actually work is....

Questionable, especailly since they didnt do it.

But in theory you'll only need a handful to cover the Horizion and hit the RV as they pop over. Likely will F up any satellites in the way but small price to pay compare to being nuked.

 

[Scott Kenny]

And of course one of the ideas with the Particle beam was that it will not destroy it per say but utter ruin the electronics and likely the uranium/plotuimiun/whatever bits of the nukes.

Which was able to be done very fast, like in a same amount of time a radar beam will hit it while sweeping back and fore fast.

Allow the system to just swept left and right basically repeatly.

How well that will actually work is....

Questionable, especailly since they didnt do it.

But in theory you'll only need a handful to cover the Horizion and hit the RV as they pop over. Likely will F up any satellites in the way but small price to pay compare to being nuked.

All it has to do is toast the fusing electronics, or fry one detonator in the implosion lens. No damage required to the fissionables.

Remember the George Cloony movie "Peacemaker"? Where they pried one panel off a nuke to prevent it from going major boom? That really works. Though they'd still be dead due to all the fissionable dust and being next to a good 50+lbs of boom.

 

[Firefinder]

All it has to do is toast the fusing electronics, or fry one detonator in the implosion lens. No damage required to the fissionables.

No as in there was an legit trick with nukes that could remotely defuse them that the Nuke A2A systems used.

Which was to use a radiation pulse to mess up how the Fissionables work so that they stop being fissonable apperantly.

In atmosphere you need a nuke to do so but in space you can likely do the same trick with a Particle Beam.


Still will run into the dirty bomb but 100 pounds of Hi-ix even with Fissionable Dust is not that bad. Actually since nukes Fission Materials are not radioactive it will not even be a dirty bomb, it be more of a heavy metal duster. Still bad but far more likely to be survivable.

 

[Scott Kenny]

No as in there was an legit trick with nukes that could remotely defuse them that the Nuke A2A systems used.

Which was to use a radiation pulse to mess up how the Fissionables work so that they stop being fissonable apperantly.

In atmosphere you need a nuke to do so but in space you can likely do the same trick with a Particle Beam.


Still will run into the dirty bomb but 100 pounds of Hi-ix even with Fissionable Dust is not that bad. Actually since nukes Fission Materials are not radioactive it will not even be a dirty bomb, it be more of a heavy metal duster. Still bad but far more likely to be survivable.

Yes, if you get enough of a neutron flux going you can burn up the fissionables, leaving the warhead without a critical mass to go kaboom. But even after that neutron flux, the materials will still be some flavor of radioactive!

And whether by disabling the implosion lens or neutron flux, you end up with fairly heavy objects dropping fast and then blasting radioactive heavy metal dust all over the place once they land. Better than a nuclear boom, but not pleasant.

 

[publiusr]

Could firehosing be a good thing?
HAARP able to push a distant beam upward and modify it? Can’t do that with lasers.

—or would it just follow a lobe?

 

[Forest Green]

Coarse aiming is definitely by pointing the entire satellite, fine aiming is by magnetic fields at the muzzle before the particle beam gets neutralized.

I'd have thought achieving the required accuracy over range with magnetic beam steering would be fairly difficult. Maybe I'm wrong.

Yes, if you get enough of a neutron flux going you can burn up the fissionables, leaving the warhead without a critical mass to go kaboom. But even after that neutron flux, the materials will still be some flavor of radioactive!

And whether by disabling the implosion lens or neutron flux, you end up with fairly heavy objects dropping fast and then blasting radioactive heavy metal dust all over the place once they land. Better than a nuclear boom, but not pleasant.

A neutron beam can poison nuclear warheads. A macron beam can actually set off nuclear warheads. Both can cause sizeable physically damage too. Search 'Fission Enhancement' and 'Impact Fusion' on this page:

Beam Weapons - Atomic Rockets

projectrho.com

 

[Archibald]

A macron beam

This made me chuckles. A Macron beam can certainly damage a lot of things. (I'll get my coat)

 

[Forest Green]

This made me chuckles. A Macron beam can certainly damage a lot of things. (I'll get my coat)

 

[Archibald]

PARCE QUE C'EST NOTRE PROJEEEEEEET !!!!

Back so SDI... he isn't worth a thread hijacking.

 

[Maury Markowitz]

Some more:

Shiva Star - fired compact toroids, which are small donuts of plasma

Casaba-Howitzer rehash - LANL dusted off the Orion pusher shaped charges concept to form high velocity (100s km/sec) jets. I believe this is what a previous poster was referring to as the nuclear lightbulb - right concept, wrong name.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Some more:

Shiva Star - fired compact toroids, which are small donuts of plasma

Casaba-Howitzer rehash - LANL dusted off the Orion pusher shaped charges concept to form high velocity (100s km/sec) jets. I believe this is what a previous poster was referring to as the nuclear lightbulb - right concept, wrong name.

nuclear lightbulb is a gas core nuclear thermal rocket that traps the reactor core in a quartz bottle.

 

[Forest Green]

Some more:

Shiva Star - fired compact toroids, which are small donuts of plasma

Casaba-Howitzer rehash - LANL dusted off the Orion pusher shaped charges concept to form high velocity (100s km/sec) jets. I believe this is what a previous poster was referring to as the nuclear lightbulb - right concept, wrong name.

I think the weapon itself was called MARAUDER (Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultra-high Directed Energy and Radiation).

Exotic Weapons - Atomic Rockets

www.projectrho.com

So a ball lightning weapon remains tantalizingly out of reach –- or does it? As I noted in a previous article on military ball lightning, the USAF’s Phillips Laboratory examined a very similar concept in 1993. Again, this involved accelerating a donut-shaped mass of plasma to high speed as an anti-missile weapon in a project called Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultra-high Directed Energy and Radiation, or MARAUDER.

Based on the Air Force’s awesome Shiva Star power system, experiments spat out plasmoids at ultra-high speed that were expected to reach 3,000 kilometers a second by 1995. But nothing was published after 1993, and MARAUDER was classified, disappearing into the black world of secret programs.

 

[flateric]

...

 

[Orionblamblam]

Ebay auction?

 

[Maury Markowitz]

I think the weapon itself was called MARAUDER (Magnetically Accelerated Ring to Achieve Ultra-high Directed Energy and Radiation).

This is indeed it, I had forgotten the name.

But I can tell you what happened to it after 1993 - it was canned because it didn't work. As was found in the fusion world that hatched them, compact toruses don't last as long as they were expected to, and in the case of a weapon they would be cold gas by the time they reached the ICBM.

Shiva Star has been used for all sorts of things since, including a number of fusion experiments using the same injector.

 

[badd]

Heritage Chair (charged particle beam) was not an SDI program (far earlier, started about 1974) nor strategic in function - it would have been a defense against antiship cruise missiles, particularly sea skimmers.

 

[Pixelbrick]

I'd have thought achieving the required accuracy over range with magnetic beam steering would be fairly difficult. Maybe I'm wrong.


A neutron beam can poison nuclear warheads. A macron beam can actually set off nuclear warheads. Both can cause sizeable physically damage too. Search 'Fission Enhancement' and 'Impact Fusion' on this page:

Beam Weapons - Atomic Rockets

projectrho.com

Just read a paper related to this & to reach the ~1000 km/s required for the teeny projectiles the author posits an accelerator 75 km long...

Acceleration of macroscopic particle to hypervelocity by high intensity beams

Hypervelocity (~1000 km/s) impact of a macroscopic particle (macron) has profound influences in high energy density physics (HEDP) and impact fusion studies. As the charge-mass ratio of macrons are too low, the length of a electrostatic accelerator can reach hundreds to thousands of kilometers...

ieeexplore.ieee.org

 

[Forest Green]

Wouldn't that depend to some extent on the power of the accelerator?

 

[Firefinder]

Just read a paper related to this & to reach the ~1000 km/s required for the teeny projectiles the author posits an accelerator 75 km long...

Acceleration of macroscopic particle to hypervelocity by high intensity beams

Hypervelocity (~1000 km/s) impact of a macroscopic particle (macron) has profound influences in high energy density physics (HEDP) and impact fusion studies. As the charge-mass ratio of macrons are too low, the length of a electrostatic accelerator can reach hundreds to thousands of kilometers...

ieeexplore.ieee.org

Wouldn't that depend to some extent on the power of the accelerator?

Imagine so since Ive seen paperwork that puts that you only need a ring accelerator of 100 meter diameter with 10 tesla field strength to punt macrons to fusion velocity.

Hypervelocity Macron Accelerators

A blog dedicated to helping Science Fiction authors create and discuss worlds where a realistic setting can still serve the fiction.

toughsf.blogspot.com

Maybe a Scifi blog but these guys do show their work and all the maths behind this in a easy to read set up.

Also got a link to SDI era research on this at tgd bottom to circle back on topic.

 

[publiusr]

I’ve read about particle accelerators being shrunken down…might that help with macrons (actual particles )

 

[Scott Kenny]

Imagine so since Ive seen paperwork that puts that you only need a ring accelerator of 100 meter diameter with 10 tesla field strength to punt macrons to fusion velocity.

Hypervelocity Macron Accelerators

A blog dedicated to helping Science Fiction authors create and discuss worlds where a realistic setting can still serve the fiction.

toughsf.blogspot.com

Maybe a Scifi blog but these guys do show their work and all the maths behind this in a easy to read set up.

Also got a link to SDI era research on this at tgd bottom to circle back on topic.

Tough Guide to SF is an excellent blog, the author's ideas are generally quoted with approval on Atomic Rockets.

 

[Forest Green]

You can get fission with less energy when fired as a beam though.

 

[NERVA]

...

Robert McCall’s work.

 

[Forest Green]

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA344854.pdf

 

[bcredman]

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA344854.pdf

Thanks.

 

[TheKutKu]

Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative

A new and provocative take on the formerly classified history of accelerating superpower military competition in space in the late Cold War and beyond.In M

direct.mit.edu

Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative
By Aaron Bateman
May 2024, Free Access.

 

[publiusr]

I wonder if it will mention this:

Clementine Project Information

 

[bcredman]

https://optics.org/news/15/6/6

Xcimer lands $100M to build fusion energy prototype​

"...the startup’s plan is to leverage laser technology originally conceived as part of the US Strategic Defense Initiative (aka “Star Wars” program) of the 1980s, using 248 nm-emitting KrF sources that have since played a key role in semiconductor manufacturing as the light source in deep-ultraviolet lithography systems.

“Xcimer’s laser architecture will produce up to ten times higher laser energy at ten times higher efficiency and over 30 times lower cost per joule than the NIF laser system that achieved fusion scientific breakeven in December 2022,” it claims, with CEO Conner Galloway..."

 

[bcredman]

I wonder if it will mention this:

Clementine Project Information

The book does mention Clementine, stating on page 197,"The closest that Brilliant Pebbles ever came to deployment was the 1994 joint NASA–Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (SDIO’s successor) Clementine probe that used missile defense technologies for a planetary science mission.1 Strategic defense advocates saw Clementine as irrefutable proof that Brilliant Pebbles was more technologically mature than critics had alleged. Nevertheless, whether the Department of Defense could have integrated all of the components required to have an effective space-based missile defense capability remains an open question."

1. For an overview of Clementine, see Stephanie Roy, “The Origin of the Smaller,Faster, Cheaper Approach in NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program,” Space Policy,vol. 14, no. 3 (1998), 161-162.

Link to the book as a PDF: https://direct.mit.edu/books/book-pdf/2369358/book_9780262377386.pdf

 

[publiusr]

I remember reports about how this was all a "brain-drain."

Instead, it was a brain boost to smaller missions.

Any talk about KKV thruster tech helping spawn skycranes?

One reason I was skeptical of private rocket ventures early on was the vast difference between wonky Armadillo hover tests and seeing KKV hover over nets rock steady--as if anchored into the very fabric of space itself.

That was one of the few times Old Space really had an advantage over the upstarts.

 

[Byeman]

1. Any talk about KKV thruster tech helping spawn skycranes?

2. One reason I was skeptical of private rocket ventures early on was the vast difference between wonky Armadillo hover tests and seeing KKV hover over nets rock steady--as if anchored into the very fabric of space itself.

1. First off, sky crane is a technique and not piece of hardware. It was the descent stage that lowered the rovers. it was just throttleable thrusters. KKV thrusters were bang-bang. On and off.

2. They were more than 20 years apart. The difference was money and not technology.

 

[Doc_Roswell]

No as in there was an legit trick with nukes that could remotely defuse them that the Nuke A2A systems used.

Which was to use a radiation pulse to mess up how the Fissionables work so that they stop being fissonable apperantly.

In atmosphere you need a nuke to do so but in space you can likely do the same trick with a Particle Beam.


Still will run into the dirty bomb but 100 pounds of Hi-ix even with Fissionable Dust is not that bad. Actually since nukes Fission Materials are not radioactive it will not even be a dirty bomb, it be more of a heavy metal duster. Still bad but far more likely to be survivable.

They are still working on this - See articles:

Neutrino beam could neutralise nuclear bombs - 14 May 2003​

Neutrino beam could neutralise nuclear bombs

Weapons belonging to enemy states could be zapped by firing neutrinos straight through the Earth – in theory

www.newscientist.com

and the Japanese working on it as well c. 2003:

Could neutrinos destroy nuclear weapons? - 13 May 2003​

Could neutrinos destroy nuclear weapons? – Physics World

Japanese particle physicists propose to destroy nuclear bombs with a high-energy neutrino beam

physicsworld.com

"Physicists at the KEK laboratory in Japan and the University of Hawaii have proposed a “futuristic but not necessarily impossible technology” that would use an ultra-high energy neutrino beam to destroy nuclear weapons. However, the researchers stress that the method is well beyond the capabilities of current particle accelerators and would require substantial R&D and financial investment by many nations (H Sugawara et al. 2003 arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0305062)."

and a more recent update from Fermilab describing the same technology being developed:

How do you make the world’s most powerful neutrino beam? - 13 November 2019​

How do you make the world’s most powerful neutrino beam?

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment will tackle some of the biggest mysteries in physics — and to do so, it will need the most intense high-energy beam of neutrinos ever created. Engineers are up to the complicated task, which will need extreme versions of some common-sounding ingredients...

news.fnal.gov

(it's the same technology as described in the 2003 articles, but now they're insisting its for purely academic purposes, of course.)