Question about "Killer" Satellites in orbit...

[mobuttu]

How much damage do they do? Or what book/page do they talk about them at all? I have been searching through them to try and find them...anyone know???

Take a look at Mutants in Orbit or pgs. 40-42 SoT3. Btw, from this last reference: it's unlike anyone on Rifts earth can take control of those killer satellites, and if one could do it would unbalance the power on it (such is its damage capacity).

Hope this helps.

[Rallan]

How much damage do they do? Or what book/page do they talk about them at all? I have been searching through them to try and find them...anyone know???

Some of them are statted in MiO, but others are just described without going into detail.

Basically one of the few things that all the factions in Orbit can agree on is that Rifts Earth is an extremely dangerous place that needs to be contained, so they've all chipped in to take over the pre-Rifts military satellite network (well, the bits of it that aren't ran by AIs that refuse to accept instructions) and added their own killer satellites and suchlike to zap absolutely anything from Earth that tries to get into space. As well as a wide variety of weapons platforms, they've put a staggering amount of debris in a retrograde orbit, so attempting to launch conventional spacecraft from Earth will result in them getting battered to hell and back by space junk.

If you're planning on getting the PCs into space though, there might be a weakness. The writeup of it all sort of implies that the Orbit community expect any incursion from Earth to be "conventional". The network is probably set up with the assumption that Earthlings will use ships with chemical rockets or some other kind of reaction mass, and that they'll therefore try and launch from close to the equator and get into fairly conventional orbits. Which is fair enough, since most of the major powers on Rifts Earth don't even have traction drive technology, let alone contra-gravity.

But if you could get a contragrav ship from Phase World you'd be set. You could just fly over to the North Pole (or the South if you're that way inclined) and go straight up. You'd miss the debris ring altogether, and there's a good chance that there'll be a lot less defense satellites covering the polar regions.

[cornholioprime]

They do enough damage to take down the spacecraft of advanced alien civilizations.

Just ask the Archons.*

In other words.........they automatically do enough damage (Hand of God) to keep Rifts Earth contained in a bubble, and so that there is no such thing as satellite communications (well, except from ARCHIE-Three), and stop things like interballistic, sub-orbital nuclear strikes.

P.S. I think that it was Rallan who said that the Poles might be free of debris and satellites, but from what I remember, the Counter-Orbital Debris Field (CODF) and Killer Satellite Network is "MacGuffined" by the authors to cover 100% of the planet even though this would be a virtual impossibility in Real Life.


*Rifts: South America II

[jaymz]

Build a ship thatuses weapons like the big gun on the NGR SUper APC and you outrange most of hte stellites and can take em out on your way to orbit

[Zer0 Kay]

How much damage do they do? Or what book/page do they talk about them at all? I have been searching through them to try and find them...anyone know???

Take a look at Mutants in Orbit or pgs. 40-42 SoT3. Btw, from this last reference: it's unlike anyone on Rifts earth can take control of those killer satellites, and if one could do it would unbalance the power on it (such is its damage capacity).

Hope this helps.

But the fluff on 40 and 42 is the CS's and a Maveric Major's beliefs that those weapons are that powerful. Those weapons can't even reach the surface of the Earth since they are 312 miles from the surface and at max the longest range is 7 miles. It does support the canon info that people on Earth really have no clue what is in space and are opperating on beliefs that GA tech is so far advanced than their own that it would solve everything. Without even knowning that most of the stuff they have (as far as the CS) was based on GA tech and has already almost solved everything.

It is kind of interesting to note that in Major Kado's picture it also depicts a Railgun from MiO.

[Zer0 Kay]

They do enough damage to take down the spacecraft of advanced alien civilizations.

Just ask the Archons.*

In other words.........they automatically do enough damage (Hand of God) to keep Rifts Earth contained in a bubble, and so that there is no such thing as satellite communications (well, except from ARCHIE-Three), and stop things like interballistic, sub-orbital nuclear strikes.

P.S. I think that it was Rallan who said that the Poles might be free of debris and satellites, but from what I remember, the Counter-Orbital Debris Field (CODF) and Killer Satellite Network is "MacGuffined" by the authors to cover 100% of the planet even though this would be a virtual impossibility in Real Life.


*Rifts: South America II

Ask the Archons and they'll say that from the attack they feared the Nazca weapons more than the Satellites as the Sats PLUS the space stations took out a quarter of their fleet. The Nazca almost obliterated an entire fleet. So it isn't that EACH does enough damage. All of them were repurposed to attack the Archons. The CODF would eventually deteriorate to a ring but IIRC the orbital community "maintains" the CODF. Satellites on the other hand can maintain other orbits but would require constant possitioning corrections so they would require larger reaction mass tanks or have solar powered ion engines powerful enough to maintain their orbit.

[Ed]

Build a ship thatuses weapons like the big gun on the NGR SUper APC and you outrange most of hte stellites and can take em out on your way to orbit

Doesn't allow for the fact that nickel-iron sand at counter-orbital velocities would destroy any conceivable launch craft.

[The Beast]

They do enough damage to take down the spacecraft of advanced alien civilizations.

Just ask the Archons.*

In other words.........they automatically do enough damage (Hand of God) to keep Rifts Earth contained in a bubble, and so that there is no such thing as satellite communications (well, except from ARCHIE-Three), and stop things like interballistic, sub-orbital nuclear strikes.

P.S. I think that it was Rallan who said that the Poles might be free of debris and satellites, but from what I remember, the Counter-Orbital Debris Field (CODF) and Killer Satellite Network is "MacGuffined" by the authors to cover 100% of the planet even though this would be a virtual impossibility in Real Life.


*Rifts: South America II

I like the "Earth's in a pocket dimension" theory better.

[Ed]

They do enough damage to take down the spacecraft of advanced alien civilizations.

Just ask the Archons.*

In other words.........they automatically do enough damage (Hand of God) to keep Rifts Earth contained in a bubble, and so that there is no such thing as satellite communications (well, except from ARCHIE-Three), and stop things like interballistic, sub-orbital nuclear strikes.

P.S. I think that it was Rallan who said that the Poles might be free of debris and satellites, but from what I remember, the Counter-Orbital Debris Field (CODF) and Killer Satellite Network is "MacGuffined" by the authors to cover 100% of the planet even though this would be a virtual impossibility in Real Life.


*Rifts: South America II

I like the "Earth's in a pocket dimension" theory better.

Except that doesn't work unless the spacecraft are using a dimensional jump drive. We know traction and contra-gravity drives function.

[jedi078]

Well if somebody every bothered to power up the SDF-1 class space ship sitting in Atlantis*, and fire off its main gun several of the ‘killer satellites’ could be taken out. The blast would probably clear out some of the debris surrounding Earth as well.

Also it won’t be long before the CS (or any other nation-state) begins to send teams through the Rifts to gain the necessary technology to defeat the killer satellites.

*Pictures speak a thousand words and anybody whoever says a picture is not canon is an idiots so don’t use that BS to counter my above statement.

[Rallan]

They do enough damage to take down the spacecraft of advanced alien civilizations.

Just ask the Archons.*

In other words.........they automatically do enough damage (Hand of God) to keep Rifts Earth contained in a bubble, and so that there is no such thing as satellite communications (well, except from ARCHIE-Three), and stop things like interballistic, sub-orbital nuclear strikes.

P.S. I think that it was Rallan who said that the Poles might be free of debris and satellites, but from what I remember, the Counter-Orbital Debris Field (CODF) and Killer Satellite Network is "MacGuffined" by the authors to cover 100% of the planet even though this would be a virtual impossibility in Real Life.


*Rifts: South America II

Just as an aside, the orbital defenses are a Deus Ex Machina, not a MacGuffin.

[cornholioprime]

They do enough damage to take down the spacecraft of advanced alien civilizations.

Just ask the Archons.*

In other words.........they automatically do enough damage (Hand of God) to keep Rifts Earth contained in a bubble, and so that there is no such thing as satellite communications (well, except from ARCHIE-Three), and stop things like interballistic, sub-orbital nuclear strikes.

P.S. I think that it was Rallan who said that the Poles might be free of debris and satellites, but from what I remember, the Counter-Orbital Debris Field (CODF) and Killer Satellite Network is "MacGuffined" by the authors to cover 100% of the planet even though this would be a virtual impossibility in Real Life.


*Rifts: South America II

Just as an aside, the orbital defenses are a Deus Ex Machina, not a MacGuffin.

I went out and looked, and saw that my use of the term "MacGuffin" isn't exactly what the CODF is (although it does arguably serve the MacGuffin's basic purpose of advancing the plot in some way shape or form).....but the term that does properly apply, if any, sure as hell ain't Deus ex Machina.

That term refers to an 'invincible' plot device that saves the day at the last minute, sort of like the Cavalry in a Wild West film; that term came straight out of old plays, whereby a literal device with God on it would swoop down onto the stage and solve the characters' dilemmas. It was usually also used at the conclusion of the play (since the god or gods would solve everything).

A very good, recent example of a deus ex machina: When Mother Nature 'herself' routed the enemy forces in Avatar.

[AzathothXy]

There is also a nexus point on Mars. You can use that to bypass the defenses.

[The Beast]

Except that doesn't work unless the spacecraft are using a dimensional jump drive. We know traction and contra-gravity drives function.

Sure it does. Everything coming up from Earth has a 90% chance of being rifted away, regardless of the type of craft leaving Earth. See how easy that is...

[Lenwen]

The Killer sats and counter orbital debre field so far as I know is around the entire earth, yet at their weakest above both poles ..

Killer sats are not powerful enough to stop an advanced space force. Yes I know about the Arkhon fleets but lets face it .. their tech is not more advanced then that of Rifts earth by much .. if at all ..

[cornholioprime]

The Killer sats and counter orbital debre field so far as I know is around the entire earth, yet at their weakest above both poles ..

Killer sats are not powerful enough to stop an advanced space force. Yes I know about the Arkhon fleets but lets face it .. their tech is not more advanced then that of Rifts earth by much .. if at all ..

The Killer Sats are the Palladium version of the Lady of Pain in Planescape -they are only a plot device, there to partially control the Rifts Earth game setting.

Anything that shows up in the CODF and the satellite array, will by the powers of the Hand of God (Palladium's authors) be assaulted with enough force to take them out -and there will always automatically be enough Sats and Debris no matter how big the fleet, if they don't retreat.

[Zer0 Kay]

Well if somebody every bothered to power up the SDF-1 class space ship sitting in Atlantis*, and fire off its main gun several of the ‘killer satellites’ could be taken out. The blast would probably clear out some of the debris surrounding Earth as well.

Also it won’t be long before the CS (or any other nation-state) begins to send teams through the Rifts to gain the necessary technology to defeat the killer satellites.

*Pictures speak a thousand words and anybody whoever says a picture is not canon is an idiots so don’t use that BS to counter my above statement.

A schematic or accurate graphic representation is canon a grand land scape not even drawn to a description with the SDF-1 in the background is not. Sometimes the drawings are just jokes. Just like the Magic Book in one of the PFRPG books that says (in Rune) "Its a dog eat dog world and I'm wearing milkbone underwear. Norm" So is that canon and not satire? If it is the latter and not the former than it is (C) infringment.

[Ed]

Except that doesn't work unless the spacecraft are using a dimensional jump drive. We know traction and contra-gravity drives function.

Sure it does. Everything coming up from Earth has a 90% chance of being rifted away, regardless of the type of craft leaving Earth. See how easy that is...

Would it not be a bi-directional transfer? We know orbital debris are dumped down the gravity well from higher levels by the Orbital communities and at least some of the kill-sats change orbits (low to high) for maintenance.

[Zer0 Kay]

Sometimes the drawings are just jokes. Just like the Magic Book in one of the PFRPG books that says (in Rune) "Its a dog eat dog world and I'm wearing milkbone underwear. Norm" So is that canon and not satire? If it is the latter and not the former than it is (C) infringment.

It would NOT be copyright infringement if the former, as Cheers was not the originator of the quote(adding "Norm" at the end MIGHT cause problems, but probably not as the creators of Cheers never bothered to copyright the quote).

Does it really matter though? Since my point was that not all of the art is canon... and I'd say most of the art is not canon and just an artist rendition. Just like Kevin's picture in the RMB of a cyberknight and his Dbee companion... Yeah on Kevin's website they are identified as two orks, and that armor sure looks orkey to me. So that is actually reverse as publishers interpretation.

[Rallan]

Moving beyond the Hand Of Writer (scriptor ex machina?) plot device that is the defenses, I can see another big problem with canon when it comes to getting into space:

Why does nobody on Earth know that there's a thriving orbital community? You've got several very very large space stations up there, dozens of smaller ones, major mining/industry on the moon's surface, hundreds (thousands?) of ships between them, ice asteroids (which'll look like comets) being lobbed into high earth orbit and subsequently vanishing, and the occasional pitched space battle. And yet we're meant to believe that even technologically advanced nations with all the latest sci-fi gizmoes have no idea of what's really up there.

[Dr Megaverse]

Moving beyond the Hand Of Writer (scriptor ex machina?) plot device that is the defenses, I can see another big problem with canon when it comes to getting into space:

Why does nobody on Earth know that there's a thriving orbital community? You've got several very very large space stations up there, dozens of smaller ones, major mining/industry on the moon's surface, hundreds (thousands?) of ships between them, ice asteroids (which'll look like comets) being lobbed into high earth orbit and subsequently vanishing, and the occasional pitched space battle. And yet we're meant to believe that even technologically advanced nations with all the latest sci-fi gizmoes have no idea of what's really up there.

I've got the same gripe.
Doesn't anyone own a telescope in Japan?

I've always thought the same thing! I've also always never bought that there aren't any satellite uplinks left anywhere but with ARCHIE. What about defense bunkers built into the sides of mountains with hardened MDC walls that hide a satellite dish? Totally plausible IMHO.

[Zer0 Kay]

Moving beyond the Hand Of Writer (scriptor ex machina?) plot device that is the defenses, I can see another big problem with canon when it comes to getting into space:

Why does nobody on Earth know that there's a thriving orbital community? You've got several very very large space stations up there, dozens of smaller ones, major mining/industry on the moon's surface, hundreds (thousands?) of ships between them, ice asteroids (which'll look like comets) being lobbed into high earth orbit and subsequently vanishing, and the occasional pitched space battle. And yet we're meant to believe that even technologically advanced nations with all the latest sci-fi gizmoes have no idea of what's really up there.

I've got the same gripe.
Doesn't anyone own a telescope in Japan?

Nope... just cameras

[Shadow Wyrm]

I can't really understand the whole Earth Containment thing that is still going on. After 300 years it would serve the space bound communities to have some contact with Earth.

Though I would still keep the CS contained if I was in space, those guys are nothing but trouble.

[Rallan]

The xenophobia of the Orbital community also doesn't make much sense, in some respects. For example, the New Navy surface bases, the NGR itself, and Japan's technological city-states would be clearly identifiable and observable centers of humanity with pre-Rifts roots. With their ELINT capabilities, the Orbitals should know who is a potential friend and who is truly foe.

Earth-Space alliances would fundamentally change the balance of power on Rifts Earth. That's why they're handwaved away.

I think in MiO the writers were more worried about how it'd change orbit. If the orbital community was trading and making alliances with Earth nations, Siembieda wouldn't have been able to just take the After the Bomb material, staple a couple of Glitter Boys to it, and call it Rifts canon. He'd have had to rewrite everything from the ground up.

[Colt47]

The Counter Orbital Debris Field is kind of absurd due to the fact it would be more dangerous for the space faring peoples than it would be to people trying to launch off of the Earth. First off, if someone wanted to get into space badly enough and had a few nukes to throw at the problem, the detonation of the nukes would put out enough force to send a good portion of that debris field in every conceivable direction, shredding ships, satellites, and space stations while leaving the earth perfectly safe thanks to the atmosphere. Even if their was a K-sat within range of the incoming nuclear strike, the chances of it being able to stop the strike are slim to none thanks to the nature of the debris field. Also, the earth based forces in this scenario have no real drawbacks to using high altitude nuclear strikes, since they have no satellites to lose to the excessive amounts of radiation being thrown off. So, the nuclear strike would punch a huge hole in the debris field AND take out a rather large number of K-sats, space stations, and ships.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised that Joseph Prosek hadn't tried this at all. He should have plenty of records that describe what hypothetically is floating around up there, and have the technology to observe what might take out any spacecraft heading up. He'd also reap huge benefits if he could get some satellites up there and running. It isn't like his current ground forces couldn't hold what territory he has while he diverts some money to a decent space program.

Here is an image from Starfish Prime, which involved a nuke at 400km up at 1.4 megatons. This image is from Honolulu, over 1,300KM away from the detonation...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Starfish_Prime_aurora_from_Honolulu_1.jpg

Needless to say, the CS wouldn't even need a nuke at 400km with a big enough payload.

[Shadow Wyrm]

The xenophobia of the Orbital community also doesn't make much sense, in some respects. For example, the New Navy surface bases, the NGR itself, and Japan's technological city-states would be clearly identifiable and observable centers of humanity with pre-Rifts roots. With their ELINT capabilities, the Orbitals should know who is a potential friend and who is truly foe.

Earth-Space alliances would fundamentally change the balance of power on Rifts Earth. That's why they're handwaved away.

I think in MiO the writers were more worried about how it'd change orbit. If the orbital community was trading and making alliances with Earth nations, Siembieda wouldn't have been able to just take the After the Bomb material, staple a couple of Glitter Boys to it, and call it Rifts canon. He'd have had to rewrite everything from the ground up.

Rewriting the canon for Rift's Space would be a bad thing. How? The canon material needs to be re-done. Its garbage. Paladium should drop the Mutants in Obit/ Rifts Space manuscript, trash can it. Give us the Palladium fans a seperate book for each game that is worthy and meaningfull to each game.

[Shadow Wyrm]

Rewriting the canon for Rift's Space would be a bad thing. How? The canon material needs to be re-done. Its garbage. Paladium should drop the Mutants in Obit/ Rifts Space manuscript, trash can it. Give us the Palladium fans a seperate book for each game that is worthy and meaningfull to each game.

Win

Thank You.

[Sureshot]

I would also like to see a rewrite. Anyone with enough resources could clear the satellites inorbit given enough time. Splugorth if he wanted to could do it all on his own if he could see some way to profit from it.

[Colt47]

I would also like to see a rewrite. Anyone with enough resources could clear the satellites inorbit given enough time. Splugorth if he wanted to could do it all on his own if he could see some way to profit from it.

Pretty much right on the money there. The Debris field and the Killer Satellites seem redundant to the story; especially from the angle that the space war that would ensue from people trying to get satellites up and running would be more than enough of an excuse to prevent satellite surveillance of the earth from ever taking off. That and the fact that any incoming alien ships would simply get embroiled in the conflict, thus fulfilling the purpose of the old K-sat and debris field excuse.

[Shadow Wyrm]

Just after the coming of the Rift's a certain amount of containment would probibly seemed nessissary. After some time the space community would be in great need of contact with earth, and the NGR would be the most likely help on Earth. After all the NGR survived the coming of the Rift's, and would be the most likely country to start sending equipment back into space.

[Colt47]

Just after the coming of the Rift's a certain amount of containment would probibly seemed nessissary. After some time the space community would be in great need of contact with earth, and the NGR would be the most likely help on Earth. After all the NGR survived the coming of the Rift's, and would be the most likely country to start sending equipment back into space.

I'm not really certain what there would be to contain. The vast majority of beings who got rifted to Earth either ended up being monster food, were monsters that ate the poor people mentioned previously, or were powerful beings who actually want to be on Rifts Earth. Not really much incentive to go flying about in space. Plus the cataclysmic environment would have made going to space impossible for a fairly long period of time.

[cornholioprime]

The Counter Orbital Debris Field is kind of absurd due to the fact it would be more dangerous for the space faring peoples than it would be to people trying to launch off of the Earth. First off, if someone wanted to get into space badly enough and had a few nukes to throw at the problem, the detonation of the nukes would put out enough force to send a good portion of that debris field in every conceivable direction, shredding ships, satellites, and space stations while leaving the earth perfectly safe thanks to the atmosphere. Even if their was a K-sat within range of the incoming nuclear strike, the chances of it being able to stop the strike are slim to none thanks to the nature of the debris field. Also, the earth based forces in this scenario have no real drawbacks to using high altitude nuclear strikes, since they have no satellites to lose to the excessive amounts of radiation being thrown off. So, the nuclear strike would punch a huge hole in the debris field AND take out a rather large number of K-sats, space stations, and ships.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised that Joseph Prosek hadn't tried this at all. He should have plenty of records that describe what hypothetically is floating around up there, and have the technology to observe what might take out any spacecraft heading up. He'd also reap huge benefits if he could get some satellites up there and running. It isn't like his current ground forces couldn't hold what territory he has while he diverts some money to a decent space program.

Here is an image from Starfish Prime, which involved a nuke at 400km up at 1.4 megatons. This image is from Honolulu, over 1,300KM away from the detonation...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Starfish_Prime_aurora_from_Honolulu_1.jpg

Needless to say, the CS wouldn't even need a nuke at 400km with a big enough payload.

**EDIT**
Megadamage Values aside, someone here seems to have forgotten just how "wimpy" Rifts Nukes are....both in terms of MDC damage values and their tiny tiny area of effect (what is it, something like only a few hundred feet in diameter, tops?) compared to the vastness of the orbital space around the planet.

(And the ones that really could do a number on the CODF -temporarily, one forgets just how weak even Golden Age City Killing Super-Nukes are in the grand scheme of things -are A]] super-few in number, B]] are Golden Age tech that is, apparently by the Hand of God impossible to replicate, and C]] Wouldn't ever be used by the Coalition States except as a final spoilsport weapon against those strong enough to destroy them [i.e., the Splugorth].)

[Wōdwulf Seaxaning]

Rewriting the canon for Rift's Space would be a bad thing. How? The canon material needs to be re-done. Its garbage. Paladium should drop the Mutants in Obit/ Rifts Space manuscript, trash can it. Give us the Palladium fans a seperate book for each game that is worthy and meaningfull to each game.

Win

Agrees with Laux the Ogre. Win. As SW & others have said.. tis garbage & needs to be rewritten. Always thought it was stupid & don't care about MiO as it'll have NO bering on my games. I won't rewrite it just say if I want a ship to come through the Orbital field o'garbage leaving or arriving to Earth it will do so. But then again I'm not going to have any galactic assaults on Earth via Aliens anyway.

[Rallan]

The Counter Orbital Debris Field is kind of absurd due to the fact it would be more dangerous for the space faring peoples than it would be to people trying to launch off of the Earth. First off, if someone wanted to get into space badly enough and had a few nukes to throw at the problem, the detonation of the nukes would put out enough force to send a good portion of that debris field in every conceivable direction, shredding ships, satellites, and space stations while leaving the earth perfectly safe thanks to the atmosphere. Even if their was a K-sat within range of the incoming nuclear strike, the chances of it being able to stop the strike are slim to none thanks to the nature of the debris field. Also, the earth based forces in this scenario have no real drawbacks to using high altitude nuclear strikes, since they have no satellites to lose to the excessive amounts of radiation being thrown off. So, the nuclear strike would punch a huge hole in the debris field AND take out a rather large number of K-sats, space stations, and ships.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised that Joseph Prosek hadn't tried this at all. He should have plenty of records that describe what hypothetically is floating around up there, and have the technology to observe what might take out any spacecraft heading up. He'd also reap huge benefits if he could get some satellites up there and running. It isn't like his current ground forces couldn't hold what territory he has while he diverts some money to a decent space program.

Here is an image from Starfish Prime, which involved a nuke at 400km up at 1.4 megatons. This image is from Honolulu, over 1,300KM away from the detonation...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Starfish_Prime_aurora_from_Honolulu_1.jpg

Needless to say, the CS wouldn't even need a nuke at 400km with a big enough payload.

Nukes in space don't work that way. In an atmosphere nuclear weapons are incredibly destructive because the energy heats a ridiculous amount of air to ridiculous temperatures in a fraction of a second, creating an immensely huge ball of superheated gases that expands explosively and flattens everything with the mother of all shockwaves.

In space you just get a massive burst of radiation, which is going to be enough to fry anything too close (and I mean literally in the melty and dead sense, not just the fried electronics sense), and that's about it. Using nukes to clear the debris field in orbit over Rifts Earth is going to be an insanely expensive waste of time. Great for frazzling the circuits of defense and surveillance satellites (except that in Rifts virtually everything with an MDC shell is somehow magically immune to that sort of ECM tricksiness), but absolutely lousy for clearing a field of debris that covers most of low and mid Earth orbit.

[Shadow Wyrm]

I'm all for figuring out a logical way to defeat the Debris Field and the K-Sats, but do we still believe thats how it would be written. Keep the DF and KS's, lets just figure a better orbital community rather than getting past the barriers. I want there to be something to visit before I figure out how to get there.

[azazel1024]

Considering the loveliness of MDC alloys and how nothing seems to be an insta kill against them you could continually launch test rockets to orbit packed with sensors. Build up a picture of what they are up against and that would give you an idea of the counter orbiting debris field and also the killer satellites.

Also for the debris field I always got the impression that it was multiple belts orbiting opposite each other in orientation at different altitudes (with hundreds of belts consisting of millions of tons of sand, dust, pebbles, etc to basically cover the Earth), so even if you launched opposite the normal attitude, you'd still run in to a debris filed orbiting the 'wrong way'.
-Matt

[Colt47]

The Counter Orbital Debris Field is kind of absurd due to the fact it would be more dangerous for the space faring peoples than it would be to people trying to launch off of the Earth. First off, if someone wanted to get into space badly enough and had a few nukes to throw at the problem, the detonation of the nukes would put out enough force to send a good portion of that debris field in every conceivable direction, shredding ships, satellites, and space stations while leaving the earth perfectly safe thanks to the atmosphere. Even if their was a K-sat within range of the incoming nuclear strike, the chances of it being able to stop the strike are slim to none thanks to the nature of the debris field. Also, the earth based forces in this scenario have no real drawbacks to using high altitude nuclear strikes, since they have no satellites to lose to the excessive amounts of radiation being thrown off. So, the nuclear strike would punch a huge hole in the debris field AND take out a rather large number of K-sats, space stations, and ships.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised that Joseph Prosek hadn't tried this at all. He should have plenty of records that describe what hypothetically is floating around up there, and have the technology to observe what might take out any spacecraft heading up. He'd also reap huge benefits if he could get some satellites up there and running. It isn't like his current ground forces couldn't hold what territory he has while he diverts some money to a decent space program.

Here is an image from Starfish Prime, which involved a nuke at 400km up at 1.4 megatons. This image is from Honolulu, over 1,300KM away from the detonation...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Starfish_Prime_aurora_from_Honolulu_1.jpg

Needless to say, the CS wouldn't even need a nuke at 400km with a big enough payload.

Nukes in space don't work that way. In an atmosphere nuclear weapons are incredibly destructive because the energy heats a ridiculous amount of air to ridiculous temperatures in a fraction of a second, creating an immensely huge ball of superheated gases that expands explosively and flattens everything with the mother of all shockwaves.

In space you just get a massive burst of radiation, which is going to be enough to fry anything too close (and I mean literally in the melty and dead sense, not just the fried electronics sense), and that's about it. Using nukes to clear the debris field in orbit over Rifts Earth is going to be an insanely expensive waste of time. Great for frazzling the circuits of defense and surveillance satellites (except that in Rifts virtually everything with an MDC shell is somehow magically immune to that sort of ECM tricksiness), but absolutely lousy for clearing a field of debris that covers most of low and mid Earth orbit.

I did the math work back when I was taking Meteorology. Yes you are correct about how the nuke works. Assuming that they put the CODF below the K-sats, that would put the debris field close enough that upper atmospheric gases could be expelled into space and effect the field. Nothing like the face shredding goodness of metal dust at mega-damage velocities to wake someone up in the morning. Likewise, disturbing a good percentage of the debris field would likewise effect the rest of the orbiting debris depending upon the distance of the debris from the ejection point and whether or not they get hit by parts of the field sent astray from the gas expulsion. You might think that it would take a lot of gas expulsion to get this effect, but in reality it wouldn't take much at all.

[Colt47]

The point of the discussion really isn't about the circumvention of the field or the destruction of it, but rather the question of "should it even exist?" From the number of comments pointing out how many options there are to bypass it, the field shouldn't exist. In a game like Rifts, there should be plenty of reasons for players to stay grounded on Earth anyway. The best use of space flight that a typical adventurer on Rifts Earth would endorse is traveling to other locations on Rifts Earth.

As for the Killer Satellites in orbit, they seem a lot more probable. It would be more correct to refer to the K-sats as Orbital Weapons Platforms than standard Satellites.

[Shadow Wyrm]

I totally think that there should be some barrier to space travel on Rift's Earth, that way I want a new senesible canon.

[Rahmota]

I'll agree the orbital community in MIO is kinda lame. One reason i totally rewrote it. Also the way i keep everyone on the planet is that in the upper atmosphere is a highly oncentrated and dispersed electro-magical field that blastercates anythin that tries to pass through it, scrambles distorts and destroys any radio or comm signal that tries to pass through it and creates a distortion field so that looking up from below it looks like plain empty starry skies but looking from above it still looks lie hell on earth. Sort of a quantum time shift thing. From below you ar elooking into the far far far past but from above looking into the apocalypse so folsk don think there is any reason to try and deal with earth.

I do that because look at the ISS right now and how bright it is. You take the size of some of these stations and they would be reflecting enough sunght to cast mild shadows on a moonless night.

[Rahmota]

I don't have the book in front of me, but aren't the orbital communities supposed to be in the earths LaGrange Points? If so, they'd be at FAR higher altitudes than the ISS, and likely not visible from the surface of the planet. Namely, the 'closest' of those L-points are beyond the orbit of the moon.

Actually they are kinda scattered arodn thewhole Earth Moon orbital region. and o the closest L point is between the earth adn the moon.

And another thign these stations are frakkin huge. According to the book on page 58 of the description of Freedom station it is 6 times larger in rifts thanin MiO and in MiO it is a 1/4 mile in diameter. That means by my rough calculations its almost a mile and a half in diameter in rifts.

Laika is a 6 mile long cylinder in rifts beign only 2 miles long. It orbits the moon passing between the earth and the Moon. And about 6000 or so feet thick.

Yuro is the smallest but its still 1350 meters i Rifts beign 450 meters in MiO. And its in Geosynchronous orbit which is rouhgly 300000km up.

Outcast is three miles long and orbits both the earth and the moon.

Now compare that to the ISS which is in LEO (only a couple hundred or so miles up) which on its long axis is only 109meters or 357' depending on your measures.

Also compare to asteroid 2003 UV11 which is 595meter across and will pass within 5 lunar distances (ie the distance between the earth and the moon) and yet will still be magnitude 15. And thats just a chunk of rock. These station are goign to be brighter because f the olar panels, radiators, being made of shiny metal. These thins will stand out like beacons in the night sky especially with no light pollution from modern cities.

The deleted scene in ANH when Luke looks up and sees the ISD battling the blockade runner was about right. These huge shis in orbit would act like a giant mirror announcing themselves to anyone who bothered to look up. There is no stealth in space.

[Rallan]

The xenophobia of the Orbital community also doesn't make much sense, in some respects. For example, the New Navy surface bases, the NGR itself, and Japan's technological city-states would be clearly identifiable and observable centers of humanity with pre-Rifts roots. With their ELINT capabilities, the Orbitals should know who is a potential friend and who is truly foe.

Earth-Space alliances would fundamentally change the balance of power on Rifts Earth. That's why they're handwaved away.

I think in MiO the writers were more worried about how it'd change orbit. If the orbital community was trading and making alliances with Earth nations, Siembieda wouldn't have been able to just take the After the Bomb material, staple a couple of Glitter Boys to it, and call it Rifts canon. He'd have had to rewrite everything from the ground up.

Rewriting the canon for Rift's Space would be a bad thing. How? The canon material needs to be re-done. Its garbage. Paladium should drop the Mutants in Obit/ Rifts Space manuscript, trash can it. Give us the Palladium fans a seperate book for each game that is worthy and meaningfull to each game.

I rather liked the direction it was going myself. It was the closest thing Palladium's ever done to hard science fiction, the setting had a distinct vibe to it instead of just feeling like a bunch of random ideas that'd been thrown in the blender together, and the book kept the focus mainly on setting rather than being a toy catalogue with some token fluff at the front.

It could definitely do with a major rewrite to tidy things up and flesh things out, but if I suddenly found myself in charge of Palladium Books I'd be revising the Orbit setting, not scrapping it entirely and declaring a do-over.

[Rallan]

The Counter Orbital Debris Field is kind of absurd due to the fact it would be more dangerous for the space faring peoples than it would be to people trying to launch off of the Earth. First off, if someone wanted to get into space badly enough and had a few nukes to throw at the problem, the detonation of the nukes would put out enough force to send a good portion of that debris field in every conceivable direction, shredding ships, satellites, and space stations while leaving the earth perfectly safe thanks to the atmosphere. Even if their was a K-sat within range of the incoming nuclear strike, the chances of it being able to stop the strike are slim to none thanks to the nature of the debris field. Also, the earth based forces in this scenario have no real drawbacks to using high altitude nuclear strikes, since they have no satellites to lose to the excessive amounts of radiation being thrown off. So, the nuclear strike would punch a huge hole in the debris field AND take out a rather large number of K-sats, space stations, and ships.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised that Joseph Prosek hadn't tried this at all. He should have plenty of records that describe what hypothetically is floating around up there, and have the technology to observe what might take out any spacecraft heading up. He'd also reap huge benefits if he could get some satellites up there and running. It isn't like his current ground forces couldn't hold what territory he has while he diverts some money to a decent space program.

Here is an image from Starfish Prime, which involved a nuke at 400km up at 1.4 megatons. This image is from Honolulu, over 1,300KM away from the detonation...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Starfish_Prime_aurora_from_Honolulu_1.jpg

Needless to say, the CS wouldn't even need a nuke at 400km with a big enough payload.

Nukes in space don't work that way. In an atmosphere nuclear weapons are incredibly destructive because the energy heats a ridiculous amount of air to ridiculous temperatures in a fraction of a second, creating an immensely huge ball of superheated gases that expands explosively and flattens everything with the mother of all shockwaves.

In space you just get a massive burst of radiation, which is going to be enough to fry anything too close (and I mean literally in the melty and dead sense, not just the fried electronics sense), and that's about it. Using nukes to clear the debris field in orbit over Rifts Earth is going to be an insanely expensive waste of time. Great for frazzling the circuits of defense and surveillance satellites (except that in Rifts virtually everything with an MDC shell is somehow magically immune to that sort of ECM tricksiness), but absolutely lousy for clearing a field of debris that covers most of low and mid Earth orbit.

I did the math work back when I was taking Meteorology. Yes you are correct about how the nuke works. Assuming that they put the CODF below the K-sats, that would put the debris field close enough that upper atmospheric gases could be expelled into space and effect the field. Nothing like the face shredding goodness of metal dust at mega-damage velocities to wake someone up in the morning. Likewise, disturbing a good percentage of the debris field would likewise effect the rest of the orbiting debris depending upon the distance of the debris from the ejection point and whether or not they get hit by parts of the field sent astray from the gas expulsion. You might think that it would take a lot of gas expulsion to get this effect, but in reality it wouldn't take much at all.

What you're forgetting is that this is a field of debris in a big belt big enough to encircle the globe, spread far enough north and south to interfere with pretty much all conventional launches. And to top it all off it's supposed to be incredibly deadly even without the help of killer satellites, which means that any ship passing through it is pretty much guaranteed to not just cop a hit or two but sustain really serious damage. Which means the debris field is either an incredibly dense storm of crap, or it's several kilometres high, or both.

Unless you plan on lighting up a nuclear halo of explosions that circles the globe, you're only going to be affecting a very small part of that debris field. , effectively opening a "window" that's going to be pretty much impossible to exploit.

[Rallan]

I don't have the book in front of me, but aren't the orbital communities supposed to be in the earths LaGrange Points? If so, they'd be at FAR higher altitudes than the ISS, and likely not visible from the surface of the planet. Namely, the 'closest' of those L-points are beyond the orbit of the moon.

Actually they are kinda scattered arodn thewhole Earth Moon orbital region. and o the closest L point is between the earth adn the moon.

And another thign these stations are frakkin huge. According to the book on page 58 of the description of Freedom station it is 6 times larger in rifts thanin MiO and in MiO it is a 1/4 mile in diameter. That means by my rough calculations its almost a mile and a half in diameter in rifts.

Laika is a 6 mile long cylinder in rifts beign only 2 miles long. It orbits the moon passing between the earth and the Moon. And about 6000 or so feet thick.

Yuro is the smallest but its still 1350 meters i Rifts beign 450 meters in MiO. And its in Geosynchronous orbit which is rouhgly 300000km up.

Outcast is three miles long and orbits both the earth and the moon.

Now compare that to the ISS which is in LEO (only a couple hundred or so miles up) which on its long axis is only 109meters or 357' depending on your measures.

Also compare to asteroid 2003 UV11 which is 595meter across and will pass within 5 lunar distances (ie the distance between the earth and the moon) and yet will still be magnitude 15. And thats just a chunk of rock. These station are goign to be brighter because f the olar panels, radiators, being made of shiny metal. These thins will stand out like beacons in the night sky especially with no light pollution from modern cities.

The deleted scene in ANH when Luke looks up and sees the ISD battling the blockade runner was about right. These huge shis in orbit would act like a giant mirror announcing themselves to anyone who bothered to look up. There is no stealth in space.

What he said.

Some of the stations in Orbit will be visible to the naked eye because they're just so damn big and shiny. And the ones that aren't should be ridiculously easy for high-tech observers on Earth to spot because they're

a) constantly communicating with each other by radio

b) positively glowing with warmth compared to the background temperature of outer space because they're kept at comfortable room temperature

c) constantly serviced by a swarm of spacecraft, most of which are using bright, easy to spot engines like chemical thrusters or fusion drives

d) occasionally having wars where a bunch of stuff explodes

Considering all the fancy sci-fi gear that the high tech nations of Rifts Earth are able to make, I think it's safe to say that it'd be impossible for them not to have a pretty good idea of what's in orbit.

[azazel1024]

I don't have the book in front of me, but aren't the orbital communities supposed to be in the earths LaGrange Points? If so, they'd be at FAR higher altitudes than the ISS, and likely not visible from the surface of the planet. Namely, the 'closest' of those L-points are beyond the orbit of the moon.

Actually they are kinda scattered arodn thewhole Earth Moon orbital region. and o the closest L point is between the earth adn the moon.

And another thign these stations are frakkin huge. According to the book on page 58 of the description of Freedom station it is 6 times larger in rifts thanin MiO and in MiO it is a 1/4 mile in diameter. That means by my rough calculations its almost a mile and a half in diameter in rifts.

Laika is a 6 mile long cylinder in rifts beign only 2 miles long. It orbits the moon passing between the earth and the Moon. And about 6000 or so feet thick.

Yuro is the smallest but its still 1350 meters i Rifts beign 450 meters in MiO. And its in Geosynchronous orbit which is rouhgly 300000km up.

Outcast is three miles long and orbits both the earth and the moon.

Now compare that to the ISS which is in LEO (only a couple hundred or so miles up) which on its long axis is only 109meters or 357' depending on your measures.

Also compare to asteroid 2003 UV11 which is 595meter across and will pass within 5 lunar distances (ie the distance between the earth and the moon) and yet will still be magnitude 15. And thats just a chunk of rock. These station are goign to be brighter because f the olar panels, radiators, being made of shiny metal. These thins will stand out like beacons in the night sky especially with no light pollution from modern cities.

The deleted scene in ANH when Luke looks up and sees the ISD battling the blockade runner was about right. These huge shis in orbit would act like a giant mirror announcing themselves to anyone who bothered to look up. There is no stealth in space.

Visible as a dot in the night sky, sure, but not brighter than the ISS.

GEO as you mentioned is much higher than LEO. GEO is approximately 35,000km (not 300,000km or lunar orbit) compared to 350km of the ISS. That is 100 times further away.

ISS as you mentioned is about 109m in length compared to Yuro at 1350m in Rifts. That is about 12 times larger than the ISS, yet 100 times futher. Much, much dimmer than the ISS. Even with its solar sail it'll appear much, much smaller.

Laika being 6 miles long, orbiting the moon would mean it is anywhere from 250,000km on up in distance from the Earth. That is about 800 times further than the ISS, and only about 90 times larger than the ISS.

If something like Laika was in low earth orbit, than yeah, it would very, very visible to the naked eye. If Laika was in LEO it would appear to be about 1.6 degrees in size in the night sky. For reference the full moon only covers about half a degree of the night sky. That is fricken huge for Laika in LEO.

But its not, at 250,000km it would cover 8.25 arc seconds of the night's sky.

To get an idea how small that is, someone with 20/20 vision can distinguish between two black lines on a white background 1.75mm apart at 20ft. That is a visual accuity of 1 arc minute (60 seconds in a minute). Unless Laika is pumping out million or billions of lumens of light on top of what it reflects it probably wouldn't be noticable in the night's sky at all.

Yuro might be just visible.
-Matt

PS The ISS for reference is almost exactly 1 arc minute in size in the night's sky. These space stations either wouldn't be visible without a telescope and knowing right where to look, or at best would appear to be very, very, very dim tiny dots in the sky.

[Colt47]

The Counter Orbital Debris Field is kind of absurd due to the fact it would be more dangerous for the space faring peoples than it would be to people trying to launch off of the Earth. First off, if someone wanted to get into space badly enough and had a few nukes to throw at the problem, the detonation of the nukes would put out enough force to send a good portion of that debris field in every conceivable direction, shredding ships, satellites, and space stations while leaving the earth perfectly safe thanks to the atmosphere. Even if their was a K-sat within range of the incoming nuclear strike, the chances of it being able to stop the strike are slim to none thanks to the nature of the debris field. Also, the earth based forces in this scenario have no real drawbacks to using high altitude nuclear strikes, since they have no satellites to lose to the excessive amounts of radiation being thrown off. So, the nuclear strike would punch a huge hole in the debris field AND take out a rather large number of K-sats, space stations, and ships.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised that Joseph Prosek hadn't tried this at all. He should have plenty of records that describe what hypothetically is floating around up there, and have the technology to observe what might take out any spacecraft heading up. He'd also reap huge benefits if he could get some satellites up there and running. It isn't like his current ground forces couldn't hold what territory he has while he diverts some money to a decent space program.

Here is an image from Starfish Prime, which involved a nuke at 400km up at 1.4 megatons. This image is from Honolulu, over 1,300KM away from the detonation...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Starfish_Prime_aurora_from_Honolulu_1.jpg

Needless to say, the CS wouldn't even need a nuke at 400km with a big enough payload.

Nukes in space don't work that way. In an atmosphere nuclear weapons are incredibly destructive because the energy heats a ridiculous amount of air to ridiculous temperatures in a fraction of a second, creating an immensely huge ball of superheated gases that expands explosively and flattens everything with the mother of all shockwaves.

In space you just get a massive burst of radiation, which is going to be enough to fry anything too close (and I mean literally in the melty and dead sense, not just the fried electronics sense), and that's about it. Using nukes to clear the debris field in orbit over Rifts Earth is going to be an insanely expensive waste of time. Great for frazzling the circuits of defense and surveillance satellites (except that in Rifts virtually everything with an MDC shell is somehow magically immune to that sort of ECM tricksiness), but absolutely lousy for clearing a field of debris that covers most of low and mid Earth orbit.

I did the math work back when I was taking Meteorology. Yes you are correct about how the nuke works. Assuming that they put the CODF below the K-sats, that would put the debris field close enough that upper atmospheric gases could be expelled into space and effect the field. Nothing like the face shredding goodness of metal dust at mega-damage velocities to wake someone up in the morning. Likewise, disturbing a good percentage of the debris field would likewise effect the rest of the orbiting debris depending upon the distance of the debris from the ejection point and whether or not they get hit by parts of the field sent astray from the gas expulsion. You might think that it would take a lot of gas expulsion to get this effect, but in reality it wouldn't take much at all.

What you're forgetting is that this is a field of debris in a big belt big enough to encircle the globe, spread far enough north and south to interfere with pretty much all conventional launches. And to top it all off it's supposed to be incredibly deadly even without the help of killer satellites, which means that any ship passing through it is pretty much guaranteed to not just cop a hit or two but sustain really serious damage. Which means the debris field is either an incredibly dense storm of crap, or it's several kilometres high, or both.

Unless you plan on lighting up a nuclear halo of explosions that circles the globe, you're only going to be affecting a very small part of that debris field. , effectively opening a "window" that's going to be pretty much impossible to exploit.

Center mass formula + eccentricity formula.

[azazel1024]

For knowing they are up there, the radio communications would be the largest giveaway.

Blowing stuff up wouldn't be very visible other than something in a true nuke scale. Chemical exposions thousands of miles away wouldn't be visible. The 'mini' nukes on long range missiles probably wouldn't be much brighter and based on the rules, don't really seem to give off much in the way of EM pulse or radiation. That said, you'd have to pickup some of that, but it probably wouldn't be visible from the ground at night unless you were fairly close to GEO or lower. You might see some infintesimally tiny 'stars' appearing and disappearing with a big running battle with a lot of long range missiles with 'mini' nuke warheads. Full sized nukes at GEO would be fairly visible, but they wouldn't exactly light up the night sky (stuff used in LEO or within the van allen radiation belts would be pretty visible).

So someone like the CS or NGR has gotta know there are people in orbit. Depending on the encryption or lack of it, they might have no real particulars except the general location of some of the bigger emmitters. Its not like the CS and NGR are likely to have big ole radio telescopes searching the night's sky. You'd need high gain antennas to pickup a lot of the radio chatter in space, and for that matter a lot of space craft use them to communicate between one another for any resonable range.

I am making up numbers a bit, but a 100w radio with a pretty sensitive receiver on the other end might only have a range of 1,000-2,000 miles in space. Using a high gain receiver, pointed in the right slice of the sky, that range can be boosted a lot. Using the 1 meter frequency (300mhz) a 3 meter diameter high gain antenna would boost receiving strength by around 88 times in theory (maybe 50 times in principal). This would extend the range by about 7 times (signal strength drops with the square of the distance). So a 1,000-2,000 mile range signal can now be picked up at 7,000-14,000 miles. Using a high gain antenna to transmit also increase the range by a similar amount, so in theory using a 3m transmiting dish and a 3m receiving dish you could extend the range significantly since you'd capture both 50 times as much signal energy, but you'd boost it by 50 times as well. So the overall distance would be increased by 50! So now you'd have a range of 50,000-100,000 miles using a sending and receiving 3m anntena.

The downside is the sender and receiver must both be pointed in the 1/50th of the sky that the other resides in. Not exactly amazing accuracy needed, but it still means that the orbital communities, unless in LEO and transmitting broadly instead of on narrow beam would likely have very few of their transmisions be able to be picked up on Earth's surface.

Sure transmissions to Yuro from other communities are going to be pointed in the right direction, but they are also likely to be pointed at good sized high gain antennas using anything from the 1m frequency down to about the 1cm frequency and probably are hitting dishes anything from 3m up to 20m in size with similar sending dishes.

So a regular antenna on Earth's surface would be picking up something like 1/50th of the signal strength on the high end to 1/20 millionth the signal strength on the really low end (20m receiving antenna, 1cm wave length). Of course a high gain antenna would compensate for a lot of that, but the higher the gain the more precise the aiming of the antenna.

Increased transmitter power isn't a good way to go about it, signal strength drops with the square of the range, so to get 2 times the range, you need 4 times the transmitting power. However, with a high gain antenna all you have to do is double the parabolic dish size to double the range. Get the same size increase on a parabolic high gain antenna on the receiving size, every doubling of their dish size quadruples the range! Omni directional broadcasts are going to have a pretty limited range, probably less than 50,000 miles on really powerful transmitters (in the kilowatt range) to omnidirectional receivers. Of course have a small dish pointed in the general direction in the sky and you can increase the receiving range of that omnidirectional transmission, but you are also limited by having to sweap the sky with your receiver to find the broadcast to begin with and also sweep commonly used frequencies at the same time to find one.

Every doubling of the range at which a high gain antenna can pickup an omnidirectional transmission would double how long it took the dish to sweep the entire sky. So a 10 minute sweep of the entire sky by a .5 meter dish searching through say the common 10-100cm wave lengths looking for omnidirectional boardcasts would take 20 minutes with a 1 meter dish (but it could pickup those broadcasts at twice the range).

Just some food for thought on radio communications.
-Matt

[Colt47]

The point of the discussion really isn't about the circumvention of the field or the destruction of it, but rather the question of "should it even exist?".

It has to. Or rather, something has to. Space flight means comms sats, GPS, and eyes in the sky. The whole premise of RE collapses into the boring, overly restricted big brother of the real world today. To say nothing of what ICBMs could do to various factions dirtside.

There are just better reasons for a lack of satellite tech than the impossible CODF. Rogue Orbital weapons platforms, space mines, and even things that might not have been there before such as rifted in alien ships gone haywire.

[azazel1024]

2 belts with a small seperation of a few dozen miles one orbiting normally, one retrograde. Unless you launch in to an orbit between the two and stay there you are going to have to pass through one of the belts with things hitting you at twice orbital speed.

34,000mph impacts are going to ruin your whole day. A 1 gram piece of rock is going to with the kinetic energy of a .50 caliber bullet and have a much, much smaller point of impact and faster transfer of energy. If the space community is making 'hardened' space debris, such as from iron-nickle asteroids and strewing it about in 10-50 gram pebbles/b-bs it is going to ruin a ships whole weak (something that size at those speeds probably would put a hole in 10 inch tank armor).

550 million square kilometers of orbital space at an orbit of 200km (very low earth orbit, but high enough to be stablish for a few years). If you placed 50 gram BBs 1 for every 1 square meter of space you'd need 550 trillion of them. A heck of a lot, but only 27.5 billion tons to put 1 every 1 square meter.

An iron/nickel asteriod 1 cubic km in size is around 8 billion tons. Plenty of rocks bigger than that in the asteriod belt.

Entering a higher orbit with a velocity "upward" of 1km/sec still with the rest "in plane" with the orbital debris, a 10m tall ship, 30m across would likely impact would cross the plane of the orbital debris field in 10 miliseconds impacting approximately 4,200 50 gram pebbles each hitting the ship with about 5.5 megajoules of energy, or about what a 76mm high velocity tank gun hits with.

That is four thousand two hundred of them.

Decrease the density to 1 BB per 100 square meters and it takes 275 million tons (a humble 300 meter across asteriod could provide all the material for that) and you'd still strike something around 40 projectiles hitting with the kinetic energy of a small tank gun, and hitting in a much smaller impact area (about 11mm circular BB if made of Iron compared to 76mm front cross section of a 76mm high velocity tank gun).

Sure you'd need to renew the orbitals fairly frequently and they'd bunch, spread out, etc, but odds are good if you try to lift in to an orbit above 200km you are going to strike dozens if not hundreds of these suckers and they are going to punch massive holes in your ship. Even something armored is going to take massive if not catastrophic damage. Something like the actual space shuttle would be torn to shreds, something like a battle tank being lifted in to orbit probably even would be.

You'd likely need a ship with massive frontal armor, force fields, or both to survive it.

Is it likely that the Rift's space communities would spend the resources to do something like this, no, but it is theoretically possible and it would likely end any attempt to climb to a sustainable orbit (anything that is going to be able to be maintained for more than a few months). It would take a massive number of ships operating 'round the clock' to keep it maintained.

If 10% had to be renewed per year you'd have 27.5 million tons with my low end density. That is 75,000 tons per day that would need renewal. Just hauling from a 'storage yard' in LEO to the lower orbital where the debris field is located would take some time, but a really big ship could probably manage the whole day's consignment in a go, or even a couple of days consignment of junk. Then just a matter of off loading it properly in to orbit, which would be tricky as hell to get it spaced out, etc.

Really you'd probably need at least a few score ships of medium sized (hauling a few thousand tons) constantly maintaining the debris belts year round, plus smelting the stuff from big asteriods hauled from the belt.

If you moved the orbit a little higher to say 250km you'd reduce replinishment by a factor of 10 or more, but of course you'd have a much higher ceiling for earthlings to put satellites, etc in to LEO where kill sats would have to deal with them (and energy weapon ranges in Rifts are paltry, so you'd need to use missiles, which would run in to the orbital debris fields).

Sounds like a huge investment of time and energy for a relatively small orbital community (I could believe it if the orbital population was in the millions, but in the low hundred thousands (1-200k) including EVERYONE, independents, loonies, etc).
-Matt

[azazel1024]

You stagger the rings altitude. Get small enough objects, and 11mm is small enough and you just can't see them from the ground using radar. The only way you can predict which orbits you can move in to and move to a new one, etc like you are suggesting is knowing exactly where they are. Radar, especially at longer ranges is not going to work. You'd need to be very close, a few miles and use milimeter wave radar to image the rings.

If you manage to succesfully get in to an orbit low enough to be below all of the rings and be within range to image them with radar, or another imaging method you are going to be taking a lot of time to manuever through the various rings using transfer orbits (you couldn't simply inject up to a really high orbit without having to maneuver through the rings, otherwise you run in to one of them). Even with really power to weight ratios and unlimited fuel this would probably take hours or days to accomplish all the while there are killer satellites making your acquaintance.

I have no idea how closely you could set the rings, but you could probably place them within a few hundred meters of each other or closer. So the whole spherical coverage of the Earth probably wouldn't take up more than a few kilometers to a few dozen kilometers.

Renewing them because of this would pretty much be an impossible task. Setting it up wouldn't but it would be horribly timing consuming.

No orbital mechanics are not my hobby, but physics is, and I certainly understand orbital mechanics fairly well.

The orbital rings would be more in the way of landmines. If you know they are there, they are relatively easy to avoid, but they slow you down a lot. All the while the enemy is shooting at you while the mine field is 'pinning' you in place.
-Matt

PS I certainly agree that MDC is broken, as are all physics surrounding it. I simply threw in the energy equivelency for the heck of it so that anyone who didn't have an idea, would have one about what those little pebbles and BBs would be like running in to at orbital speeds. Have them do MD or not, whatever you care to do, but if they were to do even 1 point of MD, a density of 1 per meter square would do 4,200MD, 1 per 10 meter square would still do 420MD and 1 per 100 would do 42MD (okay, not that much). Or use it as simply writer fiat that you can't get in to orbit from Rift's Earth.