Fight the commies in space

Well for example a large ship with a railgun on it could do kinetic bombardment, that is dropping things that effectivley turn in to like meteorites when they land

They would have more energy than explosives pound for pound, so they could do more damage with a lower weight; but the main advantage is that if you were a soldier you could call in what is effectivley an artillery/airstrike anywhere in the world at any time and have it happen in like 30 seconds

With orbital artillery, you could shoot like rounds down to earth anytime you wanted, within a several hundred mile range with relative ease, from each ship that is effectivley in orbit above an area. So you could station like a few frigates or something over afghanistan and anytime you needed it, bomb the crap out of the enemy without having to wait for a plane to fly by or hope artillery is nearby, you'd have it essentially anywhere in the whole country on demand within seconds or minutes

just in free fall a projectile would fall at like 8 km/s, which would be like 32 megajoules per kilogram, or 8 times that of TNT

and the projectile would be great at piercing armor due to it's high velocity, localize the effects more so you could adjust the blast radius essentially and would have no fall-out or unexploded ordinance, meaning it would be less dangerous for the environment. A very large road that was slightly accelerated, say to 11-14 km/s, would easily have the force of an atomic bomb, although such weapons are already banned. The variable yield capability is a pretty big advantage as well, as simply altering it's flight path/initial velocity would mean you could increase or decrease power. Also, you could have the projectile explode in to dozens of little projectiles right before it hits the ground, thus acting more like shrapnel. The high velocity would mean good penetration, and something like a depleted uranium round would be cheaper. So kinetic bombardment is one advantage, another is an easier time communicating with sattelites, and the third is potentially transporting stuff from space but that's less feasible

He who rules space, rules the world. However, you're getting ahead of yourself; first we have to develop stable military platforms from which to stage any sort of orbital presence.

Exactly

We're quite a ways from having space warships.

But even if there's no space battles having spaceships would still be neat

Oh, absolutely.

it would be dual use for shooting down other spaceships or bombing targets from space

I've got a novel series in the works that explores some of the themes of humanity asserting itself in space.

As well as current politics and cultural trends.

and you could carry a ton of ammunition since pound for pound it would be far lighter than comparitive explosives. A 10 pound projectile could deliver as much power as a 500 pound bomb, and so you wouldn't need to carry as much ordiance, and the nearly unlimited range of several hundred or thousand miles and the nearly instant bombardment would be nice

Neat 😄

I mean as a soldier imagine calling it an air strike in like 30 seconds any time you wanted it lol

That would be pretty neat

Well, the projectiles are considerably lighter, but the energy it takes to send them plunging into the atmosphere isn't inconsiderable.

The initmidation effect of looking up and being able to see it from hundreds of miles would also be something

Guidance systems also need power.

Well, you can't really see it coming.

Well the theory is a very large nuclear reactor powering the whole thing

Like with artillery, the first warning you'll have of a bombardment is a screech and explosions all around you.

Yes, but how do you get that reactor into space in the first place?

That's not easy.

So I basically have two ideas for reliable space travel

The first is to shoot a plane at super high speeds off of a railgun powered by like a nuclear reactor, and then once it's at like 60 miles have it fly the rest of the way

At like 6-8 km/s you should with the same ceramics needed for reentry be able to do the reverse and go in to space at these speeds

Ideally it would be on top of a mountain where the atmosphere is thinner and so you'd have less drag

You basically fly up 90% of the way with a giant gun and then fly the rest with fuel, which saves on fuel

Too complex.

Something like a space elevator would be really handy. Failing that, some sort of anti-gravity or gravity-reduction device will go a long way.

The problem is the amount of energy required to reach escape velocity.

Space elevator equires super strong cables.

The problem with most reusable rockets is that the useful payload is usually between like 1-5% of their mass, so if you could essentially bypass the need for a booster rocket by just shooting it up in to the air at super high speeds initially, you bypass the need for all that extra fuel, and thus can have a higher payload to weight ratio. A 10,000 pound rocket doesn't send 500 pounds but 2500, 5000 etc. or something of the sort. With modern day computers such a thing is far easier to achieve than it was before and we already have super long high energy magnet guns, just used as hadron colliders.

Graphene, whiic.

So there's technical problems with space elevators.

Problem is, graphene is hella expensive.

Graphene is the best idea so far. How many miles of that do we have?

Space elevators do require super strong cables; one way around this *maybe* is to have a very large like, ion generator powered by a nuclear reactor to counteract the orbital forces of earth and stay in stationary orbit, counteracting the spin of the earth, but it would consume a ton of energy for every second it was in space