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

Dunno, but it ain't a lot.

And how many strings of cable do we need anyway if we want 10 tonnes to the orbit?

But, yeah, practical problesm.

The second idea is a nuclear powered steam rocket, basically using nuclear power to do it. Nuclear powered rockets shows quite a bit of promise, but funding was cut like back in the 60's. Today I figure something would be even easier since technology, especially in materials, and theefore lighterweight materials, has advanced quite a bit

Since nuclear power is really your most powerful form of power, pound for pound, and there's not much inbetween hydrogen and nuclear power to get there, converting nuclear power in to propulsion is really the big question