![]() The target runs into it at, say, typical low orbit speed of 7.8 km/s. Suppose the target seeker is hanging like a popup fly, stationary relative to the Earth at the moment of impact. Nor is delivering a punch – the target's own kinetic energy will see to that. You'll still need a target seeker in order to hit anything, but sending it up there is not a big problem. Simple, single-stage boosters in the V-2 / SCUD class will do the job nicely. But by the standards of space tech, throwing rocks up to orbital altitude is also not very hard. Sure, an orbiting ship can easily throw rocks at the surface, the rocks needing only a small kick to send them down from orbit. Not even the gravity well itself, as it turns out, offers much advantage. In a rock throwing contest at the gravity well, holding the high ground means no concealment, while the low ground means being able to take cover in the underbrush. Once they arrive they have nowhere to hide and nothing to take cover behind. They are much bigger targets, perhaps 100-1000 times the cross section of a warhead, and their approach track will probably be known long in advance. Large spacecraft arriving from deep space (such as an interplanetary armada) are quite another matter. But this is largely a matter of short warning times, compact warheads, and most of all the conundrum that strategic nuclear defense is ineffectual unless it is perfect. Even after four decades of effort and enormous expense, strategic missile defense remains uncertain at best. To be sure, the B-70 fell victim not just to improvements in Soviet air defense but to competition from ICBMs that flew much higher and faster still. 'Under the radar' has now become a common metaphor. Strangelove' came out in 1964 the B-52s were flying near treetop level. But the B-70 ended up getting canceled, and by the time 'Dr. The development of bombers up to that time emphasized speed and altitude, from the B-17 and its British counterparts to the pressurized B-29, then the jet powered B-47, B-52, and V-bombers, then the supersonic B-58 and Mach 3 B-70. In the rocketpunk era of the 1950s there was little reason to think so. ![]() In general the advantages of high ground are obvious, and the image of fighting from the top of a gravity well versus fighting from the bottom is vivid. ![]() Heinlein, evoking the Hornblower-verse, called it the gravity gauge. A traditional assumption in science fiction is that ships in orbit have an enormous advantage over enemies on the ground.
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