One time use Weapon of Mass Destruction

In my story, there's the Orbittal Striker, a feature attached to an anti matter-fueled satelite, that can fire laser beam that can vaporize small islands in the weakest setting. It is the seventh most powerful object in my entire verse and THE most powerful weapon the human race from the protagonists' time has created.

The problem here is that it is far more powerful than nuclear weapon and why would the international community allow construction of such dangerous potential weapon like that? For your information, the global community is somewhat aware of supernatural phenomenas, including several invasions of enormous and hostile extraterrestrial creatures called The Deviations. However, because the military in my verse is extremely competent, there hasn't been any use for the device.

It is ALMOST used at the climax of the first arc, where the protagonists' city is about to swarmed and assimilated by virus/alien demon creatures, and is definitely used near the end of the story to obliterate the gate to the Otherworld and its Sentinel at the same time.

I have no idea what kind of financial and political implication will arise from constructing and using such devices. Any thing I should take into consideration?

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

I have no idea what kind of financial and political implication will arise from constructing and using such devices. Any thing I should take into consideration?

Although, I can't help you with the political motivation for building such a device, depending on the setting such a thing could be made to function as a space communications laser, the laser version of a sunlight mirror, it could be used to transfer power from solar arrays from space to ground instillations (seems to be the wrong kind of laser though), or the source of thrust for a outbound solar sail.

So extremely powerful laser type devices could indeed be useful and you did mention that your army was competent so perhaps they snuck in a Weaponized Exhaust feature?

EDIT: As for financial considerations, how big is it? Lasers can handle a lot of power, but if it’s too big it would be prohibitive expensive to build. And the anti-matter thing isn’t helping with the cost.

edited 6th Oct '11 12:55:12 AM by GiantSpaceChinchilla

What exactly do you mean by "One Time Use"? Aren't all bombs considered one time use as in "It's gets used once and blows up."

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I can't think of any special considerations, you seem pretty set.

If they understand forces that are not human and are against them, then they'd probably understand the need for weapons.

In terms of power level I don't see a effective difference between the super laser and the giant bunches of nukes that the US and Russia have today, given the technology changes that probably ensued upon discovering how to antimatter.

edited 6th Oct '11 12:55:55 AM by OuthouseInferno

Forget the tropes until after you're done.

Oh, by one time use, it is used only once in the entire plot.

Another thing I should consider is that some aspects of "magic", dubbed as "Augmentation", is integrated in technology and one of the breakthroughs it allowed is making antimatter generating far more useful. Now, ignoring all the potential lobby and other forms of sabotization that would have no doubt been carried by oil company all around the world, this has somewhat cheapened the cost of electricity in general.

I’m not quite fixed on exactly how much anti matter energy is used. One sure thing is that it is used quite a lot and at least five percent of all the cars use that for energy. Think of hydrogen or electricity cars. It used to be over sixty percent, but there were some accidents when some cars exploded so it plummeted.

You know what, I think I should scrap this whole being powered by anti-matter thing because who in the right mind would want to use something so unstable as a power source for a spacecraft?

edited 6th Oct '11 1:26:24 AM by dRoy

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Fixed:

Damn near everyone, I'd wager. I can't remember where I read it, but antimatter propulsion systems have a retardedly high Specific Impulse compared to chemical rockets or even NT Rs.

Unless you meant for providing electrical power to the ship's onboard equipment, in which case you're right.

edited 6th Oct '11 2:06:34 AM by RiotousRascal

AH crap, damn typo...fixed it.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Regarding implications: How weaponized is space other than the orbit-to-ground thing? If not very, then someone could just...build it, and no one could really stop them.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

There are a variety of modern ASAT systems right now that could knock out anything put up in the sort of orbit that would make it useful.

(Also why are we going with antimatter quackery when you could just use a good ol' fashioned bomb-pumped laser? The technology has been on the drawing board since the eighties and it's literally the definition of one shot, as it destroys itself in firing.)

Nous restons ici.

If it fires a laser beam, then you should be able to put it in any orbit you want and still have it be effective. Firing through more atmosphere might diffuse it into uselessness, but firing through more vacuum shouldn't. I'm not sure how high our current ASAT systems can strike, but AFAIK they're all missiles. Maybe have some smaller point defense lasers.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

It wouldn't.

Besides that, satellites are trivially easy to destroy from the ground...

edited 7th Oct '11 12:11:05 PM by USAF713

I am now known as Flyboy.

Misunderstand me. It's not about range but orbital mechanics and their interaction with targeting. A low orbit is required to allow repositioning the weapons platform. The higher the orbit, the more fuel must be burned to get it over the target area and the longer it will take. Lower orbits can also make more oblique shots, nullifying terrain cover or building something into the side of a canyon or hill.

Thus space-based weapons intended to be used against ground targets are going to be low down where current ASAT weapons can reach. (This also means you'll need more of them for sufficient coverage, but that's a fair tradeoff; targeting something smallish accurately from geosynch is a crapshoot.)

Nous restons ici.

Shouldn't a geosync installation be able to target, more or less, one-third of the Earth? Granted no oblique shots, but if you put three of them up there's your coverage problem solved. Aiming was always an issue, though.

What about point defense? If you've got sufficiently awesome DEWs to act as a Kill Sat, then you should have good point-defense lasers. Of course, this assumes that the anti-orbit weapons you're facing are missiles, rather than DEWs themselves, or railgun slugs, or something.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

In theory it should, but, geosynch is a sufficiently long ways away with a sufficiently high travel time as to introduce noticeable errors, and in the case of a DEW for beam dispersion to become a serious problem. They also have troubles with targets close to the poles because you have to fire through a lot of atmosphere; geosynch is only possible over the equator.

edited 8th Oct '11 12:52:26 PM by Night

Nous restons ici.

I suppose you could do a Clarke polar orbit, but it would just be a pointless high orbit that didn't stay over much of anything.

Probably not geosynch, then; that's actually fairly far up. Higher orbit would make it harder to shoot down.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

@ alethiophile and Night...You know what, maybe I should reconsider this idea. I better do some research on how satelites work -grumbles grumbles-

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.