Mega-Structures

Thank you to Isaac Arthur.  He has a really interesting series and I would recommend checking out the others.

While this is not MILITARY-SF exactly, this is good information and very useful.  From a military perspective it adds some interesting objectives to capture and hold, or destroy.  It takes a lot of resources to land thousands of troops on a planet and to transport them back to their ships.

Assault shuttles sound great, but there are massive energy costs in doing so.

Another thing to consider is the potential destruction of any orbital structures, a space elevator, etc.  Chances are real good that anything in orbit will be pulled down, crashing into the planet’s surface, which would really ruin the day of any defenders still alive.  Also the destruction of a large orbital facility would create a debris ring which could cause all sorts of navigational hazards for a fleet trying to maintain orbit.

Unless the destruction of the planetary surface is the goal then any attacker would have to capture the orbital structures relatively intact.  Not as easy as it sounds.

 

For other videos by Isaac Arthur check out;

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g/videos

 

Here is a nice website for calculating radius, spin, etc.

http://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/SpinCalc.htm