U.S. Wants Soldiers Inserted Into Troubled Areas via Rockets

[bookworm_020]

This was looked at back in the 50's by space boffins to try and get (and keep!) the intrest of the military in space and space programs. Before Spunik the US had very little intrest in space and space programs and someone came up with this idea to try and get some more funding.

It was worked out the cost per launch, and the minimal amount of equipment that could be carried due to space / weight reqirements ment that the program was never looked at all that much and shelved pretty quickly!

[Digital_Trucker]

Totally non-scientific question, but does anyone think that the prospects for this being successful might have decreased significantly when they chose 13 for the number of soldiers that would be transported?

[baggygreen]

here is a slightly more scientific (or perhaps not!) question that DTs: how does this affect the whole 'no militarisation of space' thing??

[Diopos]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

here is a slightly more scientific (or perhaps not!) question that DTs: how does this affect the whole 'no militarisation of space' thing??

Easy! Get a lawyer!
I imagine his argument would be something in the line of: they are not staying in space they are just passing through!

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Not much. The soldiers can't do anything in space - they are just payload. If you want to complain about payload you have to complain about all ICBMs, and none of the big powers are going to do that.

What I'm interested in, however, is how they plan for the soldiers to stay conscious as the Trident (presumably they'll be using a Trident) blasts off with accelerations suited for carrying warheads, not humans.

I can just see this. These guys are blasted off by Trident rocket to Iran. By the time the main rocket stops two are unconscious from G-LOC. The Iranians spot them coming. As they groggily fight off all the Gs they've been taking from takeoff to landing, plus the shock of landing, and open the hatches (without any help from the outside), they are surrounded by Pasdaran...

[AntEater]

Actually I think this is quite doable.
But what if these space Marines are shot around half the globe 12 seconds after somebody does something the US does not like?
I mean:
- what can a squad of soldiers accomplish? I mean if they turn them into Heinlein-style über Marines, they will weigh twice as much as normal Soldiers. And despite Tom Clancy, a squad of Marines can't beat an entire Army.
- How are they going to get back again?
I mean if they go in, assasinate Bin Laden/Achmadinejad/Chavez/Kim Yong Il or Benedict XVI, how do they get back out?
Same goes for hostage rescue.
There will have to be some CSAR assets in place, and moving them into the region takes the same amount of work and time it would take to move a full conventional SPECOPS team there.

Sorry but the US should rather get a new CSAR helicopter, a real littorial combat ship or a new infantry rifle.

[Diopos]

Originally Posted by AntEater

Actually I think this is quite doable.
But what if these space Marines are shot around half the globe 12 seconds after somebody does something the US does not like?
I mean:
- what can a squad of soldiers accomplish? I mean if they turn them into Heinlein-style über Marines, they will weigh twice as much as normal Soldiers. And despite Tom Clancy, a squad of Marines can't beat an entire Army.
- How are they going to get back again?
I mean if they go in, assasinate Bin Laden/Achmadinejad/Chavez/Kim Yong Il or Benedict XVI, how do they get back out?
Same goes for hostage rescue.
There will have to be some CSAR assets in place, and moving them into the region takes the same amount of work and time it would take to move a full conventional SPECOPS team there.

Sorry but the US should rather get a new CSAR helicopter, a real littorial combat ship or a new infantry rifle.

And to continue your line of thought
1 rkt/squad (section)
3-4 rkts/platoon (light)
9-16 rkts/company (light to medium ie 3-4 plattons/company) and assuming they don't need extra rkts as ammo carriers, vehicle(???) carriers etc.

Get back? Uhmmm............. Must they?

I mean I fully understand "rapid deployment" but this...

[SteamWake]

Anyone even remotely knowledgable of the massive logistics required for the mobilization of troops for say the D day invasion, Op Desert Storm, and the like.

Should know full and well that 13 soldiers stuffed into a tube is not going to amount to much of anything.

A sci-fi fantasy pipe dream.

When they can rocket a carrier with support and attack aircraft along with its multitude of logistics let me know.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

here is a slightly more scientific (or perhaps not!) question that DTs: how does this affect the whole 'no militarisation of space' thing??

Actually I think that treaty just bans Strategic weapons in space. Nothing about Tactical weapons. Which have already been flown on the Russian Almaz space station.


But inserting Marines or Airborne errr make that Spaceborne troops by rocket is just a waste of a expensive rocket. Unless your bording the ISS sending troops in to space for a short term mission is just wasteful. It takes a lot of thrust to put payload in to orbit but once its there its there for a LONG time, so why not station troops in orbit! Station a company sized unit on a space station with a bunch of reentry vehicles and you have a quick reaction force that is over a target area every 90 or so mins. Just make sure that station is a 2001 style centerfuge or all those troops are going to suffer from the lack of gravity as their muscles turn to spegetti.

Space based troops also offer the posablity of cost effective off world deployment say to the Moon or Mars... just in case we find some green 8 tenticled creature there that needs a bayonet shoved up its @$$! First contact marine style baby!

How about this insted of troops put a couple of F-22 fighters on the end of that rocket? Or two dozen tomahawk missiles? A thousand 50lb GPS guided bombs?

[AntEater]

[quote=TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

Station a company sized unit on a space station with a bunch of reentry vehicles and you have a quick reaction force that is over a target area every 90 or so mins. Just make sure that station is a 2001 style centerfuge or all those troops are going to suffer from the lack of gravity as their muscles turn to spegetti.

Doesn't some kind of RTS have that premise?
I laughed when I read about the "Space station with a marine company" because after a few weeks, such a station would enable the US to land within ten minutes around the globe a bunch of atropied, spacesick men with constant diarrhoe barely able to walk.

What they really need is a hypersonic VTOL recovery ship like in Starship Troopers
Put the navy SPEALS (Space air land) on top of a SLBM with each trooper as a MIRV, then launch them into space. Recover them with your hypersonic SR-71 like transport able to land vertically.
Problem is, if you didn't reinvent physics beforehand, the SPEALS will be just some juge cans of tomato sauce on landing after being subjected to G forces a hundred times those of a fighter jet

:rotfl:

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by AntEater

As I said:

Just make sure that station is a 2001 style centerfuge or all those troops are going to suffer from the lack of gravity as their muscles turn to spegetti

[TLAM Strike]

Ok I really got to thinking about this, and I think a few here don't fully understand rocket design.

First there are two kinds of rockets, solid fueled and liquid fueled. Solid fuel rockets are like most tactical missiles (Say a Sidewinder). The first solid propellant was Black Powder. They are great at long term storage which is why they are used in weapons which need to sit around but be ready on demand. Also they offer more power in relation to the space they take up meaning more more rockets in the magazine. On the flip side they are not as powerful as liquid fueled rockets. Some space launches use solid fuel rockets like the two side mounted boosters on the Space Shuttle (Called SRB for Segmented Solid Rocket Boosters.) Now Liquid Fueled rockets are a different creature. These are like the V2 rocket. Liquid fueled rockets have two chemicals that are mixed causing an explosion of thrust. For example Liquid Oxygen and some kind of Hydrocarbon fuel or Liquid Hydrogen. One of these chemicals is the fuel while the other is the reaction mass, the fuel basically allows the remass to explode and produce thrust. Liquid fuels offer a lot of power but are dangerous to store (The explosion on the K-219 was due to liquid fuel mixing with water from a leaky hatch). Refueling isn't really a problem if a liquid fuel rocket is used, you bring the equipment that can make fuel and remass on site. But we can do better if a rocket is say nuclear powered the Fuel is Uranium and the Remass is liquid hydrogen (remember all that steam coming from the Saturn V? Thats excess liquid hydrogen turning to gas). So hydrogen is one of the most common elements in the universe, in theory a we could just distill it from local water for a return voyage. Ok yes the down side is the exhaust is “somewhat” radioactive but if we use a conventional rocket for take off and the nuclear rocket for exo-atmospheric flight and take off from the LZ who cares, all that radiation is in a country we felt the need to invade.


But why even have part of the rocket land at all to deploy troops? Make the troop carrying section of the rocket a lifting body (like the Space Shuttle) that the troops parachute from during sub-orbital flight (don't worry its dark, you won't even be able to tell your falling 60,000 feet! Ooorah!), then the lifting body glides to a landing in friendly territory or is even recovered by a aircraft carrier somewhere on the other side of the world. This would be a lot like the Antipoldal Bomber the Germans designed during WWII.


Now do we really need a big rocket NASAs new Aries launch vehicle. Why not put it on the top of big aircraft with a loiter capability? When needed the launch vehicle detaches from a very high altitude and turns on its rocket and goes sub-orbital to the target.


Ok so lets design a rocket to insert troops that can be launched from the continental US. Let have an Aries booster with a lifting body on the top stage. The lifting body carries say a dozen SOF troops with an automated navigation system. The Aries sends its payload on a suborbital trajectory skipping off the atmosphere over the target area out SOF troops make a HALO jump as the lifting body fires a detachable rocket boosting it in to a higher trajectory towards friendly territory where it lands on autopilot.


Now as we can see its feasible to build such a launch vehicle. But whats the down side? Well stealth is almost impossible during the boost phase due to the massive exhaust plume thats sets off warning sirens in the control center of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces HQ! So anyone with a basic space monitoring capability to know a operation is under way. When the lifting body skips off the atmosphere its plainly visible to everyone below, we all saw the footage of the ill fade Columbia burning up in the atmosphere. Now direction of flight is a problem, unless we forward deploy rockets overseas rockets (since current submarine launch tubes are too small to be of value modified boomers are out) would be launched from Cape Canaveral (or whatever they are calling it these days) or Vandenberg AFB. Launches from The Cape are to the east (to use the spin of the Earth to add velocity) this is good for targeting our good buddies in the middle east but lousy for say China or North Korea. Vandenberg is good for launches over the pole which is good for targeting Northern China and North Korea but targets in the southern hemisphere become a problem. Targets in Australia are out, so Crocodile Dundee has nothing to fear from Space Marines.


I would put this in the realm of possibility but a stealthy cargo aircraft capable of hypersonic fight (like the fabled Aurora spy plane) would be better.