Attacking From Orbit
I finally got around to watching Isaac Arthur's latest video about devastating the surface of a planet using old fashioned brute force. A little while ago I watched his video about defense against rogue asteroids. I guess Space Force existing is a necessary thing. As the video points out metals like Tungsten can be mined from the moon or asteroids, made into huge rods and be dropped from orbit. I kind of imagine those old Roadrunner cartoons where the coyote holds a small umbrella over his head as the bolder's shadow gets bigger and bigger around him and then BANG! If we don;t keep an eye out for that when that kind of space industry becomes feasable than anyone on Earth could be that coyote.
Of course it doesn't have to be a huge mass dropping. A laser, maser or other particle weapon could be used but the atmosphere's air tends to scatter particle's weakening the beam. Anything with mass dropped gains kinetic energy as it falls to Earth. Anything shot up from the surface loses kinetic energy as it works against the Earth's gravity well. As the video points out if anything gets out of an object that just made a huge crater RUN! Whatever it is that's walking away from that crater just servived g-forces that would kill most living things. Definately something you don't want to mess around with.
The brand new word I learned from watching this video is lithobraking. It's like aerobraking but instead of using the atmosphere to reduce speed while moving through low orbit you use the surface ground to accelerate to a quick abrupt stop.
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