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How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?

Aliens? Invading aliens? What will Earth do? Well...we may have a few more resources than we first thought. Come join a friendly discussion about David Weber's newest Tor series - "Out of the Dark."
Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by fallsfromtrees   » Fri Dec 05, 2014 6:22 pm

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TN4994 wrote:
jvilnis wrote:How do yoou defeat a race of Aliens who control high orbit and can throw rocks at you down the gravity well?

Unless you can somehow get up to defeat their ships you are always going to be at a enormous disadvantage.

niethil wrote:With maple syrup, I believe ...

You caught the Live Free or Die reference.

Actually I just finished OotD.
If the aliens are as in this story, they won't be expecting the orbitals to be attacked.
We have options: Space Battleship Yamato or plague that they carry back on their ships (oh, that's been done, otherwise I wouldn't have thought of it). But the Vampires are plague, aren't they?

A plague of vampires. Is that like a murder of crows, or a gaggle of geese?

Actually defeating the invading aliens with bacteria goes back to at least HG Wells, and the War of the Worlds.
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by TN4994   » Fri Dec 05, 2014 10:17 pm

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fallsfromtrees wrote:
TN4994 wrote:Actually I just finished OotD.
If the aliens are as in this story, they won't be expecting the orbitals to be attacked.
We have options: Space Battleship Yamato or plague that they carry back on their ships (oh, that's been done, otherwise I wouldn't have thought of it). But the Vampires are plague, aren't they?

A plague of vampires. Is that like a murder of crows, or a gaggle of geese?

Actually defeating the invading aliens with bacteria goes back to at least HG Wells, and the War of the Worlds.

A group a vampires has variously been called a clutch, brood, coven, pack, or a clan.
Bats are colony or cloud.
Plague of vampires.
It has that something.
And yes H.G.Wells did it, but I think Alexander Pohl had humans contaminating the Alien food supply.
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by fallsfromtrees   » Sat Dec 06, 2014 2:03 am

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TN4994 wrote:A group a vampires has variously been called a clutch, brood, coven, pack, or a clan.
Bats are colony or cloud.
Plague of vampires.
It has that something.
And yes H.G.Wells did it, but I think Alexander Pohl had humans contaminating the Alien food supply.

Who is Alexander Pohl? The only references I find to an Alexander Pohl are for a photographer. OTOH, Fred Pohl was a pretty well known SF writer and editor, whom we sadly lost just over a year ago.
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by TN4994   » Sat Dec 06, 2014 3:09 am

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fallsfromtrees wrote:
TN4994 wrote:A group a vampires has variously been called a clutch, brood, coven, pack, or a clan.
Bats are colony or cloud.
Plague of vampires.
It has that something.
And yes H.G.Wells did it, but I think Alexander Pohl had humans contaminating the Alien food supply.

Who is Alexander Pohl? The only references I find to an Alexander Pohl are for a photographer. OTOH, Fred Pohl was a pretty well known SF writer and editor, whom we sadly lost just over a year ago.

For some reason I think Alexander instead of Frederik. Alexander ???
Probably a children's author from my youth.
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by cralkhi   » Tue Dec 09, 2014 1:39 am

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Isn't the real problem the implicit tech difference (if they can get here at all...) rather than shooting into orbit? I mean, we already have ASAT missiles that can destroy current-tech satellites.

If just being in orbit was an insurmountable advantage, the US and Russia would both have space stations with kinetic-bombardment weapons.
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by Cheopis   » Tue Dec 09, 2014 12:54 pm

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cralkhi wrote:Isn't the real problem the implicit tech difference (if they can get here at all...) rather than shooting into orbit? I mean, we already have ASAT missiles that can destroy current-tech satellites.

If just being in orbit was an insurmountable advantage, the US and Russia would both have space stations with kinetic-bombardment weapons.


Are you certain they don't have satellites with kinetic weapons? The idea's been around for several decades (rods from god / Project Thor) a very long time, and implementing it would be pretty darn easy.
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by DDHvi   » Mon Dec 29, 2014 11:40 pm

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biochem wrote:Or the computer geeks of the world could learn the programming language of the the alien's computers, hack the computers and program the vessels to crash into each other. Much easier said than done since there is no reason to suppose that alien computer languages would bear any resemblance to human ones.


Are you saying that logic is different out there? Problems would exist in matching signals, protocols, etc. and getting past firewalls, etc., but that is a different problem. Judging by how often my antivirus software reports there would be quite a few wanting to take a crack at the problem.
The biggest difficulty would be not being able to get reports back on things tried out - today's crackers and hackers likely have a sample of the hardware and OS to try things out.
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Smart mistakes go on forever
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by Theemile   » Mon Dec 10, 2018 3:03 pm

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Cheopis wrote:
cralkhi wrote:Isn't the real problem the implicit tech difference (if they can get here at all...) rather than shooting into orbit? I mean, we already have ASAT missiles that can destroy current-tech satellites.

If just being in orbit was an insurmountable advantage, the US and Russia would both have space stations with kinetic-bombardment weapons.


Are you certain they don't have satellites with kinetic weapons? The idea's been around for several decades (rods from god / Project Thor) a very long time, and implementing it would be pretty darn easy.



Don't say it wasn't tried..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by Killmouski   » Fri Apr 05, 2019 10:23 pm

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jvilnis wrote:How do yoou defeat a race of Aliens who control high orbit and can throw rocks at you down the gravity well?

Unless you can somehow get up to defeat their ships you are always going to be at a enormous disadvantage.


David Webber gave us the answer in the first few chapters of the book. Then he lost his mind and introduced Vampires.

I digress. He gave humans the inability to surrender. This is something the puppies have never encountered. We also had some very advanced technology in certain areas. Finally, the puppies taught us everything we knew about their civilization, because we "surrendered" and were now one big happy family (not).

We don't defeat. We fight an asymmetrical war, and take them over from within, by hacking their computers and using their tech against them.

I was very disapointed with this book. It was the first book of his I read, and I am cringing at the prospect of reading another.
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Re: How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?
Post by Bahzellstudent   » Wed Apr 10, 2019 2:37 pm

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I was very disapointed with this book. It was the first book of his I read, and I am cringing at the prospect of reading another.


Hopefully you have now discovered all the rest of the wonderful David Weber universes, and found his books a great read. I too was disappointed by Out of the Dark - but I had read all his other books up to that point, and was happy to allow him one novel where he was playing games!
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