A nuclear missile will damage, but the station is not small. It's not like today's ISS. It's much bigger, and holds well over one hundred people. Over five hundred. There are miners, station crew, extra pilots, a couple squads of CI marines, researchers and scientists, engineering crew and construction workers.
See, the problem with nuclear missiles is that they have scalability. Nuclear warheads in general can be made smaller and (in theory) be made to where you can squeeze one megaton of explosive energy out of a single kilogram of warhead material—though the rule of the day is that the larger the warhead, the more powerful the explosion. Also, refer to my previous comment regarding nuclear-shaped charges and their effectiveness in space. The size of the station matters little if it’s being ravaged by a Tsar Bomb-grade warhead (equal to 50 megatons of TNT, though the USSR planned for a 100 megaton bomb, but were concerned over the survivability of the bomber that would delivery such a weapon), and with advancements in technology come advancements in nuclear weaponry. We won’t even get into antimatter-initiated fusion warheads (though such a weapon would be undeniably expensive to create).
I don’t think you know how frail a space station is. Note that modern space stations get gibbed by tiny specs of dust that are traveling at 25,000 miles per hour; they typically strike with the force of a .44 caliber round, but this is enough to cause serious structural damage to a station or satellite, which can lead to the death of crewmembers (vented oxygen and the sort). Thankfully, the deadliness of such particles is lessened by the presence of strategically-placed Whipple shields, which operate in a similar fashion to spaced armor.
While a future space station could be made more resilient, they aren’t going to be floating tanks.
A nuclear missile would certainly break the current energy screen, but the CI are trying to make it so that it won't. Nuclear missiles are the most common space-faring missiles, since they go up and back down. An engagement between to space powers would undoubtedly be measured by who can withstand more nuclear missiles, with the line of thinking you all inhabit.
No. The first nation that throws a nuke in this RP brings about the end of the RP itself. You’re all in a MAD scenario. Once one bomb goes off, they all go off.
…But I’m going to assume this isn’t case because apparently two world wars occurred without the detonation of a single bomb (this conclusion being drawn up by the fact that the planet isn’t a radioactive wasteland right now).
And you say everything as if point defense would not have advanced. As if it would have stayed the same or become inferior, even though scientists that are closer to
a feat that no one else has even begun to encounter the possibility of are also working on making point defense efficient and powerful enough to stop weapons before they are tested against energy screens.
Then you’re going to be battling against the continued advancement of missile technology. Missiles don’t stop being effective when PD comes on the scene. I’ve already said this.
Additionally, just as missiles aren’t infallible, point-defense succumbs to the same short end of the stick. Your stations are not invincible and they do not retain space superiority or whatever it is you’re trying to shoe horn into the RP. Your nation isn’t even big enough to call any shots when it comes to the political scene, while its status as a space-based nation is a serious weakness in its own right. For example, how in the world are you getting the raw material needed to sustain yourself
let alone develop new technologies when you have
zero planetary holds?
You are not going to be talking about how everything would be so against point defense if it could have advanced farther than missiles have. I do not see missiles being fired every day across oceans. There is not as much need to make an anti-point defense missile, and so the funding and progress of such would not be as fast as a group of researchers with materials that others would never get in the same amounts with technology that is more durable than others with as much funding as they need. It is lower priority elsewhere to make weapons that would render point defense useless, while the advancement and usefulness of point defense is vital for the Ceres, and so it will be going much faster than the anti.
Why would PD advance farther than missiles have? Both technologies have a mutual line of development as detection and stealth technology does, in that both try to out-do the other. When radar stealth advances, radar becomes more powerful, for example. It’s a constant battle that probably won’t let up any time soon.
Also, the nations on the surface of the planet have every reason to chase after enhanced missile technology and more sophisticated point-defense technology. Missiles are a critical part of modern warfare and so are suitable countermeasures to missiles. Are you again trying to say that your nation is superior to everyone else’s? Let’s go over the signs of your powerplaying:
1) Is attempting to render the most powerful weapons devised by man obsolete by investing heavily into anti-missile technology and energy shield technology. Said weapons, which are nuclear armaments, are one of the few effective methods of dealing with his space station in a timely and efficient fashion.
2) Is trying to run a space-based nation that cannot be touched by standard ground-based weapons. The notion that the station cannot be touched by ground-based weaponry is incorrect.
3) Claims to possess uncontestable reign in space, and claims that his faction possesses the capacity to strike fear into the surface powers by using space-to-surface weapons. This is woefully false and downright suicidal on your part.
4) Is trying to monopolize on the design and production of specific military and nonmilitary equipment—most notable of which are energy shield technology, fusion technology and missile defense technology. All three of these technologies are major game changers when it comes to war and national economics.
So no, you would not be able to just wipe out the station with a flick of your finger. If push comes to shove, the station would be evacuated and pushed out of orbit, towards, say, the Moon. Then they would start claiming the Moon and Mars for the Ceres Independence, claiming that because they are unwelcome in Earth and in orbit around it, they'll just absorb all those superexpensive colonies up there like the Antarcticans did to the Antarctic outposts countless years before.
Because your super-heavy station can truly out-accelerate an incoming MIRV on an attack vector. Holy fuck do you have access to graviton technology or something? Super sensors of some sort? What’s your secret?
Also you act like the moon can’t be attacked by Earth. How are you going to claim the moon without the powers of Earth stopping you? Your plan makes zero sense.
And besides, you sound more like this is supposed to be superrealistic instead of just a roleplay. Point defense will have expanded more than the superduper unstoppable missiles that you keep blathering on about, and Duck has already said no orbital weapons platforms, which means you won't have the type that fires nuclear missiles or projectiles in the first place, which eliminates the need to have advancement in that area in the immediate future.
It isn’t about being realistic. I don’t care about the realism, frankly.
What I do care about is someone going on about being invincible when it’s been clearly proven that this is not the case in the slightest. Also, missiles aren’t orbital platforms, and if you’re trying to pull that rule on me, when are you going to apply that to yourself?
The missiles aren’t ‘super’ and they are not ‘unstoppable’, but your space station abides by the same tenants.
