Shado of the 21st Century

Hello Everyone, I often wondered what type of weapon systems would
SHADO have today, would they have a base on Mars...? I am considering
doing seies of ("what if models"); scaled with the Dinky toys and
other plastic kits (1/48th Scale).. the "what if " models could be
called SHADO-FORCE..! Types of models would include Armor and
Aerospace craft of various types; and a armored locomitive to
transport men and material to the battle zone...your feedback on this
matter would be greatly appreciated...thank you..Allan

"allan2040 <[hidden email]>" wrote:
> Hello Everyone, I often wondered what type of weapon systems would
> SHADO have today, would they have a base on Mars...?

I can't really imagine a purpose for a base on Mars, unless the
conflict between SHADO and the aliens had taken a new,
interstellar flavour or SHADO had vehicles so fast that they could
be deployed from that distance to take part in interceptions in
the defence of Earth.

Unless of course Mars itself needed to be defended - while at
first thought it wouldn't seem that we have any interests there,
it might arguably be strategically important - it might make a
handy base for the aliens to stage more frequent raids against
Earth from.

To be quite honest though even the Moon is a somewhat illogical
place to park the Interceptors, I reckon - there's no need for the
aliens to go anywhere near it.

James

Hi :)

That is an interesting question.

Today as part of the US Governments anti-satellite weaponry, there is a
weapon that can destroy enemy satellites that can be launched from an F16
aircraft. The F16 takes off conventionally from any airbase, flies up to as
high as 60,000ft, and whilst at a very high angle launches one (yes, looks
like Gerry (or should I say Derek Meddings) got it right! Yes, the aircraft
only carries one LTV Anti-Satellite Missile. The missile flies up through
the atmosphere, releases its first stage, continues with its second stage
and then completely automatically calculates its own trajectory so that it
intercepts an enemy orbiting satellite or returning warhead. When it
determines it is at the ideal near interception point its warhead separates
into a cluster of bomblets to catch the enemy in a kind of shotgun scatter.
It has been proven to be very effective, and is a reality today.

Other then that, whenever I've thought about how SHADO would be effective
today, I always envisioned a number of particle beam weapons (rather like
the ones used by the UFO's in the series) fired from remotely controlled
Hubble Telescope like devices parked in Geosynchronous orbit (so that they
appear to be stationed over one point above the earth, and hence all have
their own target designation area). Being out in space would mean they would
be very effective and not inhibited by the earths atmosphere. I suppose in
theory the further out from the earth they were 'parked', the earlier and
hence more chances SHADO might have to intercept any incoming UFO.

The big problem would be that of detection. Of course, in the series the
UFO's appear to be able to 'fly' faster than the speed of light, so we would
have a BIG problem, as the flight time say at the speed of light (and in a
few cases in the series, the speed implies up to 3 x light speed) would mean
that SHADO would only have (at the speed of light) about 5 hours to react,
launch an intercept a UFO once it had passed the average distance orbit of
Pluto (not much time)

The good news is that the UFO would be in much more trouble than SHADO,
because unless it had shed most of that speed before then, the deceleration
(and hence G force alone) would be catastrophic (Gerry and his team were
quite clever by thinking that the aliens might 'cushion' themselves by
living in a liquid environment), and also even at half the speed of light
calculating the ideal trajectory to even roughly intercept with the earths
orbit, (and steer around any debris - including satellites, debris, small
meteorites etc) would be a tracking and computational nightmare. Statically,
the higher your speed the higher your chances of intercepting 'something',
also the higher your own speed, the more catastrophic any interception would
be. At even 100,000mph hitting one grain of dust would prove catastrophic.
Mmm, lots of good story line ideas here ;)

One other bit of good news is that of our own "space junk". We Earthlings
are untidy creatures, and Yes, Straker was right, space junk is causing
major headaches to NASA, the ESA, and just about anyone else that puts craft
into orbit or beyond. A number of US and Russian satellites have already
been damaged by junk, and it has been said that a major US military spy
satellite was blinded and put out of action by junk (as it was later
determined). Anyway, any object attempting to negotiate with Earth and its
orbit at high speed would be in BIG trouble. Mmmm, if I was an alien, one
rather nasty way to cause a big problem to SHADO would be to 'steer' an
asteroid or comet into a trajectory to intercept with the earth. That would
be VERY nasty, and not much that we could do about it at the moment.

I could 'go on', (as I used to work roughly in the biz in another life) but
I have already ;-)

Best to all,

Griff

-----Original Message-----
From: allan2040 <[hidden email]> [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 11:24 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [SHADO] Shado of the 21st Century


Hello Everyone, I often wondered what type of weapon systems would
SHADO have today, would they have a base on Mars...? I am considering
doing seies of ("what if models"); scaled with the Dinky toys and
other plastic kits (1/48th Scale).. the "what if " models could be
called SHADO-FORCE..! Types of models would include Armor and
Aerospace craft of various types; and a armored locomitive to
transport men and material to the battle zone...your feedback on this
matter would be greatly appreciated...thank you..Allan





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>"allan2040 <[hidden email]>" <[hidden email]>
wrote:
>Hello Everyone, I often wondered what type of weapon systems would
>SHADO have today, would they have a base on Mars...? ...your feedback on
>this
>matter would be greatly appreciated...thank you..Allan

This is a pertinent question as I'm looking forward to ending my present UFO
series of stories in the near future and beginning a "Next Gen" series based
on Straker's children. This new series will take place in 2020, and I have
no idea what kind of weaponry and defense capabilities we might have by
then. I figure I'll be scouring science journals for the next six months,
at least! *grin* By all means, let's hear what everyone thinks our defenses
will be like by then! BTW, why Mars? Seems a waste of resources to me.
Denise

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Hi Denise, thanks for the input, for the next few months , I will start working on some conceptual models..why mars...just an another line of defense..Derek...ps I also write sci- fi,perhaps we can work on a script....
Denise Felt <[hidden email]> wrote:>"allan2040 "
wrote:
>Hello Everyone, I often wondered what type of weapon systems would
>SHADO have today, would they have a base on Mars...? ...your feedback on
>this
>matter would be greatly appreciated...thank you..Allan

This is a pertinent question as I'm looking forward to ending my present UFO
series of stories in the near future and beginning a "Next Gen" series based
on Straker's children. This new series will take place in 2020, and I have
no idea what kind of weaponry and defense capabilities we might have by
then. I figure I'll be scouring science journals for the next six months,
at least! *grin* By all means, let's hear what everyone thinks our defenses
will be like by then! BTW, why Mars? Seems a waste of resources to me.
Denise

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Illogical? Probaibly, but necessary for the show to function. It is much easier to explaine hiding a moon base then it is the large space station that would be necessary to give the Earth sufficent coverage.
I always did laugh though, at the fact that there never seemed to be more then Three Interceptor pilots on the entire base at any one time Just one of those things caused by budget constraits, I guess. If you look hard enough, you can find inconsitanceis of this type in most shows. Has anyone written The Nitpickers Guide To UFO yet?

James Gibbon <[hidden email]> wrote:"allan2040 " wrote:

>I can't really imagine a purpose for a base on Mars

Robert Thomas wrote:
> Illogical? Probaibly, but necessary for the show to function. It is
> much easier to explaine hiding a moon base then it is the large space
> station that would be necessary to give the Earth sufficent coverage.

There would have to be at least 6 space stations to provide
'sufficient coverage', arranged at equidistant points around the
globe, (if that's actually possible around a sphere .. I suppose
it must be)

> There would have to be at least 6 space stations to provide
> 'sufficient coverage', arranged at equidistant points around the
> globe, (if that's actually possible around a sphere .. I suppose
> it must be)

Assuming the interceptors are fast enough, you probably only need
one space station (the important thing is to have an interceptor
vehicle in space that does not need to travel through the
atmosphere). It would also be very important to have 2, or probably
3, SIDs in geosynch orbit (equally spaced) to quickly detect any
incoming UFO frlom any angle. On the other hand, if the UFOs were
coming in orbits perpendicular to the equatorial plane (i.e.,
towards the north or south pole), then you probably only needed a
single SID and one space station (since they cannot be "blinded" be
the earth or moon). Of course, for reliability and availability
purposes, you would like to have at least two space stations and two
SIDs, so that you still have functioning defensive systems even
after a catastrophic single attack.

Question: How were the UFOs detected? Only through moon base and
SID? If this was the case, then there could have been blind spots in
the detection coverage that the UFOs could had taken advantage of...

David Levine

>No need for the aliens to go near it.

No the aliens could avoid the moon. The problem is that SHADO needs a base
where they can fast launch space interceptors from. Where do they do it from
if not the moon? I guess they could bulid a space station but that could be
a little too close to Earth. So its the moon or nothing.

The reason to build a base on Mars is to keep adding layers to the defense of
Earth. The intermost layer is Mobiles, then next is Skydiver aircraft, next
is Interceptors from from Moonbase. So if they added a base on Mars and
interceptors from there it would be more difficult for the aliens to get
through.

James K.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In [hidden email], SumitonJD@a... wrote:
> >No need for the aliens to go near it.
>
> No the aliens could avoid the moon. The problem is that SHADO
needs a base
> where they can fast launch space interceptors from. Where do they
do it from
> if not the moon? I guess they could bulid a space station but
that could be
> a little too close to Earth. So its the moon or nothing.
>
> The reason to build a base on Mars is to keep adding layers to the
defense of
> Earth. The intermost layer is Mobiles, then next is Skydiver
aircraft, next
> is Interceptors from from Moonbase. So if they added a base on
Mars and
> interceptors from there it would be more difficult for the aliens
to get
> through.
>
> James K.

James,

I disagree with your mars base idea, or even with the idea that they
needed a moon base. Maybe a mars base would be a good idea if the
UFOs were ALWAYS coming in their approach very close to mars.
Obviously earth and mars move around the sun, at different speeds
and in different orbits. Assuming the planet where the aliens come
is very far away, in a different solar system, many times they would
go nowhere near mars, earth would be much closer. And somewhat of a
similar argument can be made about the moon. Again, what is needed
here is quick access to space (for the interceptors), so earth orbit
is fine. If we insist on moving the base to the moon, then we would
need to consider logistics in comparison to having a space station
nearby. I do not know the facts, but I have the impression that for
defensive purposes, it would be far cheaper and more convenient to
have the space station close by in earth orbit rather than the moon
station.

David Levine

David I see where your objections to a base on Mars are coming from
and there are some merit to them. But when you fight a war you can't fight a
war defensively only. That is you can't wait for the enemy to show up on you
doorstep and politely ring the bell and wait for you to blast them.
You have to build bases farther and farther out away from Earth. And
any anything out away from Earth will be in a orbit be it on a planet or a
space station. A base on Mars or anywhere else that far out will have to
have faster longer range interceptors. That is part of the looking foreward
comcept. UFO was written based on a 1980's timeframe. And looking to see
what would have become possible in that same fictional reality in 20 years we
get faster longer range craft and bases farther out in the solar system.
Space isn't just 2 dimentions but 3. But still the aliens are coming to a
known point in space, Earth. So you build something that can block they
path.
You could I guess build a giant spaceship and give it a crew of
several hundred and arm it to the teeth and fly around at faster than light
speeds to intercept the UFO's but isn't that Star Trek or B5 or other series
rather than UFO?

James K.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In [hidden email], SumitonJD@a... wrote:
> David I see where your objections to a base on Mars are
coming from
> and there are some merit to them. But when you fight a war you
can't fight a
> war defensively only. That is you can't wait for the enemy to
show up on you
> doorstep and politely ring the bell and wait for you to blast them.

James,

I guess you could have 3 (or more) space stations beyond, say,
Jupiter orbit to guard the earth. These would be on the same orbit
and evenly distributed, so you could guard an attack from any
direction (assuming the UFOs were coming in orbits on the ecliptic
plane). But maybe the main consideration would be how fast the UFOs
could go, how fast our interceptors could go, and how rapidly could
the UFOs decelerate. No point in having several space stations (or
bases in planets) in the outer solar system if the UFOs were coming
so fast that we couldn't react in time and intercept them out there.
Allegedly, they had to decelerate to relatively low speeds near the
earth, that's where we could catch them and destroy them.

Also, regarding the Mars base... remember that Mars has an
atmosphere. Very low density in comparison to earth's, but still a
problem for the design of an atmospheric/space interceptor.

David Levine

David is right. Building a base on Mars would make it worthless for
most of the year. When Mars is at its closest, it is about 20 light
minutes away. When Mars is on the opposite side of the sun, it would
be 40 light minutes away, so the fighters would potentially be 3 times
as far away from an incoming UFO than when Mars is in its closest
location and if the flight path of the UFOs is coming in from opposite
the Sun. Another problem is that Mars has an atmosphere and a
gravitational well (twice that of the Moon), so you'd want to launch
from Mar's moons, if at all.

Likewise, building a single base on the Moon has the same problem.
Yeah, the Moon is only a faction of a light second away. But,
depending on the flight path of the UFO and the location of the Moon,
the Interceptor can be 3 times as far away from the UFO as when the
Moon is in the right location. So, no wonder some UFOs get past them,
assuming it is hard enough to intercept a UFO when things are working
right.

One solution would be to build multiple space stations at the LaGrange
points. There are multiple locations where you can put things in
space that are stable - i.e., don't move in relation to Earth's orbit.
The requirement for multiple stations is, as I noted, the flight path
of the UFO would seem to need to change during the year, as the Earth
goes around the Sun.

http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wlagran.html

There's nothing wrong with exploring space. But, if you're fighting a
war, you might want to put your forces where they can actually help
the fight. If the fight is on Earth, then putting the forces in
locations that are out of the way much of the year isn't a good idea.
Heck, how about putting a base in the enemy's solar system, so you
get them at the source? That would be more useful - and it was
apparently possible in 1980 for us to send a probe to the enemy's
planet.

> When Mars is on the opposite side of the sun, it
would
> be 40 light minutes away, so the fighters would potentially be 3
times
> as far away from an incoming UFO than when Mars is in its closest
> location and if the flight path of the UFOs is coming in from
opposite
> the Sun.

My claim of "3 times as far away" is a special case. This assumes
that a UFO is as far from Mar's (or the Moon's) orbit as Mars is from
the Sun. The point is, the Interceptor would have to fly extra twice
the distance of Mars from the Sun (or the Moon from the Earth) when
Mars (or the Moon) is in the wrong location with respect to the UFO's
flight path. This is why multiple bases would be necessary for good
protection. And, of course, there is also the issue of 3 dimensions.
There is no requirement that the UFO come into the solar system in
the same plane that our planets are in. In fact, that would be
unlikely.

What was the combat range of an Interceptor? Could they be refuled/armed in "flight"? What was their life support requirements? Would these types even be able to lift off from the surface of Mars?
For that matter, why would you handicap yourself, by building in a grativy well, when it would be cheaper and easier to build the Space Stations (In the long run, that is). Since everything has to be "Trucked in" anyway, why bother landing on Mars? A station obirting out beyond Jupiter or even Pluto would give us more time to strike as well as an earlier warning. Two stations could be placed in counter orbits so that the Earth would always be near one of them.
SIDS could be deployed further out to give us even more early warning. Perhaps we could even use some kind of remote controled "Mine Fields" that could be moved into a UFOs path? Depending on how detailed (Annal?) you want to get, and your budget, the possibilities are almost endless.
Of course, it would be very hard, if not impossible, to hide all of this from the public, since you would need money and equipment from every government on the planet to develp this in any kind of reasonable time frame. Not to mention, all of the personal involved. I wouln't bet against muptile security leaks on a project of this size.
"David Levine <[hidden email]>" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> There would have to be at least 6 space stations to provide
> 'sufficient coverage', arranged at equidistant points around the
> globe, (if that's actually possible around a sphere .. I suppose
> it must be)

Assuming the interceptors are fast enough, you probably only need
one space station (the important thing is to have an interceptor
vehicle in space that does not need to travel through the
atmosphere). It would also be very important to have 2, or probably
3, SIDs in geosynch orbit (equally spaced) to quickly detect any
incoming UFO frlom any angle. On the other hand, if the UFOs were
coming in orbits perpendicular to the equatorial plane (i.e.,
towards the north or south pole), then you probably only needed a
single SID and one space station (since they cannot be "blinded" be
the earth or moon). Of course, for reliability and availability
purposes, you would like to have at least two space stations and two
SIDs, so that you still have functioning defensive systems even
after a catastrophic single attack.

Question: How were the UFOs detected? Only through moon base and
SID? If this was the case, then there could have been blind spots in
the detection coverage that the UFOs could had taken advantage of...

David Levine




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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In [hidden email], Robert Thomas
<screwedmorethenonce@y...> wrote:
>
> What was the combat range of an Interceptor? Could they be
refuled/armed in "flight"? What was their life support requirements?
Would these types even be able to lift off from the surface of Mars?
> For that matter, why would you handicap yourself, by building in a
grativy well, when it would be cheaper and easier to build the Space
Stations (In the long run, that is). Since everything has to
be "Trucked in" anyway, why bother landing on Mars? A station
obirting out beyond Jupiter or even Pluto would give us more time to
strike as well as an earlier warning. Two stations could be placed
in counter orbits so that the Earth would always be near one of
them. [rest deleted]

Robert,

Just a couple of hints to your questions: It would be useful to have
a moonbase or marsbase (owned by SHADO or a real agency) in the
future only if you can use some of the natural resources on the
planet/moon. Otherwise, you need to carry everything to the base,
and fight the gravity (going in as well as going out) as well as an
atmosphere (as in the case of mars).

The capabilities of the interceptors, we could only speculate. But I
wouldn't think they were designed to be serviced away from their
base.

One very common misconception about space travel is that one can
travel "at will" in any direction, and that travel is fast and all
celestial bodies are easy to reach. Nothing further from the truth!
All planets within the solar system are at enormous distances. Being
able to intercept a fast moving UFO traveling even within the solar
system would be extremelly difficult, many times worst than trying
to shout down a bullet with another bullet. In UFO, the fact that
UFOs could travel at speeds greater than the speed of light was a
stretch that made several things easier. Unfortunately, as of today,
it hasn't been proven that anything can travel faster than the speed
of light.

David Levine

[hidden email] wrote:
> >No need for the aliens to go near it.
>
> No the aliens could avoid the moon. The problem is that SHADO needs
> a base where they can fast launch space interceptors from. Where do
> they do it from if not the moon? I guess they could bulid a space
> station but that could be a little too close to Earth. So its the moon
> or nothing.
>

But the Moon is actually roughly as good as nothing - we know
from at least one script that the Interceptors are able to
intercept when UFOs come in 'antelunar'. Of course, they
usually don't

> The reason to build a base on Mars is to keep adding layers to
> the defense of Earth. The intermost layer is Mobiles, then next
> is Skydiver aircraft, next is Interceptors from from Moonbase.
> So if they added a base on Mars and interceptors from there it
> would be more difficult for the aliens to get through.
>

I doubt it. Mars is just too far away from Earth, and there's
no reason whatever for it to be anywhere near the route the
Aliens take to get here, even if it happens to be nearer the
Alien homeworld than Earth is at any given point in time.

[hidden email] wrote:
> But still the aliens are coming to a known point in space, Earth.
> So you build something that can block they path.
>

Exactly - and building a base on Mars would have been like
McArthur building a base in Belgium to defend the US against the
Japanese.

"Paul Carroll <[hidden email]>" wrote:

> Likewise, building a single base on the Moon has the same problem.
> Yeah, the Moon is only a faction of a light second away.

I think it's a few light seconds, to be pedantic!

--- In [hidden email], James Gibbon <james.gibbon@v...> wrote:
> > Yeah, the Moon is only a faction of a light second away.
>
> I think it's a few light seconds, to be pedantic!

To be really pedantic, you'd take 380,000 km / 300,000 km to get 1.26
light seconds for the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

Likewise, the distance from the Earth to Mars varies from 5
light minutes to 20 light minutes (not the 20 light minutes and 40
light minutes that I noted - I was probably mistaking roundtrip time).


In other words, I should have looked that up. Regardless, the
conclusions are still valid - Mars is a long, long way away.

Anyone for bases on the Sun? It's closer...