It all depends. How much infrastructure do we want left intact when we take Venus? Regardless to begin with I suggest we send some micro-cubesats equipped with cameras on a close pass in order to gain as complete a map of the surface as possible, at as high a resolution as possible, to allow us to pick out the vital military and logistics hubs.
As much infrastructure intact as possible, as per the .pdf.
General information about Venus- geographic and maritime surveys, satellite images and soforth are publically available, but military surveillance will obviously be required.
Step 4. Detonate the warhead near NEO, so it gets diverted into an orbit which encounters Venus.
That would be a lot more difficult than using a warhead to deflect a NEO away from a planet; one would first require an object on a near pass (of which it is unlikely there are many highly massive ones) and one would also need adequate accuracy to ensure that the trajectory of the object intersects that of Venus.
So there you have it. One launch of Ares-V/SLS per one tank -- without crew or supplies.
In that scenario I don't think launching individual tanks to Venus directly from Earth would be the way to go in any case.
I'm sorry, but even Battlestar Galactica is not going to cut it.
We would need a stargate.
The Battlestar Galactica is an FTL capable space battleship more than a kilometre long and roughly half a kilometre in width.
If you had that kind of technology landing thousands of tanks on Venus probably wouldn't be a problem.
Just a thought. What would the maximum speed we could make a 50 ton block of metal (or anything nice and solid really) hit the surface be? Because Kinetic Kill weapons could be viable.
According to kamaz' velocity values, a 50 ton mass would have a kinetic energy of nearly 700 tons of TNT. Quite powerful, but not a WMD. However, it would be more efficient to utilise such a weapon with submunitions or as a cluster weapon for greater effect. 10 000 darts massing 50 tons total, spread over a 20km by 5km ellipse, would have a dart impact on average every ~8000 m^2, with each dart having an energy of around 50 kg TNT assuming 9000 m/s velocity at impact.
Of course, 50 tons is equivalent to nearly 140 [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88"]W88[/ame] warheads, with a combined yield of 66 megatons.
Are Venusian ICBM's able to send nuclear weapons to Earth?
No, the ICBMs described in the .pdf are similar to modern ICBMs on Earth- so Trident II, RS-24, etc. Range ~12 000 in surface-to-surface applications, maximum apoapsis ~5500 km if fired straight up.
The primary difference is that these missiles are designed to be able to engage orbital targets. Some may hold non-nuclear interceptor vehicles for this purpose.
The Venusians could launch nuclear warheads toward Earth if they wanted, the situation described in the .pdf merely bottlenecks that capability to their space launch assets.
I'd say none. It has no atmosphere, is easily observable by Terrans and you can easily destruct any Venusian effort. I doubt you can somehow sneak a big enough spacecraft to serve as a lunar base to the Moon without anyone looking for NEO noticing, followed by an Earth government launching something to intercept you. "It's not an asteroid, it's a Venusian colony ship!"
And even if you can and were not detected for some time: The moment you use it it becomes clear that somewhere on the Moon is a base. That becomes top priority, gets found and destroyed. Now Terrans know that strategy...
The Moon might, however, play a very large role from the Terran perspective. It is nearby, it has a relatively shallow gravity well, and can be mined for resources including various metals and hydrolox. A war effort would undoubtedly be very large, which makes the economies of scale for establishing lunar industry attractive; even if many components are not constructed on the Moon, the bulk of the mass of various assets could be- which would mean that far less mass would need to be lifted from Earth.
Kessler Syndrome is the orbital equivalent of a minefield, and requires no upkeep patrols.
That's one possibility for orbit denial, but the Venusians will probably value the space near their planet as well, for various reasons. Of course, detonation of nuclear weapons near the planet will cause big problems as well, depending on how well-hardened their satellites are, and also depends on whether a magnetosphere is present around the planet (real Venus does not really have a magnetosphere, and I did not specify whether this Venus does in the .pdf, but given that it has an Earth-like rotation let's assume that it does). Regardless of the presence of a magnetosphere, nuclear detonations near the atmosphere will also potentially produce an EMP effect, which could wreak havoc on civilian systems even if military ones are adequately hardened...
Another factor to consider is that space debris is usually discussed in the context of vehicles that operate for years; in this scenario, weapons or spacecraft may transit the orbital bands in question in just a few hours, which would greatly reduce their exposure.
Troops would need to have either aeroshells like the ODSTs from Halo/Mobile Infantry from Starship Troopers (Airborne infantry equivalent) or an assault shuttle, like the MOVIE version of S.T. and the Halo Pelican (landing craft a la Normandy). Larger ships, like the TAV Valkyrie from Avatar, would fulfill the heavy assault role to deploy tanks after landing (C-5 equivalent).
Having something like the TAV on hand would certainly make things easier, it's basically a transport aircraft that is also an easily reusable SSTO. Of course, the technology of the TAV as it is described is certainly quite advanced; it has an onboard fusion engine with sufficient T/W to propel it effectively during the latter part of its ascent...
I feel it all boils down to HOW one transports the massive assault force from Earth to Venus. After you get boots on the ground, and set up a foothold on Venus, it's a "conventional" war. You just have to bring all your reinforcements with you at the start: there's no calling the Pentagon and asking for a battalion of fresh troops and getting them in a week by airlift. You have to wait for the next transfer window.
That's quite true, with two caveats;
1. You might be able to bend the boundaries of the windows a bit if you're willing to lose performance, so a transport vessel that would otherwise be able to carry hundreds of vehicles, for example, might be able to transport tens of vehicles a few weeks outside of the transfer window if they are badly needed.
2. There
is a space combat element as well, which in conventional war is limited to surveillance and communications, but can be used here for offense and defence. We're not merely talking about orbital bombardment, but also the possibility of orbital assets being used to intercept surface-to-surface missiles as a sort of tactical version of SDI.
bioweapons. Need I say more?
Not a good idea if the aim is to avoid civilian casualties to the greatest degree possible.
But the Venusians have telescopes and they can see your Battlestar weeks in advance. How do you prevent them from intercepting you before landing?
You don't. Welcome to space warfare.
And even if you somehow make it to landing, they will see your reentry -- what is stopping them from covering your landing site with artillery fire and/or nukes immediately after touch down?
That's a very good question and stuff like this is why I wanted to start this discussion in the first place.
Nuclear pulse propulsion.
Nasty, expensive, and dirty, but it's the only thing I can think of that gives you the upmass you need to carry anything heavy to Venus.
As kamaz mentioned, the mass of the example you cite is equivalent to only 80 tanks- so either multiple vessels would be needed, or the vessel would need to perform multiple round trips (somehow) to lift the necessary mass...
But it does recall the massive Orion Space Battleship that was alledgedly presented to President Kennedy...
And also the
Ithacus intercontinental troop transport concept...
But I have another idea: the venerable Space Shuttle.
The prerequisite is that we have already taken out Venusian in-space and ABM capabilities.
We take the Shuttle, load it with nukes and send to Venus. The Shuttle then performs re-entry and starts dropping nukes while still in the hypersonic or supersonic flight -- the idea here is that it is above the range of Venusian air force, which makes it very difficult to kill. At the same time, it is maneuverable (as opposed to a satellite platform) and can probably fly around the planet with careful planning (think Silbervogel) -- which makes it quite flexible. With enough Shuttles, we could probably destroy most Venusian
assets on the ground.
Well, using the historical shuttle would be a no-go way back at the point of getting it out of orbit, as it was never intended for BEO flight.
Technically a satellite in a polar orbit should be able to hit any location on the planet within a day. I'd imagine a craft in the upper atmosphere would be more limited in terms of its ground track (there is some crossrange, but it cannot cover the entire planet easily), as it's only likely to be able to circle the planet once or so unless it's in powered flight (in which case fuel is a limitation) and there are obviously thermal concerns as well, in addition to the technical difficulty of separating a munition from a vehicle travelling at hypersonic speed.
The problem with interplanetary warfare is that the enemy can see you arriving weeks in advance so forget any surprise factor. You'll be better off staging your own Operation Pastorius and start with a campaign of sabotage to damage enemy communications and transport facilities, then do a massive (and I mean massive orbital drop of troops and materiel in selected key areas where you can entrench and hamper attempts at counterattacks. You'll need a lot of heavy transports and a lot of decoys. We may employ some orbital bombardment. It's gonna be a real knife fight.
The problem with a sabotage operation is it isn't going to be easy to conduct, you can't drop off operatives unannounced and there isn't really anyone with ethnic or national connections on Venus that can be used to aid an invasion.