tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post4529467531818163291..comments2024-03-28T03:34:35.197+00:00Comments on ToughSF: Piracy in Space is Possible Part II: Armed Merchants and Pirate PatrolsMatter Beamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-88709563731356806672018-04-22T22:42:15.832+01:002018-04-22T22:42:15.832+01:00Welcome to the blog, Chris.
I'll have a look a...Welcome to the blog, Chris.<br />I'll have a look at your work.<br /><br />The issue I'd have with nations *not* tracking every spaceship in the Solar System is that it is very easy to do so, especially if you sacrifice resolution. Spaceships are bright dots that can be seen from dozens of astronomical units even when coasting. <br /><br />Even if a single nation maybe finds the number of spaceships too high to keep track of, it can rely on a shared authority that collates information through the different volumes of space.<br /><br />While spaceships might not threaten Earth's surface, they will pose a threat to everything else. Space stations, other spacecraft, bases on airless moons, bases on planets with a thin atmosphere, lifters accelerating through the upper atmosphere... and so on. <br /><br />The reason that airplanes are not tracked across the Atlantic by radar stations is due to the horizon limits on line of sight, and the cost of installing radar stations on the ocean's surface every 20km or so under all likely flight paths.<br /><br />In space, a constellation of three satellites in low orbit can give you a coverage of the entire Solar System out to Pluto, updated every hour. Resolution will be terrible (spacecraft will be located +/- a million km or worse) but it will tell you when a spaceship is heading towards your orbital assets outside of its declared trajectory. <br /><br />Soft stealth is not excluded, I agree. However, it is squarely in the hands of the author. The author can decide whether this or that ship is being confused or passing off as something else. No scientific theory or mathematical calculation, which this blog handles, can tell that author that it is or is not possible. I did mention however that if the pirate crew is the only hostile party in play, then it will have a problem trying to escape after conducting an attack under the eyes of everyone's satellites and sensor platforms. It could have been confused for a merchant ship up to the attack, but there is no doubt afterwards. <br /><br />The tactic you mentioned implicitly assumes that merchant ships are so numerous, and their tracking so vague, that one of them changing destination is not immediately noticed. <br /><br />And, there is the point of view of the potential victims. By default, they will have radar that tracks debris and meteorites, IR sensors to position themselves relative to other spaceships to prevent accidents, and high resolution sensors for use in space station or ground approach and docking procedures. <br /><br />They will notice a spaceship approaching towards them, because unless it has stealth features, it will be much brighter and more visible than the debris they are equipped to avoid. <br /><br />They will hail it to demand that it stays away. They will sound the alarm if it continues approaching. They will call for help when it refuses to do so. It might even be an automated procedure coded into the spaceship's computer to prevent complacent crews from taking too much of a risk when flying...<br /><br />This is not to say that settings where self-reporting is the norm, with each space station being an island that has to detect and track everything else on its own, are impossible. The Expanse plays in this setting for example, and you could have settings where propulsion systems are so performant and travel times so low that the tracking burden becomes unreasonable.... but these are not scenarios that any rational person would want. Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-35429020399846656792018-04-22T20:48:02.885+01:002018-04-22T20:48:02.885+01:00Speaking as the guy who's written three novels...Speaking as the guy who's written three novels about <a href="http://privatemarsrocket.net/" rel="nofollow">Pirates of Mars</a>, a few general thoughts about this series.<br /><br />1) You assume that nations are spending money tracking every ship in the solar system. I'm not sure I agree that they will. At mid-future speeds (from VASIMR or similar systems) a spaceship is not a threat to Earth. The ship will just break up in the atmosphere. You also use the analogy of air traffic control. Even today, there is no radar coverage over the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. ATC is accomplished by craft self-reporting their position and speed. So, if you're willing to deviate from your assigned course, you can go a-pirating. Also, because these tracks are publicly known, one can easily determine where particular plane will be.<br /><br />2) I also think you're forgetting soft stealth. Simply put, how do you tell a legitimate merchant vessel from a pirate? Well, unless the pirate runs up a black flag, you don't. Weapons can be hidden in cargo containers or other innocuous protrusions, to be revealed when needed.<br /><br />Given point #1 and #2, the easy way to be a pirate is to get a merchant ship, descreetly arm it, and sit at one point of the traffic scheme (say Earth) and then start heading towards the other target (say Mars). There should be other ships traveling the same direction at similar times and speeds, so by relatively low changes in delta V, you can either catch up with or slow down to intercept desired targets. If radar is not watching them (or the targets are being tracked by an onboard system that sends data like an IFF does for an aircraft) a well-timed attack will merely be a ship disappearing. <br /><br />In a self-reporting scenario such as above, one could file "ghost" flight plans for multiple ships, capture ships mid-transit, paint a new name on them, and when the captured ship arrives at the other port she appears to be completing the flight of the "ghost" vessel. Chris Gerribhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09484367221527860100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-40644510660290948752018-04-12T11:57:55.050+01:002018-04-12T11:57:55.050+01:00Hi fonzeppelin!
Historical events and past techno...Hi fonzeppelin!<br /><br />Historical events and past technological developments are an excellent source of inspiration for science fiction, but some analogies break down if we copy them over too exactly into futuristic settings.<br /><br />First of all, I detailed all the ways in which pirates could conduct attacks on their victims without ever getting close or boarding other spaceships. <br /><br />Second, the ranges of weapons that can be deployed by the pirates do not correlate with their accuracy. A laser, for example, can be used nearly surgically to cut off radiators, crack nozzles and disable sensors, leaving the target blind and immobile. <br /><br />Third, pirates can communicate clearly with the merchant crew and even negotiate with the parent company in ways that would revolutionize piracy even if we ignore technological differences. This allows for deals to be struck and halfway-measures to be taken. Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-89059364542686588392018-04-11T21:31:24.055+01:002018-04-11T21:31:24.055+01:00Considering anti-piracy weaponry...
//This is ter...Considering anti-piracy weaponry...<br /><br />//This is terribly exciting from a narrative perspective... but how realistic is it?//<br /><br />No, it fairly realistic. Basically it was how the actual "western" sea piracy ended - with the advent of carronade. <br /><br />Before Carron designed his short-barreled gun with heavy shots, active defense wasn't very cost-effective for merchant ships. Light cannons simply haven't got enough power to keep pirate away, and heavy cannons were, well, heavy. They took a lot of space & weight which might be used by cargo. Large merchant ships - like "indiamens" - could carry enough weaponry to not only took out pirates but also stand against a warship, but most of small merchants ships could not.<br /><br />Then the arm race created the carronade - short-barreled lightweight gun with heavy shot for fighting on small distances - and situation changed. They were light enough and cheap enough that even relatively small merchants could carry a battery of them. And they gave the merchants salvo powerfull enough, to inflict REAL damage on any pirate, trying to get close. <br /><br />Basically, the carronades gave the pirates two bad options:<br /><br />* Try to close in with target for boarding attack - and risk to be pummeled into wreck by deadly short-range boardsides.<br /><br />* Stay off hte carronade range and wreck the target with long guns - not very effective, required high-level gunnery, resource-consuming, and, most importantly - the target must be wrecked hard before it could be boarded. So, no profit.<br /><br />What I m trying to say, is that arm race is potentially deadly for pirates. After all, their main idea is NOT to wreck both their own & target ship in duel - this would be no profit scenario at best.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-81276328437637212932018-04-11T10:50:08.119+01:002018-04-11T10:50:08.119+01:00Funny that, it's how the Italian Mafia is supp...Funny that, it's how the Italian Mafia is supposed to have started, "distributing" water to remote places - along with the thin, hypocritical veneer of "doing it for the People" disguising a water racket.Ethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13196257853962186227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-52790329880840572492018-04-11T02:16:50.214+01:002018-04-11T02:16:50.214+01:00This does ring true - I agree, on barren asteroids...This does ring true - I agree, on barren asteroids, water is valuable, and valuables are what pirates target.<br /><br />They might even wrap themselves in the Robin Hood narrative as fighters-for-the-people that steal water to give it back to the community that needs it, instead of it being leveraged for an unethical buck by whatever company paid for the water extraction and processing units to be sent to the asteroid in the first place...Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-55857473170267551102018-04-09T20:11:02.615+01:002018-04-09T20:11:02.615+01:00Water and volatiles are valuable because they are ...Water and volatiles are valuable because they are so critical for life support. The people sitting on a mountain of ice may be getting it for pennies a litre, but for the hard pressed rock rat mining an asteroid, they could be paying arms and legs for the same water delivered to them. Sure they could potentially mine their own water on an unclaimed asteroid, but they would also have to do all the filtration and other processing (I imagine it would actually be more like brine when first melted out), or you might have to chemically process it or "bake" it out of rocks and minerals. This may require more energy or equipment than they might have available. Draining the bladder of someone else's Kuck Mosquito may be a very attractive alternative.<br /><br />And of course there is always the sort of people who still balk at pennies a litre if they can get it for free.......Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-89062246694797054132018-04-01T07:26:50.088+01:002018-04-01T07:26:50.088+01:00Piracy will happen where it is easiest to commit. ...Piracy will happen where it is easiest to commit. <br /><br />'Shoreline' piracy, which in this case would be attacks on transport craft that have completed an insertion burn and are approaching a spaceport at lower velocity, would grant the attackers a massive deltaV advantage. However, this has to be balanced against the higher chance of being inspected or intercepted by the authorities. <br /><br />I contest the fact that water and volatiles will be precious in space by the simple fact that any space settlement will sit on top of mountains of ice to start off with, and any interplanetary trade that has enough of a margin to feed pirates necessarily implies relatively fast and cheap propulsion, which in turn means that no spaceship is very far from another mountain of ice. Therefore, 'unauthorized water collection' will be more like 'illegal theft of rocks'.<br /><br />You touch on an important question with how pirates acquire their spaceships. It will depend heavily on the specifics of the setting. It can be a civilian craft with additional propellant drop-tanks and the transponder turned off for the duration of the attack... or a remote-controlled drone 3D printed out of a hidden base carved into an unclaimed asteroid. Some of the methods of attack I described in Part I hinge on having a radio and a projectile in the right place at the right time, which doesn't require much 'spaceship' to be present. Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-66323017639395692102018-03-30T17:48:14.673+01:002018-03-30T17:48:14.673+01:00Then, port authority must be very busy.
Also, if ...Then, port authority must be very busy.<br /><br />Also, if the maximum penalty for disrupting space traffic is very heavy (other than killed by defensive lasers or Whipple Shields), I think that self-sabotage wouldn't be included as anti-pirate measures, at least as a written one or a strongly discouraged one.Felixnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-60029802589953297102018-03-30T15:18:52.025+01:002018-03-30T15:18:52.025+01:00The normal tropes of piracy on the high seas might...The normal tropes of piracy on the high seas might be less applicable in the space setting. Given the long distances and low concentration of people, same piracy might resemble cattle rustling or claim jumping more than the traditional idea of taking a ship on the high seas.<br /><br />Since water and volatiles for life support are likely to be the highest value items available, landing on an unmanned asteroid or an isolated section of a moon to drain a Kuck Mosquito may be the easiest and safest course of action for a pirate crew. Company security, the police and the military are likely far away, and military forces in particular won't likely intervene unless they are directly threatened, or part of a protective force much like the multinational flotilla off East Africa.<br /><br />For the pirate, low risk, high payoff targets like that provide the life support elements needed, plus the machinery can be disassembled to provide spare parts. If the common small spaceship is based on the Spacecoach design (https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/spacecoach-concept-is-to-use-urine-and.html), then a hard pressed crew might be tempted to get around a financial emergency by doing a bit of unauthorized water collection.<br /><br />This also solves another question: where are pirates getting their ships? Unlike the movies, pirates traditionally used small coastal vessels and fishing boats close to the shore in order to slip out and attack unwary merchantmen close to shore (larger vessels going after treasure ships on the high sea were often operating under Letters of Marque, so the motivations, as well as the Captain and crew were operating under a different dynamic). Space coaches are relatively simple and cheap, and large numbers of trained crewmen will eventually be available to provide a pool of sailors to draw upon. If economic times are tough, replenishing the water supply for "free" will be a strong temptation, and the starting point for pirates to emerge from.Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-84508393270920473992018-03-29T19:03:27.211+01:002018-03-29T19:03:27.211+01:00I think the crew would be glad to be arrested! Tha...I think the crew would be glad to be arrested! That means they spend the night in jail, not splattered against a Whipple Shield or floating as tiny particles vaporized by a space station's anti-asteroid laser...<br /><br />The sabotaged ship might actually be authorities' problem to handle, from recovery to scrapping. This is because the crew and by extension the transport company is taking upon itself a strict loss (the ship and the goods have to be written off) for the benefit of the entire community (making piracy less profitable), and this is the sort of scheme that governments must incentivize to keep going. <br /><br />A non-altruistic company would just negotiate a ransom payment and get on with its business, inadvertently making piracy safer and more profitable!Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-50348001802361558052018-03-29T17:04:45.935+01:002018-03-29T17:04:45.935+01:00Hmmmmm...the reason I point out the sabotaged ship...Hmmmmm...the reason I point out the sabotaged ships near the port is that they can be a threat to anyone on the trajectory or using the port. And someone must clean it up, not because the possible response from port authority.<br /><br />Though I like this possible ironic outcome, giving a big middle finger to pirates, yet the port authority arrest the crew for...disruption of space traffic?<br /><br />The sabotaged ships can still be towed away, broken down and recycled into materials, even it may take more efforts, right?<br /><br />If the pirates are organized enough to set up front companies covering their criminal activities and have raid teams and salvage teams separately, even the target ship is self-sabotaged by the crew and raid teams got nothing, the separate salvage teams may tow the self-sabotaged ship back to port, perhaps still earning some profit.Felixnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-84480507886872181052018-03-29T14:05:30.720+01:002018-03-29T14:05:30.720+01:00Well, authorities can only be destroyed if the mil...Well, authorities can only be destroyed if the military has the authority to do so. If, a Mars patrol ship finds a hidden base in Saturn's ice rings, it might not be allowed to just shoot it. An analogy would be a US Satellite locating a secret Chinese base. Can it just send a destroyer to fire missiles at it? Unlikely. Upsetting the international status-quo might not be worth rooting out a possibly criminal base of operations.<br /><br />A hidden base might also be as simple as an ISRU station with a 3D printer making commonly worn out spare parts with none of the life support and habitation facilities with might make it as costly as any regular space station.Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-23884106186824907192018-03-29T12:52:05.215+01:002018-03-29T12:52:05.215+01:00I'm not sure how professional piracy would be ...I'm not sure how professional piracy would be viable in a near future setting since there's nowhere to hide if its confined to the Solar System. A hidden base would cost a lot to build and can eventually be found and easily destroyed and/or conquered by national space militaries. <br /><br />Perhaps piracy under the guise of corporate espionage or sabotage (such as a rival insurance firm hires pirates to increase the cost of insurance for another to drive it bankrupt), but these pirates would have to be part-time, imo, and disguised as legit interests for an ad hoc operation.<br /><br />A far future setting with FTL and hundreds of worlds to hide in would be a better time for a new age of piracy I would think.John Triptychhttps://www.amazon.com/John-Triptych/e/B016E003QUnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-21948213172001404042018-03-28T01:33:56.747+01:002018-03-28T01:33:56.747+01:00Yes, you've got plenty of good ideas. Saturn w...Yes, you've got plenty of good ideas. Saturn would make a perfect 'Pirate Bay' for criminal activity to take place. Playing the hiding game in cis-lunar space would be akin to drug runners driving their boats up New York harbor! <br /><br />Commerce raiding does certainly have many of the traits of piracy, but it is not a criminal activity and it must follow both international rules of war, and the laws of the country it is working for. So, a pirate might not care about killing victims out of spite, but a captain would be harshly punished for doing so. Also, pirates can steal, ransom and personally benefit from their activities in ways that are not available to a captain beholden to various laws. <br /><br />I did mention Letters of Marque, and the prospect of paramilitary crews hunting down pirates clearly blurs the lines and makes for more interesting story material!Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-25466313152127242552018-03-28T01:28:27.393+01:002018-03-28T01:28:27.393+01:00Well, there are still options if no nuclear techno...Well, there are still options if no nuclear technology is being used. Tearing the concentrator foils and breaking the internal focusing optics for a solar-thermal rocket would make it pretty useless. Fusion ships can be induced to melt their critical components into a useless slag. <br /><br />The honor system is a general reputation/rumor mill sort of thing that gets spread in space ports and between crews. Pirates can self-discipline against the excesses of their 'community' and spread the word that justice has been done. Or, they can play a double game and whip up fear over a handful of murderous pirates to corral crews into paying for a protection scheme.... when it comes to human interactions, the depth and complexity possible is endless.<br /><br />Good point in the proximity of ports changing the risks being taken by a crew sabotaging their propulsive ability... they might end up being shot down by the port authorities they were relying on to save them instead!Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-53087592158383787422018-03-27T13:55:52.064+01:002018-03-27T13:55:52.064+01:00Self-sabotage is a good way to deter pirates if th...Self-sabotage is a good way to deter pirates if the ship is unmanned and powered by fission. There is nothing to worry when pirates are salvaging a solar-powered/beam-powered ship. Fusion ships have no radioactive waste to foul the everything and give the pirate a big middle finger.<br /><br />I think both salt-and-dump and self-sabotage give additional risk to the crew (if the targeted ship is a manned ship). Pirates are no law-abiding citizen (at least when they are doing business in the void), no one can be sure that the incoming pirates are more or less following their honor system. Even though I believe that there may be some kind of orders or "unwritten laws" among them. Breaking the rules for too many times may raise some eyebrows if all these rule-breaking threaten everyone's business, at worst, there may be war between pirates.<br /><br />Also, if the orbital cleaning and salvaging is maintained by the private sector not governmental organizations, there may be still some chances that pirates can pose them as salvaging crew. Then no matter they shot down the target or simply robbed the goods, they still win.<br /><br />No one would allow the trajectory or space near the port littered with self-sabotaged ships.Felixnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-38447959829589743782018-03-27T05:05:49.199+01:002018-03-27T05:05:49.199+01:00Since much real world piracy was (and is) done by ...Since much real world piracy was (and is) done by short range ships close to shore, maybe it is worth looking at an analogue to that. After all, a "Stealth" ship would, in our terms, be similar to getting a nuclear submarine. The likelihood of pirates or any group of her do wells getting their hands on an operational SSN (much less being able to run it) is pretty low.<br /><br />Sailing out in a small ketch (in the 1700's) or a speedboat (today) is realistic because small craft are far more common, and far more people know how to use them. So we should be looking for pirates in planetary orbits, around small moons and lurking in the rings of Saturn, not cruising through deep space. Saturn would actually be a great place to set a prate story, given the multitude of "islands" to hide among (the rings and multitude of moons), and the heavy industrial activity (mining the moons for ice. Titan for nitrogen and hydrocarbons and potentially antimatter harvesters gathering antiprotons in Saturn's magnetosphere), providing lots of lucrative targets.<br /><br />Small spacecraft darting out suddenly to intercept tankers or industrial machinery being transported from moon to moon is the image we should have in mind, and don't forget many pirates often landed shore parties to raid cities along the "Spanish Main" during the hight of that period, so grounding beside a robot ice extractor and seizing it for ransom, while maybe not so exciting (no maidens for the police or coast guard to rescue), will certainly be an effective tactic.<br /><br />One other quasi piratical activity would be surface raiding. During WWI, the SMS Emden sailed from the then German port of Tsingtao, China into the Indian ocean. Her primary mission was to raid surface targets and ships, both to disrupt Allied activities but also to draw Allied naval forces away from Von Spee as he attempted to sail the East Asia Squadron around South America and back to Germany. Captain von Muller led everyone on a merry chase for about two months before he was finally trapped, but during that time he successfully disrupted Allied operations and Emden had destroyed two Entente warships and sank or captured sixteen British steamers and one Russian merchant ship, totaling 70,825 gross register tons. <br /><br />The last way to more easily get pirate ships is for governments to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal, essentially hiring private contractors to harry enemy shipping. Queen Elizabeth I pioneered this in the modern age, and Captain Henry Morgan worked for the Crown both as a pirate, and then later, when auxiliary forces were no longer needed, as Governor to suppress pirates who refused to disband and continued with piracy.Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-52377556707107355292018-03-27T00:29:55.973+01:002018-03-27T00:29:55.973+01:00It will depend on the relationship between the val...It will depend on the relationship between the value of the goods and the cost of the pirate operation.<br /><br />Pirates acting as thieves basically handle the final step of the production chain (delivering the goods to the market) while saving in the cost of actually producing the good. <br /><br />If the cost of transport is much greater than the value of the goods, such as water from Saturn being delivered to a metallic asteroid outpost running dry, then pirates have nothing to gain. If the stolen goods are very valuable, such as palladium, then they are worth carrying from one end of the Solar System to the other.<br /><br />In a kardashev 2 scale civilization, energy is abundant and cheap. As a result, propulsion and therefore transportation is the smallest cost in producing and delivering a product. Therefore, piracy will be even more attractive!<br /><br />Also, as surveillance technology advances, there will be equal effort being made into devising new techniques or methods for evading surveillance.Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-21397213553328160242018-03-26T18:16:39.763+01:002018-03-26T18:16:39.763+01:00Great work! My question is, how would piracy and c...Great work! My question is, how would piracy and crime compare in the future where there will be more material and cargo to go around? Assuming that technology steadily progresses and humanity reaches stage 2 on the kardeshev scale, would theft continue to remain a valid strategy as it is now owing to the copious amounts of good being transported and the potential reward if stolen, or would it fall behind as the sheer industrial capacity of dedicated infrastructure comes closer and closer to being able to provide 24/7 surveillance of ever cubic kilometer of space?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12096799534510028639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-86645914393304974482018-03-26T15:18:58.914+01:002018-03-26T15:18:58.914+01:00Hi Felix!
The trick is to ruin the cargo before t...Hi Felix!<br /><br />The trick is to ruin the cargo before the pirates perform the intercept maneuver. If they see the target is worthless, they might save the time and propellant and just fly on instead of risking being caught by the authorities...<br /><br />But if pirates start killing crews out of spite, even without a prize to gain, then the transport companies will instruct their crews to dump their cargo intact while military response is stepped up.<br /><br />The self-sabotage involves making the components of the ship itself not worth salvaging. A nuclear reactor with all the control rods broken, coolant pipes molten and covered in the radioactive remains of the fissile core as it melted its way out of the nozzle isn't worth much. Same goes for fried electronics, cracked mirrors, holed hulls and so on....Matter Beamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16721504049578296529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150340806781551727.post-80867228694506160522018-03-26T05:28:57.679+01:002018-03-26T05:28:57.679+01:00For the last resorts against piracy, while no-rans...For the last resorts against piracy, while no-ransom policy may discourage some pirates, I doubt that salt-and-dump or self-sabotage may backfire horribly<br /><br />If the target is the cargo and the commercial ship crew salt-and-dump it, the pirate may destroy the ship out of anger, this can be a lesson of "being uncooperative" for other ones.<br /><br />For self-sabotage, if the pirate has more than one ship, they may destroy the target with Ship A, then Ship B comes in and claim the target ship as salvage.<br /><br />Not an intact ship, but they still get something away from the crime scene, it is still a gain.Felixnoreply@blogger.com