Ye olde chatsubo thread about orbital bombardment spawned by Theodicy.
Oh wait, that's not really helping is it.
Basically what you are doing is shooting at something through 10km of gas.
It will cause difficulty, since space ammo in all likelyhood is not designed aerodynamically, it's most likely designed for most damage in the space environment, it will most likely burn to cinder as it enters the atmosphere if it just doesn't skim off it.
That means that any projectile designed for space combat will be pretty much pointless when approaching orbital bombardment. All kinds of missiles count as projectiles.
Lasers will most likely be dispersed by atmospheric gases.
Most cost efficient way of orbital bombardment would be using big mass drivers that lob asteroids at the planet, even then the atmosphere would be the major problem with the whole thing. Causing inaccuracies and projectile disintegration.
The whole orbital bombardment as a capsuleer is pretty much pointless, you will never be able to choose the target you will be aiming at, the guy who chooses the target will be the DUST guy, making you nothing but a lackey with a big ship.
Even today, bombarding a planet from orbit is a possibility, though it might well be a highly costly one.
Assemble a nuke. Or a Fuel bomb, if you want to be 'clean' about it. Or just a big collection of whatever explosive you wish to use. Assemble this in the center, perhaps a cylinder-shaped container, shielded from and separate from the rest fo the module. Now, deploy a rack of, for example - cruise missiles. Shield this rack just as the bomb in the center. Add another rack of cruise missiles/w.e around this one and repeat until you're satisfied with the amount of firepower or until the budget is to high or the target(s) are sure to be vaporized.
Set the entire thing on a heat-shield for planetary re-entry - if you can make it solid enough to get people and thier shuttles back down without burning to a fine misty smoke in the atmosphere since the 60's, you can shield this weapon. Assemble, attach to shuttle, launch to space, deploy on a station or whatever, ready to go. When needed drop to the earth in whatever angle or such needed to prevent burning up and hit whatever city/nation you want to remove from the map.
Send it down. Once beyond the part of the atmosphere that might burn it up, blow off the outher edges and fire the missiles in whatever way is most practical, guide these to whatever designated targets(s) they go to. Blow off the next layer and repeat. Try to have the core bomb fragment hit more-or-less on whatever you want to destroy and detonate it x meters over the surface to inflict maximum damage. Bonus points if you managed to design the heat-shield in a manner where it would turn into a gigantic, glorified frag-grenade when blown up, for even more destructive power.
If all else fails and it's not really possible to make this kind of weapon in today's world, wait 20-30 thousand years and make them en-masse in a universe that has the tech needed, and leaders cold enough to deploy them. Might even replace those explosive warheads with anti-matter bombs and/or place a really big one in the center. Distribute to enemies as needed, don't forget to paint "xoxo, your pal, [insert name]" on the front, for hilarity, or maximus cheese, depending on who asks...
Yes, I'm being overly sarcastic. IMHO once you figure out how to get space-faring objects/people back down without unfortunate fatal incidents or immolation due atmospheric re-entry, actually bombing a planet like this becomes a piece of cake. That or just drop a huge rock on them to kill the planet cheaply, if needed, though that's covered allready.
Ofc, I'm sure this was not exactly the topic here, likely more of "tony G did not do his homework - again" or somesuch.
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Topic: Orbital Bombardment (Read 5043 times)