It reminds me of a part in The Dark Forest [1] by Liu Cixin, where a single alien probes annihilates a whole fleet of human space ships because of such big technology difference.
This series [2], btw, has transformed my view of space and space opera litterature. I have a much somber thinking about space, the theory in the books, is that there are species that want to wipe all their opponents and the only way to survive is to hide.
Another take at this is from Charles Stross in Singularity Sky [2], where a whole human fleet is again destroyed by aliens like a flick of a switch.
I know these two are science fiction, but like comment, a nuke won't save the day when aliens have been forced to live in the void for the travel time and have engines capable of taking them here.
This makes me think of the current book i'm reading about the Soviet space shuttle [1].
They started building it because of military paranoia. They did copy some of the design but it was to be able to accomplish the same type of mission. If I remember correctly, notably polar orbits. The west calls it a shuttle copy, I think it's probably more a design convergence.
Buran was able to fly by itself, it was boosted by modular liquid fuel rocket [2]. The book goes into details about the differences between the two and a bit of history pre-shuttle, programs like the spiral space planes. It's also humbling when you find out that people in the ~1900 thought about going to other planets [3].
I was about to comment on what skunk works did with the U2 and the SR71, but then i saw that virgin wanted to go at 4x the service ceiling of these two planes.
These two planes already had several very hard problems to solve (as related in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101438.Skunk_Works ), i can't begin to imagine the bigger problems to get higher.
Since we design our own hardware, we put exactly what we want and need into them.
We share some components like power, network, and casing.
This means for example :
- one integrated network switch/router for 18 servers; no need to buy an external cisco/juniper/whatever
- one dual power supply for the whole gang instead of 19 (18 servers + switch)
- less metal/plastic parts
We try to reuse hardware designs and software from one iteration to another when possible.
In short, we do have less "unneeded components". Equivalent designs (thinking at moonshot for example) are expensive, so to achieve same density it's more expensive to buy existing solutions than what we design & build.
You can probably determinate the number of supernovas/hypernova/etc that happened before the sun by analyzing the proportions of different elements in the solar system and then use the various equations to compute how many explosions you would need to create the heavy elements (heavier than iron) that are observable since they are mostly created in these situations.
You probably can get these equations by analyzing nebula composition and the type of star which was there.
Also, the type of star gives an indication of it's history.
Another take at this is from Charles Stross in Singularity Sky [2], where a whole human fleet is again destroyed by aliens like a flick of a switch.
I know these two are science fiction, but like comment, a nuke won't save the day when aliens have been forced to live in the void for the travel time and have engines capable of taking them here.
1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168817-the-dark-forest
2. https://www.goodreads.com/series/189931-remembrance-of-earth...
3. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81992.Singularity_Sky