[quote=Kadaeux]
1: Incorrect. A space Elevator doesn't require a constant burn to maintain the anchor points orbit. Just a suitable asteroid and actual knowledge of orbital mechanics so that it is placed in an adequate orbit. Such a system done correctly would still be expensive, but eminently feasible. A handful of ion drives and low power reactors and you might need to make orbital corrections once every couple of years.2: Given your obvious failure to understand the basic concepts of a Space Elevator's mechanics you are hardly the one to be saying other people have no idea what they're talking about.
[/quote]

All orbits degrade, Kad, especially the ones subjected to drag as your lift vector still passes through atmosphere, and the normal force from raising weapons and materials into orbit along I'm just assuming we're going with carbon nanorods. All forces acting along the elevator's vector will degrade the orbit of the anchor, for which your only option is to counterburn. Just saying. It's irrelevant to the conversation though, because we're talk-- wait. *I'm* talking about the energy advantage of an interstellar fleet over terrestrial forces. 

Let's see what Bobo is talking about.

[quote=Brovo]
Alright. One more time, just for you. Any kind of orbital advantage a fleet would have is irrelevant on the sheer face of the fact that they will never reach orbit before being shot at with enough ordinance to annihilate them before they got anywhere near the system. Why? Because Isaac Newton is the deadliest motherfucker in space. Thats why. Plain and simple the offensive advantage of a fleet in orbit is literally irrelevant unless facing a civilization that has literally no way to stop you. Then your advantage is irrelevant by the nature of simply being massively technologically superior anyway.Space is not comparable to planetary tactics. You can see through space... Forever. And it takes forever to fly through space. And there is no maximum range in space. And so on.
[/quote]

......Newton. Isaac...... what are you even...

Okay. So what I think you're saying is 'they can see you coming and shoot straight at you for 40 years, and 40 years' worth of bullets will annihilate your puny warships.' Like throwing landmines on a train track, the train just loses. Right? That's what we're going for here?

Completely wrong. Interstellar travel is, itself, an exercise of several orbital patterns. To start, we put the satellite into an elliptical orbit about the earth, then at perigee, you burn hard and go to a hyperbolic pattern, essentially taking your high kinetic state at perigee and then adding enough thrust to reach escape velocity. Once you're on path, you cut engines, and now you're trading kinetic energy for potential -- to a point. Eventually when you're far enough distant from the earth (outside its gravitational influence -- which is technically never, but the gray line is there when...), you're now a body orbiting the sun; your energy state at present defines what sort of orbit you have (because you just came from earth, you're likely in a highly eccentric solar orbit). Eventually you reach the plane you want and accelerate again to put your drone into a more stable, predictable solar orbit -- at this point you're a high-energy body way the fuck out in space, acting in the sun's sphere of influence and ignoring the piss out of the planets. From here, planets have to work ludicrously hard to reach you -- for instance, you know how rare an event it is to see Haley's Comet? Once every 75 years, it's visible from earth -- that's your window. You've got one night or whatever to put something in its orbital plane (the microseconds will matter, for the mission control people, but let's just say one night) or else earth moves away on its revolution, and Haley's moves away on its revolution, and you have to burn impossible amounts of fuel to reach that orbital plane again. All the bodies are in motion, I guess, is the take-away here, and they're in motion along defined paths, That's orbits we can all understand.

Now. To comprehend an interstellar orbit, you have to scale up what you're learning about solar orbits. Bodies can move from planet to planet, and in transit they operate in the sun's gravitational influence. When you're interstellar, you're talking galactic sphere. Let's take the example of an attack on Alpha Centauri Bb, a small planet cluster. To get there, first we build our ship in a solar orbit near Jupiter (proximity to asteroids, and a whim). Once ready, we burn to enter a parabolic orbit about Jupiter. From there we build up energy and escape Jupiter to Sol; approaching Sol we do a hard burn to gain a specific (but very high) amount of energy to put us on the one, exact, specific, tiny line that will escape Sol, revolve about the center of the Milky Way, and allow us to (with more calculated burns) set our energy level to intercept Alpha's sphere of influence and ride their gravity down. I'd take eccentric elliptical orbit here, with the goal of reaching aphelion and burning out again, to set a stable non-eccentric orbit about Alpha Centauri.

That was a lot of steps, yes? At *no point* during that process could an observer on Alpha Bb discern what my next orbit would be. He could guess, and for every guess he has to field a warhead and a missile (at tremendous cost), years in advance, trying to place it into an orbit he thinks I might select for interception.

But wait, there's more. Is your head bleeding yet? He doesn't even necessarily have **any physical chance whatsoever of intercepting me**. If I've done my job right, I've calculated the period of his planet, and I know which eccentric options are available for him to reach an orbit around Alpha. I can pull up which planes he can access and I can avoid them at will. To even have a chance, he needs someone flying his intercept-missile who's equipped to react to my orbital plays. That means a ship, like mine, with microthrust for maneuverability and large engines for hard burns; and he'd have to be at work in the instant I started my journey, because my orbital manipulations are building up all *kinds* of energy. He'd have to take similar steps to build up his energy (I'll spare us all a breakdown of how hard that would be), and he'd have to pick the planes just right, or he might need more than 75 years to get a second window to get on my orbit.

Or you know, you could just throw rocks up there like 'eh, what the fuck, we got rocks right, raaar,' and see what happens.

Now that's just physics. I haven't even scratched the surface of the strategic value of all this, and believe me, I've got experts lining up waiting to explain how to use a pure offensive military force for empirical domination (starting with Douchelle, then some Billy Mitchell, Arthur Harris....... You want that, I'll break that out, just say the word, and make sure you do it really dismissively, like I don't even belong in a conversation with you, and end it with a smirk. Go on, I know you want to. Make sure you go wiki this first so you can still respond snarkily -- you don't have to be the whole pirate, just being a parrot should do well enough.