There are inherent problems with such a weapon:
- First to reload it, ammunition cannot be stored indefinitely in space, you need to crisply the weapon from earth, making a shot very costly.
- Second, firing a projectile will drive the weapon off its orbit according to the Newton's 3rd law, that raise the cost of the weapon itself, because you need some kind of stabilizing system.
-Yeah, that's a major problem with any space weapon, even if we had the technology today to put a DE based system in space, any maintenance, upgrades and so on would require shuttle missions. That's the advantage of ABL and/or GBL (neither of which have we been able to make a practical reality... yet), but at least when the main system is on the ground, it can constantly be tweaked and modified.
-RE: your second point:
I’m far from an expert on space. Do you know if it is possible to launch shuttle mission into orbit, and let it deploy many "mini-shuttles" (obviously unmanned), which are pretty much stay dormant in orbit unless they are needed. In the case that a target needs to be taken out, one of the "mini-shuttles" can be controlled from "Houston." Once the trajectory and everything is figured out, a small amount of fuel can be fired to take it out of orbit and "Houston" can control its re-entry, letting it glide (like a shuttle) to its target. If this is possible, once the main "vehicle" gets to a point where it's taken the majority of the heat generated from re-entry, the mini-shuttle could release many "smaller-shuttles" (MIRVS) each independently controlled. Then you get a controlled "a controlled" meteor storm. For rapid deployment, instead of having to use ICBMs or IRBMs (where it may take assets some time to get into place or deploy to too many places) use a "shuttle crash."
BTW, leave treaties that nobody adheres to anyway, aside. I'm just wondering if something like this is plausible and economical (in relative terms)?:unknown
