Kill Sat: Difference between revisions

[[File:ioncannonzl5.jpg|link=Command & Conquer|frame|Exhibit A: The GDI Ion Cannon Satellite.]]

When it absolutely, positively, has to be destroyed on time, nothing beats your own remote-controlled, satellite-mounted laser cannon.

Compare [[Wave Motion Gun]], [[BFG]], [[Big Bulky Bomb]], [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]].

* SOL in ''[[Akira]]''. Used to sucker punch a rampaging [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|Tetsuo]], [[An Arm and a Leg|incinerating his right arm in one shot]]. The reason it didn't get a second chance varies: in the anime, Tetsuo flies up and crushes it while the military is still recalibrating; in the manga, [[Villain Exit Stage Left|he just runs away and goes into hiding]]{{spoiler|, leaving the satellite available for the Colonel to use against him in the final battle.}}

** As nice as SOL was, it's hard to argue against "Floyd", the Kill Sat used by the US Military near the end of the manga, having it beaten hands-down. Able to fire multiple beams at once, move the beam ''while'' firing, widen the beam... [[General Ripper|the American commander]] actually orders ''[[No Kill Like Overkill|the entirety of Japan]]'' to be targeted at one point! {{spoiler|Not that any of these features kept Tetsuo from [[Death From Above|boarding the thing and crashing it on top of the US command carrier...]]}}

** {{spoiler|Later we learn that the true purpose of the [[Evil Plan]] behind the events of this [[Story Arc]] was to provoke the Council into such extreme action as firing the Aetherion, then reveal that they were fooled by the villain, thus undermining their authority.}}

* The [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Death-Para Machine]] from ''[[Transformers Super God Masterforce]]'', which had the power to destroy Earth's ozone layer.

* Kill Sats show up in many ''[[Gundam]]'' series, although they aren't quite as common as the [[Colony Drop]].

** ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00|Gundam 00]]'' has the Memento Mori. {{spoiler|Both of them.}}

** Near the end of the series during a tournament, the Backdraft Group calls down a whole bunch of different Dark Judges. As they're defeated on the ground, the real judging authority has a very large satellite covered in gun turrets that blows the satellites out of the sky.

* In ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' {{spoiler|[[Robot Girl|Chachamaru's]] artifact}} is this. ''[[Cute Kitten|And it's shaped like a cat]]''.

* Wormhole Driver from ''[[The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye]]'' is an old (but still fully operational) Kill Sat capable of creating Black Holes on top of the targeted area (which means that depending on the power used in such attack it can most likely destroy anything up to the entire planet)

* The GHQ's satellite laser "Leucocyte" in ''[[Guilty Crown]]''. {{spoiler|All 256 of them.}}

* ''[[Legend of Galactic Heroes]]'' featured two variants of Kill Sat, both of which are designed as space-based defences: the giant Iserlohn Fortress occupying an important choke-point in the Imperial frontier and the Artemis Necklace network of battle-satellites orbiting around the Alliance capital planet.

* Saya from ''[[Onidere]]'' has access to a Kill Sat that strikes her father every time she says a phrase. However her [[Made of Iron|father is so tough]] that despite destroying his house he doesn't even notice it.

* The penultimate issue of the ''[[Global Frequency]]'' comic is based around a preset plan by the US government to cause a population reduction by blasting a few major cities with Kill Sats. These are kinetic harpoons, a single shot weapon mostly by virtue of being a fancy orbiting crossbow that fires an artificial diamond at enough speed that the kinetic energy goes off like a nuke when it strikes the ground.

** A kinetic harpoon also appears in ''Blackhawks'', though this one is armed with bunches of tungsten rods. Wildman is in love with the concept -- "Why spend all the money and resources building a laser or a missile when an inert object traveling at Mach Ten does the same amount of damage?"

* The [[Marvel Comics]] version of ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' had a kill sat with the command centre hidden in the Chrysler Building. The IDW series that carries on the Marvel continuity also uses it.

** The villain with this power also had a more destructive [[Shock and Awe|lightning bolt attack]], and some readers [[Fridge Logic|wonder why the villain didn't channel that through the satellites]].

* In ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'', Kyon's [[Morph Weapon]]s can assemble into a Kill Sat called "[[Shout-Out|Spear]] [[Touhou|the Gungnir]]".

* The Death Star from ''[[Star Wars]]''. It's a space station filled with millions of staff, stuffed to the bursting point with weaponry, and has a planet shattering superlaser built right into it!

** The Death Star is mobile and in fact there would be no point to it if it wasn't. It is basically a giant starship that is called a space station.

** The villain in ''[[Die Another Day]]'' makes an orbital mirror that doubles as a Kill Sat.

* In ''[[Real Genius]]'', the lead characters are duped by their college professor into building a laser which is intended as the main weapon for a Kill Sat. {{spoiler|They retaliate by sabotaging the test to have it destroy the duplicitous professor's home. [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|With popcorn.]]}}

* In ''[[Godzilla]] vs. Megaguirus'' a satellite is used to {{spoiler|attack Godzilla and barely manages to get off a shot on target before it burns up}}. The fact that it fired a solid projectile which took almost a minute to get to the ground against a notably fast-moving target makes one wonder why they bothered to put it orbit.

* The disaster movie ''[[Meteor]]'' features two satellites armed with over a dozen nuclear weapons. It turns out Sean Connery designed one to be a defense against asteroids, but they thought it would be better used against Russia.

* The protagonists in ''[[Space Cowboys]]'' go into space to fix what they're told is a communications satellite, only to find out it's an old Soviet Kill Sat armed with nuclear missiles and in danger of activating.

* The ''Narada's'' drill from ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]''. It seems to blast some kind of epic fire rather than an actual laser, but it can punch straight to the ''core of a planet''. {{spoiler|This turns out to be problematic for Vulcan, as it allows the Romulans to drop a ball of black-hole-creating matter to the core and literally make it implode.}} Something like that in the hands of angry and [[Omnicidal Maniac|"particularly troubled"]] Romulans? Oh sure, they get kinda [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|woobie]] with the backstory, but that still ain't a happy situation.

* In ''[[Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen]]'', Soundwave's alt mode is that of a satellite. Instead of normal projectiles, however, he fires other Decepticons, notably his minion Ravage. And if his toy bio has any credence, he's hacked so many satellites that he could pretty much destroy human civilization if he got bored.

* The stolen [[MacGuffin]] in ''[[Escape From L.A.|Escape From LA]]'' is a control for a Kill Sat.

** It's a control for a ''network'' of Kill Sats.

* Although it didn't make it into the final product, an early draft script of the ''[[Watchmen]]'' [[The Movie|movie]] featured one of these. (None existed in the original comic.)

* ''[[Maximum Overdrive]]''. {{spoiler|At the end, the epilogue states that the alien mothership was destroyed by a Russian "weather satellite" equipped with a laser cannon and "Class IV Nuclear Missiles".}}

== Literature ==

* The fusion-powered microwave satellites in ''[[Duumvirate]]'' can burn and melt a building.

* ''[[Jack Ryan|The Cardinal of the Kremlin]]'' by [[Tom Clancy]] had as a major plot point the simultaneous development of anti-satellite weapons by the US and the USSR. As the lasers were ground-located, they weren't technically Kill Sats, but the US system included the ability to bounce the laser beam off of multiple orbiting mirrors, thus hitting any target on the planet. It worked, too, except that the laser was too weak to do much more than give the target a mild sunburn.

* In Dan Simmons' ''[[Hyperion]]'', Fedmahn Kassad uses these to resolve a planet-wide hostage situation—by simultaneously attacking all of the terrorist ringleaders at once. The leader of the terrorists is even killed on live television mid-[[Sedgwick Speech]], for bonus points.

* A Kill Sat named [[Fun with Acronyms|ODIN]] ( '''O'''rbital '''D'''efense '''IN'''itiative) appears in Philip Reeve's ''[[Mortal Engines]]'' Quartet, especially in ''[[Infernal Devices]]'' and ''A Darkling Plain''. A semi-sentient one no less. You might even feel sorry for it after it's mini-BSOD.

* The [[Dean Koontz]] novel ''Dark Rivers of the Heart'' has a rare heroic use of one. One of the protagonists uses a back door to commandeer a Japanese laser satellite, using it to help make a getaway. The satellite is named [[Godzilla]].

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'', "Endgame"; When Sheridan's forces arrive at Earth and easily overwhelm most of the remnants of EarthForce fleet, President Clarke kills himself, after programming the planet's orbital defense system to take all of Earth with him. This means Sheridan's fleet must destroy the satellites before they fire.

* The ''[[The X-Files|X-Files]]'' episode "Kill Switch" (written by [[William Gibson]]) centered around a network of Kill Sats, complete with a computer control system that [[Instant AI, Just Add Water|developed its own ideas]] about how to use it.

* The Zindi weapon in ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'', {{spoiler|which blasts a corridor of death down the length of Florida that General Sherman would have envied.}}

* An early ''[[First Wave]]'' episode has the protagonist investigate the death of a college student who is revealed to have been working on a government project to deploy a series of nuclear missile-armed satellites in Earth's orbit. While he initially assumes they're there to attack other nations, the fact that they're pointing ''away'' from Earth tips him off that the government is aware of (some sort of) an alien threat and are taking precautions. Unfortunately, the aliens find out about this and send their agent to set the satellites to self-destruct, showing Earth with radioactive material. Since [[The Chosen One|Cade]] foils this plot, the satellites are assumes to still be up there. Of course, none if this is ever mentioned again.

== Tabletop Games ==

** More directly, NASA also had "[[Gun Stars]]" that would fire hockey-puck sized chunks of metal really fast at ground targets.

* In ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'', Exterminatus is the command used by the Inquisition when demons or heresy spread too far across the planet to be contained by covert or even overt military action. All possible (or at least important) Imperial forces pull out, and the orbiting fleet blows the hell out of the planet in any of a wide variety of ways, ranging from glassing the surface with hundreds of multi-gigaton warheads and ship-based beam weapons, to bombs filled with viruses that turn all organic matter into sludge, and "cyclonic torpedoes" that ''light the atmosphere on fire'' in a rather ''[[Homeworld]]''-esque way. All of these methods aim for one thing: rendering life on the planet impossible.

** Even when you don't need to destroy the entire planet, the various factions aren't above shelling the battlefield from orbit.

* In ''[[Heavy Gear]]'', there's even a new term to describe kill sats - ortillery, a portmanteau of orbital artillery.

* In ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'', "Orbital Gun" is a modification one can make to Katastrofi Wonders. It allows the Wonder in question to deal out hellish amounts of damage, but makes it difficult to successfully hit any target smaller than an Navy destroyer.

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Nintendo Wars|Advance Wars]] Dual Strike'' features a Kill Sat called the Black Onyx on the level ''Crystal Calamity''. Its primary purpose is to create a barrier around [[The Dragon|Kindle]]'s main source of power—a large crystal that turns the land into desert while creating energy. The Black Onyx also features a potent laser beam.

** Spin-off ''[[Battalion Wars]]'' features a good guy version - the Doomsday Weapon used by the Solar Empire to put an end to the Iron Legion in the game's backstory.

* In what is one of the (probably) few ''unintentional'' uses of a Kill Sat, the game ''[[Freelancer]]'' makes mention of a [[Single Biome Planet|winter world]] attempting to use a vast array of orbital mirrors to gradually thaw out the world, or at least the settled parts of it. Evidently, someone didn't carry the one, because the in-game article basically states that it focused the refracted light into a single coherent beam and described the results as being akin to a superlaser bombardment on the colony.

* In ''[[Warzone 2100]]'', the main antagonist ([[A.I. Is a Crapshoot|a self-aware computer virus called NEXUS]]) eventually powers up his laser satellites against the player during the final mission as at this point all of his systems are now back online.

* The [[BFG]] of ''[[Ratchet: Deadlocked]]'' is the Harbinger, which scatters targets all over the battlefield, which are then quickly followed by beams of light blasting those spots.

** The Deplanetizer from [[Ratchet & Clank (video game)|the original game]].

* ''[[Civilization]]: Call to Power'' was a Civilization-style game that included the ability to build space-based weapons and cities. One of these weapons was, for all intents and purposes, a high-powered Kill Sat that could hit anything on the ground with near impunity. It's a shame that the game was never completely debugged....

* Top-down [[Shmup]] ''[[Aero Fighters|Sonic Wings]]'' features a barrage of orbital lasers presumably from satellites as the special weapon of one of the playable characters. Video games seem to like to give these to good guys and bad in equal measure.

* ''[[Parasite Eve|Parasite Eve II]]'' contains a Kill Sat that fires what seem to be kinetic projectiles down [[Nuke'Em|on the entire main setting, acting as a last resort when containment looks unlikely.]]

** [[The 3rd Birthday]] features another one, although scaled down, that you get to use several times.

* In Jack's ending in ''[[Tekken|Tekken 2]]'', he is destroyed by a Kill Sat in front of young Jane. In his ''[[Tekken|Tekken 3]]'' ending, he is carrying adult Jane on his shoulder, when Dr. Abel tries to do the same thing, but he protects her and himself with a [[Beehive Barrier]].

* In ''[[Sengoku Basara]]'', Nohime has this as her [[Limit Break]], summoning the Oda Mon as beacons with pillars of lights coming from the sky.

* The fourth boss in the SNES version of ''Ninja Warriors'' wields a pimp cane that can direct an unseen Killsat to fire on your position.

* In ''[[Spore]]'', you get the "Uber Turret", a fast moving low-orbit satellite missile platform. It is an inversion in that instead of attacking ground targets (you deploy on your own colonies; not exactly the thing you'd want to blow), it is used to destroy (in a matter of seconds) squadrons of alien invaders that enter your planet's atmosphere.

* If you built a Microwave power station in ''[[SimCity|SimCity 2000]]'', it could occasionally "miss" and rain Kill Sat-like destruction on your helpless citizens.

* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', Azeroth has 4 Kill Sats in orbit, used by the [[Precursors|Titans]] as orbital defense weapons and named after the Keepers of Ulduar.

* The 8-bit game ''Dark Side'' takes place on a moon where terrorists have built a superweapon. It continuously collects energy from the Sun; guess [[Earthshattering Kaboom|what will happen]] if you fail to disable it.

* Captain Vladimir, Rank 3 in ''[[No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle]]'', has a radio uplink to an old Soviet kill-sat. It has two functions: a rain of smaller beams that deal good damage, and the "big beam". The big one's a [[One-Hit Kill]].

* ''[[BlazBlue]]'' has the magical satellite ''Nox Nyctores Gigant: Take Mikazuchi'', complete with digital monster in a coffin that shoots the beam. Despite only being shown once, it's ''frickin' sweet''.

** It can also only be activated every four years.

* The plot in ''[[Vanquish]]'' is kicked off when Russians hijack the orbital colony of Providence and use its microwave emitter on San Francisco. Its effects are [[Gorn|very graphically]] shown, with exploding bodies and full-body burns.

* ''[[Star Wars: The Old Republic]]''. Imperial Agents have the Orbital Bombardment skill.

* The infamous [[TurboGrafx-16]] game ''[[Last Alert]]'' had the player as a mercenary out to stop a [[Mad Scientist]] from [[Take Over the World|taking over the world]] with one of these.

* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' features a few examples at higher levels - the powerful War Walkers have access to an Orbital Cannon, while [[Mad Scientist]] Anti-Matter can launch an Obliteration Beam from his space station which not only deals massive damage but also holds players helplessly in the beam.

* ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]: No Remorse'' last mission consists in the player destroying an enemy space station (with a kill sat goal) before it becomes fully operational.

* ''[[War Wind]]'''s human scientist faction can build armed satellites.

== Web Animation ==

* The graphic novel-esque flash series ''[[Broken Saints]]'' features a fanatical [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] who sets up a Kill Sat network {{spoiler|in order to broadcast a signal triggering his vision of Judgment Day.}} It also has the ability to lock on to anywhere on the planet and emit highly-focused [[Shock and Awe|EM pulses]].

== Web Comics ==

* In ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', Dracula is ''far'' too elegant to bother with something as blunt as an orbital satellite. He uses [https://web.archive.org/web/20090303221819/http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=15&issue=11 Moon] [https://web.archive.org/web/20090303221842/http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=16&issue=11 Lasers] instead.

** Technically, the moon is a satellite.

* The Tower of Babel in ''[[SSDD]]'' is an odd variation in that the satellite is only a mirror designed to redirect the lasers fired from a very large, very [[Freud Was Right|phallic looking]] tower. Apparently previous attempts at orbital weapons were either really large and easy to shoot down, or underpowered.

== Web Original ==

* The [[SCP Foundation]] has, in its archives, a ''Memetic'' Kill Sat. It makes people [[Ax Crazy]], and the effect 'splashes' at higher settings. It reports a maximum output of 238, which gets converted to 'keter' intensity - and apparently causes effects that ''screw with reality itself''. More worryingly, using it causes wear (and results in lower-intensity settings slowly becoming unavailable). What ''really'' worries the SCP, though, is {{spoiler|the fact that the Kill Sat says it was built to help protect a site that they never built.}}

* [[Anonymous]] has a Low Orbit Ion Cannon (a program that helps with their DDOS attacks), [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/two-real-guns-pointed-at-me-how-the-fbi-raided-anonymous.ars which got them noticed by the FBI] after they attacked sites that were boycotting WikiLeaks.

== Western Animation ==

* In ''[[Spliced]]'', Octocat controls a Kill Sat that she uses on people who annoy her.

* A Kill Sat made a short appearance in an episode of ''[[Kim Possible]]''. The series [[Arch Enemy]] tried to obtain the controls for it, but failed.

== Real Life ==

* The actual deployment of nukes in space is prohibited by the 1969 Outer Space Treaty.

** That didn't stop the [[Reds with Rockets|Soviet Union]] from developing the [[wikipedia:Fractional Orbital Bombardment System|Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS)]], which was designed to deliver a nuclear warhead (or [[wikipedia:Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle|warheads]]) by mimicking a satellite's orbital path.

* The Russian Almaz-class military space station ''OPS-2/Salyut 3'' sported a self-defense gun that was tested successfully on a target-satellite (probably an obsolete on of theirs, since shooting down an US satelite would have been considered an act of war). The intent here was probably taking out potential US killer satellites.

* The Russians also had the [http://www.astronautix.com/craft/polyus.htm Polyus project], an advanced weapons satellite that would have sported particle weaponry, orbital mines, and an anti-observance shroud (read: cloaking device, or rather very dark cover). ''Would'' have—it was launched upside down, executed a 360-degree spin instead of a 180, and crashed into the ocean.

** That's also a proposed alternative for [[terraform]]ing Mars: since the planet doesn't have enough gravity to retain an atmosphere with significant greenhouse effect (for dummies: the little heat that makes it to Mars escapes too quickly as opposed to Earth where the much thicker atmosphere keeps some of said heat for months; without this, Earth's average surface temperature would be around -18 °C), they'd build several orbital mirrors and focus them onto a relatively small area. Even a few sats could heat the target area enough that a human could stroll around with a simple oxygen mask and street clothing. And since [[Humans Are Warriors]], it's only a matter of time before someone gets the idea to weaponize the tech.

* [[Older Than They Think]]: Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, freaked a lot of people out when it went up, although they were afraid of the possibility of the launch vehicles the Russians now had being used to launch nuclear warheads rather than the satellite itself.

* The ultimate proposed kill-sat is the Nicoll-Dyson Laser. Using a shell of satellites in orbit around the sun (the original proposal for a Dyson Sphere, not a solid shell) which collect solar energy and convert it into a laser beam, [[James Nicoll]] calculated that one could use the satellites to create a phased array laser which would have an initial beam width equal to the size of the satellites' orbits and an effective range of ''millions of light years''. [[Awesome but Impractical|Talk about "leading your target".]] However, it should be pointed out that the guy who 'designed' it is a SF blogger and fan-writer, not a scientist or engineer. It's technically ''feasible'', maybe, but in the end, just a plot point idea.

* The inversion is more common: [[wikipedia:Anti-satellite weapon|Anti-satellite weapon]], or ASAT. These ranges between contemporary missiles, to nuclear explosions [[Recycled in Space|(IN SPACE!).]] In this age of information, these have incredible destructive potential to the infrastructures (compare: 2006 internet slowdown when some undersea cables was destroyed by Taiwan earthquake). It's not entirely ominous though, as there are few ways to safely<ref>hey, it's either this or risk flaming debris falling on your head</ref> and economically dispose of unused old satellites.