Here’s a possible launch-blocking strategy: Orbital lasers and/or kinetic interceptors.
You have a dense grid of laser satellites in orbit. Those on earth trying to get up into space face some disadvantages:
If they stay down on earth and shoot up at your satellites, while your satellites shoot back at them e.g. with lasers and kinetic interceptors, the gravity well gives you an inherent disadvantage. Your stuff has to climb out of the gravity well to hit the satellites whilst their stuff just has to fall down at the right angle. Plus also, the atmosphere and day-night cycle makes your solar panels much less efficient than theirs, so in a war of lasers they might just be able to outproduce you, plus the atmosphere makes the lasers inefficient anyway.
If they try to power up into space to fight you there using rockets, well, a big rocket can be blown up by a small bullet or laser burst as it exits the atmosphere and tries to accelerate to orbital velocity. Very vulnerable. If you try to armor it, you need to armor not just the payload but the rocket itself, which will be like an OOM bigger than the payload, plus the armor might weigh the thing down a lot reducing payload size.
A counterpoint is that you have to spread out your satellites in a grid whereas they can launch their entire fleet all at once in a single location to try to break through the grid. But yeah.
Here’s a possible launch-blocking strategy: Orbital lasers and/or kinetic interceptors.
You have a dense grid of laser satellites in orbit. Those on earth trying to get up into space face some disadvantages:
If they stay down on earth and shoot up at your satellites, while your satellites shoot back at them e.g. with lasers and kinetic interceptors, the gravity well gives you an inherent disadvantage. Your stuff has to climb out of the gravity well to hit the satellites whilst their stuff just has to fall down at the right angle. Plus also, the atmosphere and day-night cycle makes your solar panels much less efficient than theirs, so in a war of lasers they might just be able to outproduce you, plus the atmosphere makes the lasers inefficient anyway.
If they try to power up into space to fight you there using rockets, well, a big rocket can be blown up by a small bullet or laser burst as it exits the atmosphere and tries to accelerate to orbital velocity. Very vulnerable. If you try to armor it, you need to armor not just the payload but the rocket itself, which will be like an OOM bigger than the payload, plus the armor might weigh the thing down a lot reducing payload size.
A counterpoint is that you have to spread out your satellites in a grid whereas they can launch their entire fleet all at once in a single location to try to break through the grid. But yeah.