Acts of terrorism

Over the next few days I know we will stay tuned to see what the new
world order will look like.

Hopefully the events of the last day will make our leaders rethink the
silly
ballistic missile defense plan, and spend the money on something more
practical
and immediate.

FYI, I lived in Britain during the mad cow exposure period,
so my blood is inadmissable.

As for space devleopment related issues:-

>
> How vulnerable to such an attack would a habitat be? I know that

Collisions with pieces of debris are catastrophic to spacecraft.

It is generally not survivable.

Shielding provides protection from the smaller particles of debris.

> there has been discussion of such scenarios as attaching a bome to
> the habitat extrior and demanding, "Let us in or we set it off." But
> what about simply ramming the habitat? Proposed spaceliners such as
> the Konstantine Tsiolkovski are quite massive, and such a ting
> stiking at several thousand metres per second would carry a lot of
> kinetic energy. What sort of measures could be taken to protect
> settlements in free space against this sort of suicide attack?
>

The options are:

1) Get out of the way.

2) Destroy the incoming object.

3) Arrest the perpetrators before they get to the controls - (long
discussion on security measures)

4) Deter such attacks by consistently going after perpetrators and their
patrons (another long discussion).

5) Head for the escape pods.

This might lead to a long thread about the effects of sudden
decompression.

This is my understanding:

Rapid decompression is not survivable - I used to believe the David
Bowman emergency airlock
scene from 2001 was realistic, but more recently I have read things that
changed my mind.

In a vacuum, oxygen and nitrogen start to bubble from the blood at a
very rapid rate.
Within seconds, all the dissolved gas in your blood escapes through the
lung membranes,
destroying them in the process.
There is still enough oxygen in the brain for you to be concious for
about a minute or maybe two,
so this is rather a painful way to die.

David Bowman might have stayed concious enough to repressurize the
airlock, but unlikely.
He would have died anyway because of the catastrophic damage to his
lungs.

A space colony might depressurize slowly enough that we will have time
to get to the escape pods before our lungs start to disintegrate.

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