Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Xenophile,

> About the only way to justify a war theme with habitats is to
> have fanatics who want to destroy all infidels. Fanatics who don't
> want to acquire the infidels' land, but simply want the infidels to die.

One potential plot (and one that eventually definitely needs be adressed
in real life, if space habitation ever comes into fruition) is a terrorist
sect, whether someone like al Qaeda or like Aum Shinrikyo, trying to use an
asteroid to wipe out an Earth city or area. Imagine a sixty meter asteroid
falling into Chesapeake Bay at twenty km/s. The space environment will most
likely attract highly trained and bright people, and will also present
psychological challenges that may drive some such individuals into the
malevolent madness of Shoko Asahara. Same people who were diarrhea-brained
enough to buy their guru's bottled bath water to drink also produced nerve
gas. Some sort of armed vigilance - not massively numerous, but highly
capable in terms of acceleration, delta-v and detection power - needs be put
in place, monitoring all incoming cargoes and taking action if a cargo
enters uncomfortably close to an impact trajectory.
I suppose a James Bond movie could be made with such a plot. Bond
infiltrates a suspected such group heading out to the Belt to bring back a
rock, shags the two sexiest women aboard (one heroine, one villainess), and
then he and the heroine sabotage the mass-driver engine just as it is about
to make its hard push into an impact trajectory (thereby saving themselves,
as otherwise the Space Guard, alerted by Bond, would attack the rock and the
mass-driver before it could achieve its intended path). :-)

Jon Lennart Beck.