War in orbit???

Bill wrote:

>
> As for the ball bearing idea, you would literally need billions before
> it becomes a significant problem. One of the problems studied at AIMS
> and found to be insignificant was the 'artificial' meteors created by
> the mass drivers. All the mass used to move material from the moon to
> the colony would end up as earth orbiting debris that could be a
> hazard for the colony. The results showed that with a billion tonnes
> orbiting the earth, you will get one broken window every 3 years.
>

The AIMS study is for unaimed debris. In a conflict, the ball bearings
would be aimed. The study's assumtions are invalid.

>
> There is no simple way to destroy a space colony.

Nonsense. As mentioned before, even a hollowed out asteroid will have
large, fragile power and/or thermal systems which can be destroyed by
well-aimed 'debris' and kept down by repeated attack. No colony can survive
without power and/or thermal control for long (a few days, perhaps).

> The earth military
> is not equipped to send troops, and any automated system could be
> intercepted and destroyed weeks before it becomes a danger. To do it
> successfully the earth would have to bring the war to the colony, that
> means literally setting up a sizable presence in space, and be able to
> counter-move what the colony is doing.

Since the colony originally came from Earth, my WAG is that Earth would have
significant space capabilities. It's true that today's Earth would have a
hard time fighting tomorrow's colony, but tomorrow's Earth might not be such
a pushover. Of course, today's colony has no military capability whatsoever
(actually, it doesn't even exist). Finally, when faced with a threat, the
10 billion+ people of Earth will probably come up with effective weapons,
they have consistently done so for thousands of years.

>
> Bill
>
> --- In spacesettlers@y..., Al Globus wrote:
> >

Al Globus
aglobus@..., (650) 604-4404
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

The dinosaurs weren't spacefaring. We are. I don't think that's an accident.

Maybe we are life's taxi to the stars.

I think we should:

1. Devote half of NASA's budget ($7 billion) to reaching NASA's 2020 goal of

reducing launch costs to Low-Earth-Orbit to $220/kg with a 0.01% failure
rate.
This should enable space tourism. The resulting orbital hotels will need to
develop efficient orbital life support and other necessary technologies.

2. Build orbital space colonies. The materials in the largest asteroid are
sufficient for orbital colonies with a combined surface area about 500 times

greater than Earth's. Eros alone could make over ten thousand space
colonies,
each with about about 10 square kilometers of 1g living area.

3. After a few generations of orbital living, people won't need their colony

to be near Sol. Then small groups of colonies with populations in the
tens-of-thousands can set out on multi-decade journeys to nearby stars.

Except the launch goals, none of this is even a little bit official.