Canada's ex-Defense Minister who ultimately shaped Canada's armed forces during the Cold War: Aliens
240 replies, posted
[QUOTE=catbarf;43444040]1. Having a small percentage of your population away from your homeworld does not make losing your homeworld anything other than a cataclysmic event. Hell, we could be on Mars and losing Earth and most of the population could be a game-ender right there. Any species is going to be specifically adapted for its own homeworld and unlikely to survive easily anywhere else, so if you take out their homeworld then you've at the very least destroyed their main base of operations and rendered even just living far more difficult than previously.
So sure, supposing we had people on Mars and out in the asteroids or wherever, humanity might survive. The question is for how long, and whether we'd be a threat in the foreseeable future from that point. You're forgetting that the basic game theory perspective is that conflict is basically inevitable, so if you strike first and strike harder then you've still won even if you have to mop up later.
[/quote]
That isn't the kind of civilization which you use a R-bomb on. The only targets worthy of the resource expenditure of launching a RKKV against are other species capable of relativistic launches. And those will have enough offworld industry that a hit on the homeworld has a good chance of only strategically inconveniencing them and majorly pissing them off. And that's assuming that you judged the target size right and they're similarly sized to you. If they're bigger... Cavemen who piss off angels meet sticky ends. You don't even need survivors. Just seed the Oort cloud with VN machines and have them set to go to 'EAT EVERYTHING' mode if they loose contact with their creators
[quote]2. Sorry, interception does not work that way. At a high enough impact velocity all you've done is marginally reduce the speed of the projectile or turned it into a plasma spray (fun!), and now all those rocks that were in its path are now going to hit you as well. You just described the cosmic equivalent of trying to stop someone from punching you by throwing cottonballs at their fist.[/quote]
Dude, do you even understand what makes those weapons work? The whole reason that a RKKV works is that anything struck at the kind of relative speed they travel at experiences a nuclear grade energy release, and it doesn't matter whether it's a RKKV hitting a planet or the RKKV hitting a micrometeroid. That impact I described would release a multi-kiloton blast on the 'Vee - something it would not enjoy in the least. And so what if it becomes plasma? You hit it far enough out and said spray will disperse into gas and then cosmic rays. The only real effect on the target would be a spike in the cancer rate. And even if you only slow the bugger, that's enough to make it miss the target entirely and go careening harmlessly off into interstellar space.
[quote]
You could take a spaceship, point it at another star system, accelerate at 1G and in less than a year and a half you'd be at 0.8C (reaction mass permitting). Just under four years and you'd be at 0.97C. That right there is a relativistic weapon, and unless you're saying that all our galactic neighbors have telescopes good enough to see every single spaceship launch (in which case we're [I]already[/I] fucked since the Earth already emits more infrared radiation every day than a hypothetical perfect-conversion antimatter drive could even come close to, and I don't think you're suggesting we give up on space exploration either), it's not going to be visible until near-impact. Maybe not even then, if the ship's been coasting for years against a very distant target.
[/QUOTE]
Any drive that could manage that kind of accell for that kind of time for any reasonable cost is going to be pretty noticeable on an interstellar scale. Anything you'd reasonably launch such a weapon at would have a warning system like you mentioned set up anyway. And even if you launch against someone who didn't notice it, [i]someone else may[/i]. It's a direct violation of the 2nd and 3rd rules of interstellar interaction* and skirts a violation of the 1st.
*Those rules being:
[quote] First Rule: In any First Contact situation, assume that you are the Caveman, until further interaction demonstrates otherwise. As such, further interaction should be approached very carefully.
Second Rule: No matter how powerful you think you are, there will always be someone bigger than you. Try not to do anything that would piss them off.
Third Rule: Displays of power put on by interstellar civilizations are highly conspicuous. As such, they are easily detectable at great distances by sufficiently sophisticated sensors. Do not assume that violations of the second rule will go unnoticed or unseen.
[/quote]
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.