On Feb 23, 2:17 pm, John Schilling <schil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Feb 2008 08:21:43 -0500, Jack Tingle <wjtin...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>
> >I occurred to me that there is one way a stealthy attack in space might
> >work (at least once). It would depend on a lot of misdirection, really
> >good security, and an inattentive, though not really incompetent
victim.
> >The key is a mass driver, driven by a fission reactor, and the fact
that
> >most of the viewpoints humans can reach easily are in or near the plane
> >of the ecliptic.
>
> Actually, that's false. If you're not in a great hurry, a viewpoint say
> 10 AU above or below the ecliptic is not significantly harder to reach
> than one 10 AU out from Sol (or Earth) on the ecliptic.
>
> [Evil Martians push an asteroid onto an impact trajectory; nobody
notices]
>
> >It just so happens, that this asteroid was one that the Republick's
> >survey visited. And that the Republick has a long-standing bone to pick
> >with Terra.
>
> Which means that they should have launched a barrage of nuclear
missiles;
> that would have been faster, cheaper, more efficient, and slightly less
> obvious.
>
> >Mass drivers probably have the lowest radiated signature of any
> >propulsion system.
>
> Care to make a quantitative estimate for the RF and microwave signature
> of a decent mass driver?
>
> Just because the energy doesn't come out as IR, doesn't mean it isn't
> a signature.
>
> >If you keep a very well designed radiator panel aligned parallel to the
> >ecliptic (hard, when it's a few acres, but not impossible), very few
> >sensors will ever see it.
>
> Except for the off-ecliptic sensors that will be deployed at negligible
> cost by any spacefaring power that ever considers the possibility that
> someone might try to launch a stealthy attack against them.
It's been pointed out to you multiple times that your reasoning is
based upon a factually false premise, something I think you heard but
did not understand. But given the debacle where you claimed that you
'weren't convinced' that there was no link between Aluminum and
Alzheimer's, despite being corrected repeatedly, I'm not guessing
you're going to publicly change your mind.
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