Damien Valentine wrote:
> So the basic objection to Jack's original post (snipping out the mess
> about mirrors that Dwight started) is that any species with A.) the
> ability to maneuver asteroids wherever they want, is also a species
> with B.) the ability to identify and destroy dangerous asteroids.
> Therefore, asteroids wouldn't be an effective weapon against such a
> civilization, even if they don't have C.) the ability to detect and
> track all asteroids in their home system. And they would have to have
> C if they had A and B.
>
> Have I got this right?
>
> John Schilling also mentions "We've seen plenty of proposals for that
> sort of thing, all of them assuming the attacker has extensive and
> highly sophisticated space
> infrastructure and the target is the United States of America of
> roughly 2000 AD." Jack, would that work for what you have in mind? A
> high-tech culture picking on a low-tech one, and deciding to be
> stealthy for political reasons rather than fear of retaliation? Of
> course, you'd almost certainly have to scratch the "massive Terran
> space fleet that 20 years later non-stealthily nukes the Republick
> into near-extinction"...
That's a reasonable summary. As I said in the original post, it requires
an inattentive target. I don't assume the target is low tech, just a bit
careless.
Just because the target _can_ track all asteroids, doesn't mean it
_does_ track them. Again, for example, the countries surrounding the
Indian Ocean could have tracked tsunamis. They chose not to, for a
variety of reasons.
Cost probably isn't one of them. The entire US NWS has a budget of less
than $900m for 2009. There are probably less than 100 people in their
various research and operations tsunami jobs. Let's be generous and book
them at $200k/year each. That's $20m/year. Major network improvements
over the last few years cost around $20m. The Indian Ocean tsunami in
2004 killed over 200,000 people, and over $7b were donated in aid in its
aftermath. I presume the affected nations must have lost a similar
amount of money, some of which could have been saved with a network
warning. Call it $14b, roughly. That's a 350:1 bet; not bad for
insurance. So rational cost evaluation probably wasn't a big factor.
My bet is that the budget discussions in our inattentive target went
like: "Well, yes Senator, we could check every big asteroid all the
time, but all we need to do is spot check a few dozen a year for
perturbation... We can contract that out to existing observatories...
New hazardous asteroids?... No sir, we haven't found one since the big
push in the middle of the 21st century." Note that they're _not_
suggesting not watching for natural hazards. They're just not thinking
about man-made ones.
As I said before, it would only work once*, and it probably wouldn't
work at all, if you drew attention to it with a big signature of some
kind. A mass driver is the only thing I can think of that would stand a
chance of being stealthy enough, and of moving a small asteroid. And
Shilling is right, if you can't cover or neutralize the EM signature of
the mass driver, that wouldn't work either.
Still, it is a stealthy space attack that at least _sounds_ plausible,
limited though it is. As I say, that should be worth some extra points
for the soon-to-be-blasted First Marshen Republick.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
*The next year's budget discussion would have a lot different tone.
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