On Feb 25, 5:29 pm, Jack Tingle <wjtin...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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.
The assumption above is that the target is low tech. "A high-tech
culture picking on a low-tech one"
> 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 is likely the big one.
> 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.
That's a rather strange presumption. Even if the aid were
roughly equal to the amount of damage done, the damage
wasn't done to piles of money. The damage was done
to "stuff". Even if seven billion dollars worth of damage
were done, this doesn't imply that the people had seven
billion dollars of cash sitting around.
> Call it $14b, roughly. That's a 350:1 bet; not bad for
> insurance. So rational cost evaluation probably wasn't a big factor.
What's the rational cost evaluation for someone living
paycheck to paycheck vs buying health insurance?
If the money isn't there, the money isn't there.
> 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.
The more plausible scenario is that the Senator's
decision process is going the other way.
"Well, yes Senator, we NEED to deploy our asteroid
sensor satellites because the existing asteroid
sensor satellites are almost three years old. How
much do we NEED it? About fifteen billions dollars
worth of us needing it, including a hundred FTE's
worth of needing it in your home disctrict. And
including fifteen million dollar's worth of contributions
to your campaign."
> 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.
It doesn't really sound plausible to me, because
even in the absence of pork-barrel asteroid sensor
satellites, there are going to be lots of civilian
sensors out there, including ground based
telescopes and transport based sensors.
Isaac Kuo
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