dietz@SLB-DOLL.CSNET (Paul Dietz) (03/23/86)
I've seen some comments about interstellar war being impossible due to the distances involved. These comments strike me a optimistic. Indeed, the technology needed for making starships can be adapted without difficulty to build interstellar weapons. For example, very large lasers have been proposed for propelling light sails. A laser several tens of thousands of kilometers across could focus intense light on a target at interstellar distances (assuming you know where the target will be in a few years). Starships themselves can be adapted as weapons. A 1000 ton starship travelling at 1/2 the speed of light has the energy of several teratons of high explosive. An unmanned "bus" with a large tracking telescope could carry hundreds of thousands of kilogram-sized submunitions to a target star system. Several light weeks out it would aquire targets in the star system (perhaps optically, or by detecting radio emission) and release the submunitions, which would be tracked with high precision and guided onto trajectories intersecting likely targets. Before impact each submunition would disperse into a cloud of dust and gas. Each 1 milligram dust particle would hit with the force of a several ton bonb; the gas molecules would simulate a pulse from a neutral particle beam accelerator. Such a weapon might be easier to build than a starship, since it needn't slow down upon arrival.
corwin@hope.UUCP (John Kempf) (03/26/86)
> I've seen some comments about interstellar war being impossible due to > the distances involved. These comments strike me a optimistic. Indeed, > the technology needed for making starships can be adapted without > difficulty to build interstellar weapons. > [descriptions of intersteller weapons deleted] While it is certainly possible to make intersteller war, the question is 'why bother?' What possible motive could be concieved for making a war? Conquest? Kinda hard to adminisrate a planet when it takes several years to communicate with it. Eventualy, it would revolt successfully. Idiological? It is hard enough to get one country to agree on something, let alone a planet. Resources? Seems kinda wasteful to attack one solar system when there are others at about the same distance (including your own) -cory