"Dust off and nuke the site from orbit"

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M.A.D. and Space.

The premise of M.A.D., mutually assured destruction, is that such mutual annihilation is a deterrent. Now, perhaps there are some people who don't mind being annihilated, but that's not what I want this discourse to be about. The aspect I want discussed is regarding a self-sufficient space industry in opposition to the premise of M.A.D. - namely the issue of such destruction no longer being mutual. When it is no longer necessary for supplies to be shipped from ground and if spacefarers had enough nuclear weaponry to perform planetary saturation bombardment, it would no longer be an issue of mutually assured destruction but of unilaterally assured destruction, would it not?

Such a base would be a sustainable colony on the Moon. From the Moon rocks can be thrown toward Earth and nothing could stop them. This idea was proposed by R. A. Heinlein in -The Moon is a Harsh Mistress-.

He, who owns the Moon, owns the Earth..

ruveyn

I want to buy that book. I've looked for it whenever I go to my local used book stores, but I can only seem to find some of Heinlein's weirder novels and neither that one nor Starship Troopers.

Books can disappear. Partly fashion, partly politics, I think.

My wife gave me as birthday a book I recalled from years gone thast has disappeared from the shelves, even from most libratries [a few of the biggest have it, there is one in Chicago and I think one in Toronto].

She had to go to a British vendoe and I hate to think what it cost in time and cash.

I always found Heinlein okay but a bit simplistic - my sister in law's in house associate is into him, though. I don't know if he knows that one.

I can't see it happening; even with self sufficient space industry, the prospect of MAD is still there, if not potentially worse- space habitats are likely hard to defend. Its easy to protect your population on a planet by heading underground. In space, all one needs to do is puncture the environment or disable life support and their destruction is assured. Additionally, even with self sufficient space stations (Stanford Torus types, for example), there are potential risks that require the Earth's biology be there in case the artificial environment fails.

I can imagine that the sterile environment of a space station would weaken the immune systems of flora and fauna thus an accidental contamination by a simple virus that normally isn't that harmful could compromise the artificial environment. The best choice in that case may be to cull everything and start fresh (with stuff from Earth- no good if its going through a nuclear winter). Intentional biological warfare would be catastrophic. And generations of people, hypothetically, living in these (relatively) sterile environments with low gravity would breed people with weak immune systems and low bone mass. Not the ideal soldiers. Any Earth born soldier compared to these people would seem herculean.

Asides all that, I return to my initial point that space environments are hard to protect: if not just from direct attacks by missile or directed energy weapons, cyber warfare is a real 21st century thing now: it might be as easy as hacking the life support, drastically increasing the oxygen content, and waiting for someone's fuzzy sweater to cause a spark. Or, hack life support and knock everyone unconscious, and then board with Earth born soldiers, tie everyone up and that's that. Any resistance at this point would be difficult, as the weaker, space born Humans would have to rely on weapons external to the space station, and count on not having to engage in close combat. So if anything I think Earth will be able to dominate the colonies for hundreds or thousands of years, at least until terraforming Mars or Venus becomes viable (thus the colonies aren't all closed, & therefore 'easy target' environments), or we have FTL and have settled other Earth like planets, at which point these other Earth-like planets would assume a similar role to Earth, likely, and dominate their local colonies in essentially the same way. Assuming the long arm of imperial Earth won't reach there, too

Space colonies (either orbiting in space itsself or space colonies on planetary surfaces) would belong to terrestrial nations. So if a nation used a space colony to launch a nuclear attack on another terrestrial nation. The victiim would just ignore the space base and nuke its terrestrial enemy's terrestrial land to kingdom come just like what would happen now. It wouldnt make a jot of difference.

If you're suggesting that a space colony would declare itsself an independant nation and then decided to nuke a nation on earth. The earth nation would just nuke the space colony back.
In fact the terrestrial nation would probably just lob a bucket of gravel at the space colony to smash the windows and let the atmosphere escape. Against vulnerable space colonies gravel (at orbital velocity) would be more than adequate as a genocidal weapon of mass destruction.

So I dont see how nuclear armed space bases would change the doctrine of MAD.

In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the protagonist, Manny, noted that if the Federated Nations had counterattacked early in the Lunar Revolution, they could have defeated the rebellion easily, at the cost of perhaps one portion of one habitat (he thought that they could have blown open Tycho Under, a cave beneath Tycho Crater, with a single nuke, causing the immediate capitulation of at least Luna City and Hong Kong Luna, with Novy Leningrad and the outlying warrens following quickly). Their saving grace was that until after the second barrage from the railgun (metal capsules, once used to ship wheat to Earth, filled with rock instead and the braking thrusters removed), Earth simply refused to believe that "the Loonies" could possibly be serious about fighting for their freedom.

Point being, UAD, like MAD, only works as a doctrine if you make the threat first - and in a space habitat, if you threaten, your terrestrial targets can completely eliminate you by surprise. (The Lunar Revolution still wouldn't have worked if they hadn't picked up a wealthy patron Earthside, who could bribe a couple of small governments into extending diplomatic recognition to the new Lunar Republic. Instead, the Federated Nations would have gone ahead and wiped out the Lunar colonies. Nobody in the FN wanted to declare war against their ally Chad, though...)

Available on www.amazon.com both in hardcover and paperback. Not expensive, either.

ruveyn

Funny that people find it hard to find--my school library owns a copy.

Reminds me of the Golan Heights with Israel.

Books that aren't newly popular are usually put on clearance for a dollar, whereas it usually will cost four dollars to get one from amazon. I'm waiting for a better deal.

You're serious? Are you not a christian?

'Thou shall not kill / Thou shalt not murder'

Now surely the anihilation of over seven billion 'souls' will include the murder of innocents? or perhaps you have joined with Bader in his assertion that 'no one is innocent'.

Self contained bases on the moon will not happen ask any ecologist or the subjects of the two biosphere projects.

Again my dear friend and fan you have displayed exactly how twisted and misanthropic you are. Now ask yourself would jesus do that?

The great thing about your posts are that they make me feel positively like the human races number one fan and they give me such a good laugh.

Wow, I can't have a discussion about anything without you popping up here and hurling crap at me.

This is a public forum, these are public statements. I have as much right to respond as anyone.

Now your response to the moral/ethical point I mades is? [or will you continue to use the tactic of ignoring my valid points in favour of crying and whinging that people pick on you]

Your OP sounds like the insane wet dream of a genocidal megalomaniac, a fantasy of your own planet for people like you and only like you and then death for everyone who was ever mean and nasty to poor little parakeet.

If you are going to come here and make such posts you will get sniped at, If you have the right to make xenophobic/bigoted/ignorant/hateful posts I have the right to attack them. If you read through my posts you will notice a tendency on my part to only shoot down fools and biggots [a form of foolishness] and am generally respectful of everyone else and when I have nowt to contribute I keep my mouth shut instead of displaying my ignorance and wasting thread space.

Preserved for moderators to deal with.

I think that you either haven't bothered to read my OP and just assumed the content based upon your preconceived notions about me or your talent for eisegesis is unsurpassed even by Hugh Ross.

This being my opening post:



Does anyone concur with RedHanrahan? I really don't see the connection between my words and his assessment of my words, but then again I don't have the all consuming hate that RedHanrahan appears to have specifically for me. Well, except for towards Wal-Fart, but that's another issue.