Heretic

Now the reason why a ban on weapons in space is foolish is because there's just no way the Russians or communist Chinese government will ever adhere to it themselves.

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"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

jowey

That is a lame excuse for dropping the policy - because we believe that they will put weapons in space and get involved in a pissing contest....

If we had any brains we would leverage the position of peaceful exploration of space as collective expansion.

Establish a foothold, build some matter accelerators and then drop rocks on Europe, China, Russia - who needs weapons when one can chuck rocks.

Of course by that time cooperation might be the rule rather than the exception.

Our credibility is in question now so they will put weapons in space because they do not trust us. We are being sold on the idea because now they will, because we cannot be trusted.

Lets go back to "Speak chuckin"

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Heretic

Because China's already on the way to trying, for one. And, you don't honestly think human beings will stop killing each other once they're in space do you? If there is, one day, sufficient infrastructure in space someone will want to atke/destroy it and someone else will want to defend it.

IF we had any brains in position of power that is. Even if governments don't wage war in space corporations will. There's too much volume for an agency to properly monitor, regulate or police it.

The advantage of partical emissions weapons it that with the right engineering they can double as magnetic accelerator guns as well as have strict control over what type and quantity of particles to fire. It could be just enough to kill one human being or more than you'd need to lay waste to whole regions larger than the bigest H-bomb blast.

Not without a fundimental change in human nature... or one hell of a threat outside the Earth. I'd hold out for the Independence Day scenario myself.

However, do you honestly think the current incarnation of the Russia government or communist Chinese government are any better at sticking to agreements. The latter is still supporting genocide in Darfur but by buying oil and selling weapons.

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"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

jowey

I don't trust any government, especially ours since we were the ones promoting the "high road" deception. Russia and China know what they are.

You are right corporations will wage war up there. Theft is profitable, all that volume, all those bodies to explore, all those assets to exploit and they will probably be fighting over a patch of ground the size of New York.

Right now the members of the space club are rather few the governments could try to maintain the illusion of the high road.

How many of these recent "threats" were the result of concern about our intentions in the global community ?

Lets set up military platforms immediately, give Bush the button and let him zap whoever is NOT a Patriot and supporting his definition of democracy. He might even be able to zap Osama and all those "terrorist" training grounds, keeping America safe .....

China, Russia and Europe will be concerned and make near space impassible. They will be worried that our systems would be trained on them. Since we would have the advantage their goal would be to eliminate the advantage when they could. They are not as dependent on the technological toys.

Go ahead make weapons in space a policy. MADness worked, so far, so we might be lucky. Pushing the button on systems that would destroy Earth orbit satellite systems and platforms is a lot easier than nuking a country. Imagine the fireworks, poof goes another satellite, add some special chemicals so that they will glow differently when they go pop.

At what point will the debris in orbit be such that the boundary is not passable and platforms possible ? Heck just start launching nails, screws and rocks in orbit....

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