HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: Wreaking a habitat (was Re: Wrecking a Planet 
Organization: University of Western Ontario, London
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 18:18:18 GMT


	I find it hard to believe in habitats which are 10**9 tonnes
*and* able to jink around in wartime *and* able to function as a viable
commercial/industrial entity. If our target uses high Isp drives, then
they will have to radiate a hell of a lot of heat while swooping around.
If they use low Isp drives, then the mass-ratios involved will limit
delta-vee.  Radiator size is governed by the temperature the radiator  
operates at, and the quantity of heat that needs to be dumped. I think
the habitat is going to present a hot target. For a 10**9 t hab, with
a 200 km/s ion drive, able to convert electricity into Ek of reaction
mass at 60% efficiency, accelerating at .01 m/s**2, I get ~7x10**14 W
that need getting rid of. If our habitat is about the density of
water, and cylindrical, with a 1000 m radius and 320 m length, that's
a surface area of ~3.5x10**6 m**2 to radiate from: if we're  talking
black body radiation, that's a temperature of about 7,700 K if I haven't
screwed up: physics people feel free to check this, as  my schooling is
in poly-sci/econ. I can't help  but  suspect that having a surface 
temperature comparable to a star might place large and difficult to
achieve demands on the habitat's life support systems. If the habitat
uses 4000 K radiators, they should be about 5x10**7 m**2, which should
give missiles a nice large hot target to aim at.

	.01 m/s**2 lets the hab change its position by ~65 km given
an hour's warning. Of course, actively tracking dirigible torpedos might
well out-do the hab  wrt both acceleration and delta-vee...

							James Nicoll

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Subject: Re: Wrecking a Planet (Was: Re: Sci-Fantasy Weapons)
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 01:05:58 GMT

Surely the easiest and simplest method of wrecking a planet is to just
throw enough hydrogen bombs; say load an attack carrier spacecraft with
100,000 devices each weighing 1 ton and having an explosive yield of a
couple of gigatons, have it go in at maybe a couple of thousand
kilometres per second and deploy the bombs before it reaches the defense
perimeter; maybe have 10 decoys per bomb, a decoy being a silvered
balloon. No need for stealth technology, relativistic speeds or anything
so exotic; even if the defenders stop 99% of the bombs, 1,000 explosinos
of a couple of gigatons each will do plenty of damage. If you can get
the speed higher (say the attack carrier has a couple of huge disposable
fuel tanks, and remember it doesn't have to stop), the defenders will
stop a smaller fraction of the bombs. This is one reason for living in a
space habitat rather than on a planet; a space habitat is a *lot* easier
to defend.

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Malthusians are mistaken
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 02:55:06 GMT

carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU:
>>>Check the literature, looking for the subject "demographic transition."
>>
>>I'll take that for a supercilious "don't know."
>
>I'll take that as a lazy "I'm not going to take the time to try to learn about
>it, and will continue to wallow in my ignorance."

But I have tried -- including reading about demographic transition -- without
finding any references.  That's why I asked.  It seemed reasonable to infer
that if you actually knew of a reference you'd have cited it.  Still does.

>Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.

Fair enough, we're outside your area of expertise.  Mine too.

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

Roses red and violets blew
  and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Subject: Re: Wrecking an O'Neill (Was: Re: Wrecking a Planet)
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:17:50 GMT

In <C0o9J3.K4r@panix.com> pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich) writes:

>In <rwallace.726676932@unix1.tcd.ie> rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace) writes:

>>What are you assuming the windows are made of, stained glass??? How
>>about the stuff they use for police riot shields? That's reasonably
>>transparent, good tensile strength and shatterproof. Remember, the
>>windows would have to be made shatterproof in case of a meteor impact,
>>even if they hadn't been designed with missile attack in mind.

>Keeripes.  _Paint chips_ in orbit have several times put craters in
>the space shuttle windshield panels sufficient to require replacement.
>The panels in question are quartz glass tempered sufficiently to
>withstand re-entry heat. Back when SDI was hot on rail guns, they
>were fond of showing off a soft-ball--sized crater blasted out of
>six-inch aluminum plate by a _one-gram_ block of plastic going a mere
>5 km/sec. We're talking objects massing tens or hundreds of kilograms
>impacting at speeds of up to 40 km/sec, i.e.> 10,000x for the mass, 64x
>for the k.e. due to velocity. Instead of vaporizing a 10-cm cube of
>material, you're going to vaporize a 10-m cube and send major shock
>waves through the entire structure. Tempered glass just ain't in it.

Once again, by "shatterproof" I don't mean indestructible, just that a
high-velocty impact will make a hole, which can be patched, as opposed
to the entire window shattering as a previous poster seemed to think
would happen. And while your battleship is throwing 100kg projectiles at
the habitat, the habitat will be firing back at the battleship; chunks
of iron are cheap, but battleships aren't.


--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:4072 alt.folklore.science:4594
From: hwt@bcarh11a.BNR.CA (Henry Troup)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Date: 12 Jan 93 01:03:36 GMT
Reply-To: Henry.Troup@BNR.CA
Distribution: world
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa, Canada

Seems like the morons have already marched onto the net.  Read "The
Mismeasure of Man" by Steven Jay Gould for details of things like
genetic diversity - and the other consequences some of the ideas
expressed here have already had in the real world.

Henry Troup - H.Troup@BNR.CA (Canada) - BNR owns but does not share my opinions
	   "Our captain didn't care to make his wife a widow yet..."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: xrcjd@mudpuppy.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles J. Divine)
Subject: Re: Wrecking a Planet (Was: Re: Sci-Fantasy Weapons)
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt MD
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 14:25:35 GMT

In article <1993Jan6.214106.2503@mail.cornell.edu> phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu (Dave Weingart) writes:
>Thing about space habitats is that you don't need _bomb_ to wipe it out.  A few hundred
>pounds of very fast ball-bearings will likely do the trick.

Depends upon the size of the habitat.  Something the size of Mir or Freedom could be
taken out as you describe.  Something large -- on the order of an O'Neill colony --
the problem would be finding the leak(s).  Those scenes of explosive decompression we
see in SF films are for fairly small structures.

Personally I suspect the vulnerability of space habitats is about the same as for
terrestrial habitats.  A small bomb can wipe out a building, but not a city.

-- 
Chuck Divine
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3990 alt.folklore.science:4583
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: Global Sterilization
Date: 8 Jan 93 01:41:59 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester

In article <justinf-070192162350@macintosh19.cco.caltech.edu> justinf@cco.caltech.edu (Justin Fang) writes:

>The UN prediction I've seen assumes that 1990 growth rates remain constant,
>and winds up with 46 billion in 2076 (and 6.94E9 in 2150!). Granted, this
>is a "worst case" scenario.

It's also unrealistic, since growth rates will likely not stay the
same as countries get richer, and as populations age.  Much of that
growth is from increasing lifespans.


> I don't even think we can reach 10-15 billion without major problems, since
> most of the population growth is in poor, uneducated, unindustrialized
> Third World countries which show little chance of getting better without
> massive, and unlikely, outside assistance, and which have trouble
> supporting themselves now. After all, the world produces enough food to
> feed everyone now... but people still starve. 

Uh?  Most of the world's population lives in countries that are
getting wealthier (China, for example).  The exception is much of
Africa, but only about 1/6th of the world's population lives there;
Africa accounted for only 25% of the world population increment
between 1980 and 1991 (and not all of that was in the low economic
growth parts).  Both China and India individually have larger
populations than the entire African continent.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Malthusians are mistaken
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 07:07:15 GMT

treitel@gracie.IntelliCorp.COM (Richard Treitel):
>>Does the correlation hold when you control for the 
>>availability of contraceptives?
>
>It certainly holds in some heavily Roman Catholic countries (Italy, Spain).
>The Republic of Ireland has pretty strict laws about contraceptives (though
>married couples can get them) and I don't know the birthrate there.

Are we using the same language?  Oh, I see.  No, 'control for', not 'control'.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)
Subject: Wrecking space colonies
Keywords: n
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 12:30:36 GMT

An O'Neill colony begs to be destroyed.  Consider these simple
weapons, attacking from retrograde solar orbit:

depleted uranium crowbars, 10 g - 1,000 tonnes @ 40 km/s
km^2 cross-section deployable wire mesh -- for hacking apart radiators, 
	solar arrays, tethers, etc. @ 40 km/s

Needing billions of tons of shielding, an O'Neill colony will be
far too expensive, unless it's built in the orbit of an asteroid, from 
that asteroid.  If we're going to do that, we might as well build 
Cole/Cox bubble asteroids -- far easier to make than O'Neill colonies, 
as fully functional as O'Neil colonies, and with tens of meters of 
nickel-iron armor far more secure than O'Neill colonies.  Even
then, only the largest asteroids will be secure from attack; 1,000
tonnes of depleted uranium at 40 km/s is not your typical meteor.


-- 
Nick Szabo					 szabo@techboook.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
From: wurton@netcom.com (William L. Urton)
Subject: Re: Malthusians are mistaken
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 00:40:28 GMT

jfe7w@fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU (John Fletcher Elder) writes:

         (deleted material on costs/benefits of children) 
 
>Thus, one can expect (and it has been observed) that a sustained
>improvement in a society's standard of living will result in a drastic
>curtailment of the birth rate.  

>-john elder
 
There's a problem with looking only at the birth rate and how it changes-
namely that the death rate also affects population growth (for the 
moment let's ignore net migration). The typical pattern with economic
development is that birth rates do go down, but death rates go down even
faster, resulting in rapid population growth.  Consult any standard 
demography text for discussions about this pattern, reasons for it, 
exceptions to this generalization etc. To me, this suggests that aid
without fertility control is the real problem. What's the answer? Gee if
I knew that I'd probably have won a Nobel prize by now.  What I know 
about the literature on fertility control suggests alot of things help-
ranging from increasing education/employment of women to making birth
control methods more widely available.  

-- 
Bill Urton  email: wurton@netcom.com 
3930 Broad River Rd., Apt. P-5, Columbia, SC, USA 
(803)731-5969 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld)
Subject: Re: Wrecking a Planet (Was: Re: Sci-Fantasy Weapons)
Organization: University of Toronto Physics/Astronomy/CITA
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 16:23:39 GMT

In article <justinf-060192202205@macintosh19.cco.caltech.edu> justinf@cco.caltech.edu (Justin Fang) writes:
>In article <1993Jan04.210113.2515@quest.UUCP>, curt@quest.UUCP (Curtis
>Gibson) wrote:
>[nasty way to wreck a planet involving a giant linear accelerator in a
>system's Oort cloud deleted for brevity.]
>
>How about this "low-budget" version? It's not quite as fast or unstoppable,
>but it's probably easier. All you need is a fusion-powered spaceship (the
>larger the engine, the better) with the capability to melt down cometary
>ices, extract the deuterium from them (or just plain H2, depending), and
>use the residue for reaction mass.
>
>Land spaceship on comet in Oort cloud. Attach securely. Push comet into an
>orbit that will intersect target. Move to next comet, and repeat.
>
   You'd never get the granting agencies to fund it, it's too long term.
The Oort cloud is postulated to exist about 0.5 light years out. If you
stopped the orbital motion of a comet there and let it fall into the sun
it would take on the order of 1E5 years, if I remember correctly. Do you
want to bet that the target civilization won't come up with a
counter-measure given that much time, or that by then you won't be
bombing your own N-times removed grandchildren because you won your
little war by other means and they live there now?
   If you want to get the comet to a terrestrial planet on the time scale
of decades after you start you'll have to accelerate it up to a percent
or so of the speed of light. At this point the phrase "low-budget" reveals
itself to be a highly relative term.


-- 
 Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student  | Entropy isn't what it
 neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca    Ad astra  | used to be.
 utzoo.utoronto.ca!generic!cneufeld              |
 "Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity" |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: jdunning@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (John Alan Dunning)
Subject: Re: Malthusians are mistaken
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 00:07:18 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.101553@gracie.IntelliCorp.COM> treitel@gracie.IntelliCorp.COM (Richard Treitel) writes:
>In article <1993Jan6.231059.21088@netcom.com>, dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:
>|> Well, we know this to be true:  Most obviously, birthrates are lowest and
>|> empowerment highest in the wealthier countries.  This may or may not
>|> imply cause and effect.  Does the correlation hold when you control for the 
>|> availability of contraceptives?
>
>My favourite example is Singapore.  Lee Kuan Yew believed in having an
>educated workforce, including females.  He has recently been begging (and
>bribing) Singapore's highly educated women to have more babies, which they
>just aren't doing.

It's important to educate not just the women but the society as whole.
Women already know how many children they want, and it's generally far
fewer than their husands want in places with very high birthrates.  

An official with the UN who gave a lecture here last year talked to women
in Africa and India about how many children they want, in comparison
to how many they actually have.  She found that the average number of births 
was something like 7-8(!), while women wanted more like 4-5.  

When a man's prestige is linked to the number of children he has, and when
women have little opportunity to do anything but be wives, you're
going to have a population problem.

>Look also at the P.R.China.  Contraceptives available, but many babies,
>especially in rural areas.  Surprise!

Families have traditionally been vitally important in Chinese society,
as has been ancestor worship.  Men want lots of sons, both to carry on
the family name and to have someone who'll clean their graves after
they pass on.

>		- Richard

John


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich)
Subject: Re: Wrecking an O'Neill (Was: Re: Wrecking a Planet)
Organization: Trivializers R Us
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 04:23:27 GMT

In <rwallace.726676932@unix1.tcd.ie> rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace) writes:

>What are you assuming the windows are made of, stained glass??? How
>about the stuff they use for police riot shields? That's reasonably
>transparent, good tensile strength and shatterproof. Remember, the
>windows would have to be made shatterproof in case of a meteor impact,
>even if they hadn't been designed with missile attack in mind.

Keeripes.  _Paint chips_ in orbit have several times put craters in
the space shuttle windshield panels sufficient to require replacement.
The panels in question are quartz glass tempered sufficiently to
withstand re-entry heat. Back when SDI was hot on rail guns, they
were fond of showing off a soft-ball--sized crater blasted out of
six-inch aluminum plate by a _one-gram_ block of plastic going a mere
5 km/sec. We're talking objects massing tens or hundreds of kilograms
impacting at speeds of up to 40 km/sec, i.e.> 10,000x for the mass, 64x
for the k.e. due to velocity. Instead of vaporizing a 10-cm cube of
material, you're going to vaporize a 10-m cube and send major shock
waves through the entire structure. Tempered glass just ain't in it.

get real

paul
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Subject: Re: Wrecking a Planet (Was: Re: Sci-Fantasy Weapons)
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 13:32:52 GMT

In <1993Jan6.214106.2503@mail.cornell.edu> phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu (Dave Weingart) writes:

>Not bothering to quote here, because I'm rushed for time...too many irons in the fire today,
>but if I don't respond now, I'll lose it.

>Thing about space habitats is that you don't need _bomb_ to wipe it out.  A few hundred
>pounds of very fast ball-bearings will likely do the trick.

Um, no, I'm not talking about a Skylab-type job here, I'm talking about
an O'Neill habitat with mass maybe 1 billion tons. You're going to need
a high-megaton range bomb to wipe it out.

>The speed you could accellerate any sizeable space station at would probably make it a
>very last ditch method of defense.  (You _would_ want to get it back into a stable orbit
>at some point, I assume, and you don't want to kill anyone on it by suddenly breaking
>it apart under 2Gs)

Sure, I'm not proposing something with a max accel. maybe 0.05g could
*dodge* an attack, just that if it makes frequent small random changes
to its orbit, you can't predict where it will be in a month's time and
thus throw unguided bombs from long distances away like you can with a
planet.

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie
From: wixer!cactus.org!wixer!pro-smof.cts.com!rfletcher@cactus.org (Robert Fletcher)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Circles
Date: 4 Jan 1993 09:28:36 -0600
Organization: The SMOF-BBS: Science Fiction Online Since 1985 [512-467-7317]
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

  I saw a piece on a show last night on the national TV show "I Wittness
Video" which show some people making crop circles. This was an excellent
case of bad TV. The shows producers don't ask question they just show the
tape and move on.
----
ProLine:  rfletcher@pro-smof
Internet: rfletcher@pro-smof.cts.com
UUCP:     crash!pro-smof!rfletcher
ARPA:     crash!pro-smof!rfletcher@nosc.mil

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Malthusians are mistaken
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 19:46:33 GMT

stcmille@panix.com (Steve Miller):
>Dani, I don't think you are correct that nobody has ever calculated the
>value of children.  Work has been done on this...

I'm willing to be convinced.  References?

>Was your post intended to be skeptical or supportive of old age security
>reasons for having kids? 

Neither.  Kids-are-the-only-old-age-security is surely too strong a
statement.  Security-as-motivation-for-having-kids is, I agree, ambiguous.

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

   The inability of snakes to count is actually a refusal, on their part,
    to appreciate the Cardinal Number system. -- "Actual Facts"


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Subject: Re: Wreaking a habitat (was Re: Wrecking a Planet
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 00:29:54 GMT

In <1993Jan8.181818.25839@julian.uwo.ca> jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes:


>	I find it hard to believe in habitats which are 10**9 tonnes
>*and* able to jink around in wartime *and* able to function as a viable
>commercial/industrial entity. If our target uses high Isp drives, then
>they will have to radiate a hell of a lot of heat while swooping around.
>If they use low Isp drives, then the mass-ratios involved will limit

Who said anything about jinking around? The habitat can have a very low
acceleration, because it does not have to dodge missiles etc. at close
range but only to move enough that you can't hit it with ballistic
projectiles from extreme range, like you can a planet.

>delta-vee.  Radiator size is governed by the temperature the radiator  
>operates at, and the quantity of heat that needs to be dumped. I think
>the habitat is going to present a hot target. For a 10**9 t hab, with
>a 200 km/s ion drive, able to convert electricity into Ek of reaction
>mass at 60% efficiency, accelerating at .01 m/s**2, I get ~7x10**14 W
>that need getting rid of. If our habitat is about the density of
>water, and cylindrical, with a 1000 m radius and 320 m length, that's
>a surface area of ~3.5x10**6 m**2 to radiate from: if we're  talking
>black body radiation, that's a temperature of about 7,700 K if I haven't

The habitat is going to be a lot less dense than water, because the
interior is hollow.

>screwed up: physics people feel free to check this, as  my schooling is
>in poly-sci/econ. I can't help  but  suspect that having a surface 
>temperature comparable to a star might place large and difficult to
>achieve demands on the habitat's life support systems. If the habitat
>uses 4000 K radiators, they should be about 5x10**7 m**2, which should
>give missiles a nice large hot target to aim at.

Sure, but it doesn't matter if you make a few small holes in the
radiator, which are easily repaired, and again you have to use missiles
rather than bombs or rocks, which makes the operation unreasonably
expensive.


>	.01 m/s**2 lets the hab change its position by ~65 km given
>an hour's warning. Of course, actively tracking dirigible torpedos might
>well out-do the hab  wrt both acceleration and delta-vee...

Sure. See my above comment.

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science