From: mgcbo@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Charles B. Owen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Invading planets
Date: 23 Jan 1993 13:44:04 -0600
Organization: Educational Computing Network
NNTP-Posting-Host: uxa.ecn.bgu.edu

In article <C1BLCL.5L6@world.std.com> tfish@world.std.com (Tex Fish) writes:
>In article <dpn2.224.727767827@po.CWRU.Edu> dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil) writes:
>>In article <1jqijdINN8c7@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> bp652@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Gil W. Lau) writes:
>>>If you take the analogy of invading a planet to invading a hostile nation,
>>>I'd suppose you'd strike military targets from space, then when they're
>>>weak, send down an invading force.  But now think of the *SCALE* of
>>>such an operation!  We're talking millions upon millions of troops
>>>here!  Or if you had Star Trek technology I suppose you could
>>>stun everyone from orbit using your phasers.

I'm not sure I would ever use Star Trek as a reference for a technology.
>
>	I would expect that it wouldn't be feasible to treat a battle for
>a planet as a single engagement.  You would probably have to treat it as
>several different, unconnected wars, each concentrating on a certain
>section of the planet.  Dropping rocks does sound somewhat reasonable, but
>if you go overboard on flinging asteroids, the planet's not going to be
>much use to you (remember, one asteroid will pretty much annihilate a
>major city).  I expect a largely mechanized ground war, using something
>vaguely akin to Ogrs, or miniaturization, would be necessary just to deal
>with the volume.
>
I think we should think in terms of scale.  A war between two planets
may seem like a huge undertaking too impracticle to consider.  And, yes
it would require many millions of ground troops.  However, it is not, in
any way, different from a war between two countrys.  It is _just_ a
matter of scale.  It would not require any special hardware that we do
not have now, other than a intersteller and orbital travel mechanism.

Everyone is very much in love with dropping or throwing rocks in space.
Remember, though, that to drop that asteroid so that it can destroy a
city, it must have enough kinetic energy to destroy a city and that
energy has to come from somewhere.  It will not come from just falling
into the Earth's gravity well.  Text's such as Lucifer's Hammer assume
an object on an unrelated, but intercepting course.  That is not the
same as "dropping a rock".  Now many may say that we will just "divert"
a rock from the asteroid belt.  The energy required to do so will be
simular to that expended by the rock reentry.  So, you are not
accomplishing much.

Anyway, this planet has been able to produce 60,000 nuclear weapons.
Why worry about dropping rocks.  Just nuke strategic sites.  Screw up
communications and infrastructure and occupy where you need to.  Ask the
Germans and Japanese how this works on even a small scale.  Look what we
did in Iraq against a much larger force.  And, in these cases nukes were
not involved.  

In closing, invading a planet would be little different from invading a
country, just larger scale.


-- 
| Charles B. Owen                            Internet: mgcbo@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu |
| Western Illinois University                            Phone: 309-837-4292 |
| 1002 E. Murray                                                             |
| Macomb, IL  61455                                                          |