message 0527

• On Cherryh's 'Inside Outer Space' article (topic: the implications of space travel for civilizations, esp. regarding warfare)

>Date: Mon, 13 Sep 93 17:50:01 -0400
>From: "Nancy Silberstein" <silbersteinn@a1.mscf.upenn.edu>
>Subject: Cherryhlist/CJC on War in Space

ibid, p.20-21.

Why would (a species) fight?... Consider...a war in which not only the 
battle lines but the bases are constantly shifting.  Even stars change 
positions relative to each other, and smaller bodies whirling at different 
rates about a single star do confound the planning. 

Between stars, you really have to plan strategy in advance, launching your 
ships on runs that will take them an average five to ten years to complete. 
 You will get information that is at least five years old.  And ships at 
high velocities can come and go inside your "lines" completely undetected.  

How do you retain control and command of your own forces when all a ship 
knows of its government or mission is what the captain says?  After all, he 
or she is all the authority the crew sees for years.

How do you protect a solar system when a ship inbound at .9 cee travels so 
fast it can reach the sun from the Earth in about ten minutes and chase the 
wavefront of its own communications so close that it would arrive across 
ninety-three million miles only a minute behind its own message that it was 
inbound?...

And if your own ships are under way in another direction (when you learn of 
an attack), they have to get rid of all their velocity before they can even 
begin to advance back toward the intruder.

So your planet/station/mining base was just struck - not with laser; 
wasteful of energy.  It's more efficient to boost up some cheap rock to .9 
cee and let fly with it.  Cannonballs.  What doesn't burn up in atmospheric 
friction is going to hit with the kind of impact that formed the Arizona 
meteor crater and the one in Siberia.  If you do that often enough near 
major cities, civilization is done.