Subject:
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Re: Some great Space info and dicussion
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Wed, 15 Jan 2003 21:56:09 GMT
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Viewed:
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815 times
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In lugnet.space, Frank Filz writes:
> At an SF convention when I was in college, one fellow gave his theory of
> what first contact would be like:
>
> A large rock hurtling towards Earth at relativistic speeds. Boom! Flash!
>
> His theory was that once you develop the capability to easily visit
> other star systems, that you also easily have the capability of
> accelerating rocks to relativistic speeds. Since there's not much one
> can do to defend against such a tactic, should you find any
> technological society on another planet, you must pre-emptively strike.
>
> I have a more optomistic viewpoint on life than that but I can see the
> logic.
Fascinating. Although one interpretation of this is to say that any society
is inherently a threat due to their very existance, and thus all societies
should be erradicated. This type of logic is dangerous because it opens up
the possibility that some day someone will point out that you are also by
definition equally a threat to be eliminated. Also, similar logic led to
characters like Hitler doing leaving their mark on real life.
...Nonetheless, it could make for some interesting SF, if an alien society
employed such logic.
Yet, in the space warfare being discussed, I think it is implied that we are
talking about scenarios where opposing sides have similar technologies (such
as Klingons versus the Federation, or the Empire versus the Rebels, or Hendo
versus JHK... <smirk>). Given this, one could say that any such threats
from societies hurling rocks at high speeds could be dissuaded due to the
MAD principle (Mutually Assured Destruction), wherein if each side has the
capability to annihilate the other neither will act.
Your anecdote is interesting, however, as it brings up one possible
strategic goal that I did not include in my previous posts in this thread.
Thus far, I have suggested that the goal of space warfare would be to claim
colonial territory or to gain ownership of resources. However, your post
points out that some spacefaring societies might start wars out of purely
fearful and self-preserving initiatives, or perhaps for racial reasons.
These sorts of wars also exist in real life, so why not in SF? And
naturally, if such wars did occur, the nature of such would not be limited
to the technologies discussed in my other posts, but could also likely
include greater use of weapons of mass destruction -which could indeed
include anything from containers of Chef Boyardee to slingshotted asteroids.
-H.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Some great Space info and dicussion
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| (...) At an SF convention when I was in college, one fellow gave his theory of what first contact would be like: A large rock hurtling towards Earth at relativistic speeds. Boom! Flash! His theory was that once you develop the capability to easily (...) (21 years ago, 15-Jan-03, to lugnet.space)
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