Re: Communication and Travel

At 09:22 12/06/98 -0700, you wrote:
>John Atkinson wrote:
>
>> Minor note:	Israel has, in the past 60 years, created it's
population
>>
>> from almost scratch, it's economy from less than that, and heavy
>> industry from nothing.  I submit that given a half-century of growth
a
>>
>> nation will have the capability to hold it's own.  Especially if it
>> doesn't have to deal with a lot of genocidal neighbors invading once
a
>>
>> decade.
>
>That and 8+ billion $US a year in militrary aid, not to mention
civilian
>aid, plus all teh foreign donations.
>
>Los

I really hope we are not getting into all this again...Keep the politics
offline.  

We were talking about how communications would be dealt with in over
Interstellar distances in FT.  Which brings up the question, how long
would
it take for a major power to react to an invasion. Or for that matter
even
realise they were being invaded?  One planet being hit by enemy forces
may
only be a border skirmish.  Do you send a large task force to
investigate
or only regional forces?  You lose contact from 5 planets or an entire
sector and then it would seem to be an invasion.  How do planetary
colonies
indicate that they are under attack if there are no ships around to
relay
the message?  Perhaps evry system has at least a courier boat insystem? 

--------------------
Niall Gilsenan,
DIT Cathal Brugha St,
Dublin 1,
Ireland.