RE: GZG FH: Blue water navy.

Richard spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

> On 4 Oct 98, at 22:01, Thomas Barclay wrote:
> 
> > Depends. Since beanstalk uses vaccum (no air resistance) and a 
> > counterbalance system (outgoing shipment balanced with incoming),
its 
> > energy inputs are minimal. Might still be cheaper to operate. 
> 
> The solid state grav would be kinda useful to obviate the few billion 
> tons of force in the centre of a counterbalanced option.

EH? In this case, I was refering to moving shipments by balancing a 
downward shipment with an upward one thus meaning that gravity was 
accelerating one package while pulling another up. Anyway, local 
contra-grav would be great too.  
   
> > > Anyway, a beanstalk just screams 'Bomb Me To Make A Political
Point'.  I'm 
> > > all for disposable/recyclable BDBs (Big Dumb Boosters).  The
Saturn V could 
> > > put 50 tonnes (metric) on Luna - think how much it could put into
LEO...
> > 
> > Sure, so does the Eiffel Tower, The Sphinx, any Naval Base, etc.
etc. 
> > Assume the ground point would be gaurded well (and probably real
hard 
> > to knock out unless you had a design engineer handy. It probably has

> > a safety  zone a mile or two wide around it. And probably within
50km 
> > is restricted airspace. 
> 
> Those monuments don't drop 20,000 km of superstrong metal on 
> your planet when they break.

No, but the point was that they too are targets and no one has 
succeeded in killing them yet. 

 The required toughness of the 
> material probably would make breaking it tricky,

And lets say we use an additional web of grav stabilizers to give it 
a 'grav-lock' so that it won't fall even if it breaks. And so that 
its harder to break. You have to think it would be very tough, 
armoured, and may even have PDS, PDF, ADAF, and possibly its own 
defenses like batteries....and the space station at the terminus 
would have it well within paths of fire. 

 but perhaps a ship 
> hitting it for one reason or another would be enough, or perhaps it 
> takes a needle beam, class 3 battery, well placed nukes..

Or multiple hits from same. 

 50km is 
> covered by a FT ship in seconds btw.

Sure, I was thinking Air flight, not space. In orbit, you may not be 
able to occupy the same orbit at altitudes lower/higher than RV with 
the station would require.  It may be a 500km no fly zone. And as I 
said, in the FT universe, might be armoured and have defense systems. 
And it would be under the cone of fire of the space based stationary 
terminus. Which could either take power from solar panels and other 
such things, or get power via the beanstalk for heavy batteries. 
Maybe a lot of C bats (cheap to power, and well in range of any 
terrorists) and maybe a bunch of other ordinance. 

Even if it isn't ENTIRELY practical, it sure is a neat engineering 
idea and a neat campaign prop for good FT scenarios. Add to which it 
would be a lot like going to Mars - why do it? Because its way cool.

> > >From what I've seen of recent history with both US and foreign 
> > rockets (too many satellites go boom), I'm not sure that is the 
> > answer unless there is a quantitatively measurable leap forward in 
> > success rates. 
> 
> One might expect so in 180 years or so ;) or is it 280 I forget what 
> the FT 'official' period is.

Of course. Then again, we may find other methods of putting things in 
space we can barely imagine now (teleporation, railgun, big surgical 
tubing slingshot, whatever). My point was to date, despite 
significant tech, we still have trouble reliably putting satellites 
of a few hundred kilos up in orbit without having to blow them. 

Tom.  
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Thomas Barclay		     
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 "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot.  C++ makes
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