Re: Civilian Shipping

At 3:43 PM -0400 8/26/99, Ryan M Gill wrote:
>On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, Thomas Barclay wrote:
>
>> An interesting one might be a Falklands-in-space type scenario where
a
>> major power has impressed a cruise ship as a troop carrier (quite
>> likely as big ass troop carriers probably are too expensive to keep
>
>Passenger Liners were frequently build with government money on a
>contingency that if the nation went to war, the vessels would be
pressed
>into serverice by the military for Troop Ship duities. Most Liners were
>done so during WWI and WWII.

And proved to be almost worse than useless in actual combat. Things 
may be different for spaceships, but for floating liners the 
disadvantages are:

1) High target profile, very easy to hit.
2) No armor
3) Usually had second-rate armament

somewhat surprisingly, crew quality was rarely a problem.
Michael Carter Llaneza
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1991-1950
Devolution is very real to me.
Whenever I hear the "Odd Couple" theme, I get this image of Dennis 
Rodman borrowing Marge Schott's toothbrush.
Overkill: A Sufficient Preponderance of Firepower
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