Re: [GZG] Re: Mines

John Tailby wrote:

>>It would - but it would be a robotic combat vessel rather than a space

>>mine. Heck, if you have this kind of sensor net there's no reason why
you 
>>couldn't plug your crewed warships into it as well!
>You could plug your crewed vessels into the sensor net and it then
becomes 
>like a SOSUS line. This has already been done with the Hirogen in Star 
>Trek that use a sensor net to locate their prey. For this to work you
need 
>your sensors to be able to signal to other sensors via hyperspace and 
>hence to the ships without the enemy detecting the signals so your
ships 
>know where to go.

Sure, but these sensor-relay issues apply just as much to robotic combat

vessels as to live-crewed ones.

>Alternatively for this to work you have to have a fleet of crewed ships
on 
>standby. The crew get bored and performance drops off on garrison
duties. 
>Plus life support for the crew becomes more of a problem unless you
have 
>recycling to a very high efficiency level. A computer controlled vessel

>could wait patiently for years without a drop off in efficiency.

As long as no bugs develop in its programming... let's pray they don't
use 
MicroSoft software :-/ (IIRC the USN had certain problems with MS
software 
a few years ago...)

>One of the worst things about automated weapon systems is they can
persist 
>for years after they were meant to.

If they're poorly designed (and yes, many older types of land mines are
IMO 
criminally poorly designed in that respect!). Well-designed automated 
weapons OTOH are equipped with shut-down timers, specifically to prevent

them from persisting after they're meant to.

>In space, decay rates would be much lower

Hm... I'm not entirely sure that all of the astronomer members of this
list 
would agree with that. Space can be an extremely harsh environment.

>If you built your defences with say a factory on a nearby asteroid then
it 
>could keep on making more mines to replenish losses.

As long as there's also some sort of mechanism for deploying the mines, 
sure... preferrably one that is as stealthy as the mines themselves. (If

the mines can't deploy away from the factory you'll eventually end up
with 
a *very* concentrated minefield; and if they can't deploy stealthily the

enemy will fairly soon learn not just where the mines are but also where

the factory is.)

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l