Re: Asteroids

At 12:20 AM 9/25/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Ran a FT combat and decided to try having asteroids on the board. We
got
>into a discussio on how dense an asteroid field should be. I had 1
>asteroid about every 12", they thought there should be a lot more (ie.
>Empire Strikes Back scene with Mil. Falcon). How dense do other players
>on the list place them? Does anyone know about the real life asteroid
>belt: how close are the big asteroids to each other, how big, or small,
>would one have to be to be a hazard, etc.
>

I cannot remember the source, but it pointed out that stellar distances
being what they are, a ship could fly through an asteroid belt, and
never
even know it was there (come to think of it, I think it was 2001 the
novel
I read this in...).  Collision with an asteroid would be ludicrously
unlikely unless, for some reason, you were deliberately looking for it. 

I suppose something like the rings of Saturn might be more dense, but I
wouldn't be surprised to find that even there collisions were unlikely.

To quote a famous source: Space is Big.  Really Big...

--
Belegdel(Troy Nancarrow)|"And just when I think,
CWIS Programmer 	| That things are in there place;
Griffith University	| The heavens are secure,
Brisbane, Australia	| The whole thing explodes in my face" OB