Re: Communication and Travel

You wrote: 

>There seems to be an assumption that the various powers are the only 
ones >colonising.  What about private firms and groups? Similar I 

A private firm that attempted to plant a colony would a)Have it 'taken 
under the protection of' a major power, or b)provide it with the 
firepower to prevent same.

>find even if some are perfectly viable.  Why not farm them out to
>corporations or ethnic groupings (Remember the Scottish Ethnic planets 
in >Julian Mays books).

Ethnically based (especially ethnic groups/subgroups with a persecution 
complex, real or imagined) colonies would tend to have a Swiss/Israeli 
model military (if high-tech) or 'Minuteman' sort of ethic if lowtech.	
And a motivation to go guerilla if they loose out.  Guerilla wars are 
hard to win--but even harder to supress guerillas with a 
batallion-sized force.	You need large numbers of quality light 
infantry.  They'll fight, and a million light infantry, even if 
irregularly equipped is enough to give any armored commander in close 
terrain major headaches.  Just ask the Ruskies about going into 
countries full of irregularly equipped people with ethnic pride.  All 
it takes a couple dozen IAVRs and fancy tanks tend to go boom real 
quick (last DS game I played was with hidden units, and the owner of 
the high-tech force didn't ask about a certain hidden unit until it 
activated, turned out to be an infantry platoon, and sent a full 
platoon of size 4 tanks to the great scrapyard in the sky).

John