Re: Communication and Travel

You wrote: 

>Ever visited a Mennonite Farm? Or was that Hutterite? I can't 
>remember which it is (or both) - but they have FULL machine shops 
>that make some commercial ones look like nothing. And this includes 
>computer driven CAD/CAM rigs, which are getting cheaper, smaller and 
>more capable. It is entirely within the range of imagination to 
>imagine a single farmstead (with adequate raw materials) turning out 
>20-25 serviceable assault weapons in a week. Now raw materials, ammo, 
>primers, etc. become a bit of an issue, but you'd be surprised what a 
>colony of people who live by being self sufficient because most of 
>the time help is not nearby or DNE can do. 

Given that the Viet Mihn threw the French out of the country with 
primarily homemade weapons and captured equipment. . . 

Actually given 200 years of development, making an AK would be as easy 
making black powder would be today (I could do it in the basement--the 
first few batches wouldn't be too great, but I'd get the corning 
procedure down after that.)  Problems might arise, but I think 
farmsteads, especially on a frontier planet, will be more capable than 
some assume.  

Given genetic engineering's uses in farming, might not the 
well-equipped farmstead be capable of churning out biowarfare viruses 
or bacteria capable of turning the dastardly invaders into quivering 
blobs of flesh?  

And don't forget the way the Dorsai threw the Earthers off-planet in 
one of the Amanda Morgan stories.

>back of their hand. They might lack for anti-armour elements, but an 
>invading force (by virtue of space transit) can't carry THAT much 
>armour. What they had might be hard to hurt, but their might not be 
>much of that. And every casualty the high-tech invader takes is worth 
>more than each colonist lost. 

And you can always whip up 20-lb satchel charges with will, I 
guarantee, ruin any DAT's day.	Anti-armor not a problem if you planet 
isn't nothing but steppe and desert.

John