RE: GZG FH: Blue water navy.

On 4 Oct 98, at 22:01, Thomas Barclay wrote:

> Depends. Since beanstalk uses vaccum (no air resistance) and a 
> counterbalance system (outgoing shipment balanced with incoming), its 
> energy inputs are minimal. Might still be cheaper to operate. 

The solid state grav would be kinda useful to obviate the few billion 
tons of force in the centre of a counterbalanced option.

  
> > Anyway, a beanstalk just screams 'Bomb Me To Make A Political
Point'.  I'm 
> > all for disposable/recyclable BDBs (Big Dumb Boosters).  The Saturn
V could 
> > put 50 tonnes (metric) on Luna - think how much it could put into
LEO...
> 
> Sure, so does the Eiffel Tower, The Sphinx, any Naval Base, etc. etc. 
> Assume the ground point would be gaurded well (and probably real hard 
> to knock out unless you had a design engineer handy. It probably has 
> a safety  zone a mile or two wide around it. And probably within 50km 
> is restricted airspace. 

Those monuments don't drop 20,000 km of superstrong metal on 
your planet when they break. The required toughness of the 
material probably would make breaking it tricky, but perhaps a ship 
hitting it for one reason or another would be enough, or perhaps it 
takes a needle beam, class 3 battery, well placed nukes.. 50km is 
covered by a FT ship in seconds btw.

> >From what I've seen of recent history with both US and foreign 
> rockets (too many satellites go boom), I'm not sure that is the 
> answer unless there is a quantitatively measurable leap forward in 
> success rates. 

One might expect so in 180 years or so ;) or is it 280 I forget what 
the FT 'official' period is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
I've read about foreign policy and studied -- I know the number of
continents. 
     George Wallace, 1968 presidential campaign
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