> ahead of time in a lunar refinery. While a simple cylinder would be
> easiest to deal with, a penetrating shape would also be easily
> attainable, and putting guidance and maneuvering units onboard would
> also be possible, though would probably be the most expensive part
> (though nowhere near Marks estimates, as his are based on one off custom
> devices for a FEW satellites, not high production rates)
Actually, it was based purely on the cost of the solid rocket fuel to get
the rocks out of lunar orbit, which NASA buys thousand of tons of and
still pays around $30,000 per ton for (of course, they're not known for
being frugal). For guidance you'd need powerful liquid-fuelled thrusters
of some sort, a computer and some kind of targetting hardware. Even if you
can get that down to $1000 per rock (and AFAIR a 'smart' bomb is more like
$100,000) your base 6,000,000 rock attack will cost you $6 billion in
guidance systems alone.
Since your hardware will need to use active targetting, be able to correct
its course in a split second, survive a three-day trip through space and
>100g acceleration at launch, you're probably going to be paying a lot
more than $1000 for it.
BTW, now you're talking about pre-forming rocks that will add a
significant amount to the cost of your attack.
Mark
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Mark Grant M.A., U.L.C. EMAIL: mark@unicorn.com |
|WWW: http://www.c2.org/~mark MAILBOT: bot@unicorn.com |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|