Whatever the scenario, one of the important points is that any corporate
group that seriously develops the moon, once it is assured of resource
independence from earth (i.e. acquiring shipping ability to and from
cometary bodies), will by necessity have such an advantage in space
capability, in both propulsion and other technologies, over any earth
nation that must answer to the whims of the crying and ranting masses,
that they would be incredibly irresponsible to their stockholders to NOT
declare independence simply for the tax and regulatory expense savings.
By shucking off the dead weight of a government that they enjoy no
benfits from, their ability to multiply greater rates of capital growth
will allow them to rapidly outpace groundslugs...
>
> > So there is already a deterrent capability and all this posturing is
> > moot. All that remains is one corporation with the balls enough to go up
> > and grab the opportunity. now don't raise your hands too quick now.....
>
> Do you have any idea of how hard dropping a km-sized rock onto Earth would
> be? Mass would be over a billion tons, requiring a couple of billion tons
> of chemical rocket fuel for deceleration. You can forget that without
> nuclear rockets (and if you have them then the Earth can drop these or
> larger rocks onto you).
>
Nope nope and nope. See next post....
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael Lorrey
------------------------------------------------------------
President retroman@tpk.net
Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com
Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com
Website: http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/
Now Featuring:
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http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/animations.htm
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MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday
Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH)
------------------------------------------------------------
Transhumanist, Inventor, Webmaster, Ski Guide, Entrepreneur,
Artist, Outdoorsman, Libertarian, Arms Exporter-see below.
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#!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL
@k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_
]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256;
&S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}