>From Charles Champion (champion67@aol.com)
Forwarded because it does seem to get through
>I suggest that, if the Earth colony orbits opposite
>the Planet Earth, that it assign at least a sphere of
>1AU, or 93 million miles, the distance from the
>Earth to the sun. If the colony orbits further than
>the Earth (perhaps at the asteroid belt's orbit), then
>it should correspondingly increase its territorial >space. We don't want anyone to block our path to the
>sun for any reason.
I'm not sure why you guys are devoting so much effort to trying to figure out security arrangements for a space colony which does not exist and for which there is not yet any definite plan to create, but I thought I would comment on one little detail. The idea of claiming "space" seems a natural move for us Earthlings because it is a direct analogy to how we divide up the Earth. However, a direct analogy is probably not a good one in this case.
When you take into account that objects on a particular piece of territory on Earth tend to stay where you put them, but objects in space do not, you begin to realize the direct analogy may not fit. But let's go even further than that and note that "space" can only be defined relative to objects in space, all of which are moving. According to Einstein's general relativity theory there is absolutely no way to determine by any possible means of observation whether you are moving through space or not. You can only determine your motion relative to some other object or group of objects.
Consider this, what if you declare a 1 AU sphere of space around a colony to be its territory. The colony will presumably be in orbit. Does the territory move with the colony? If not, the colony will soon leave its own territory. If the "territory" moves with the colony then a spacecraft which is not moving much at all relative to the Earth (not even in orbit, just floating a few million miles out and slowly being pulled by gravity) will be in your "territory" and therefore "trespassing" because YOU moved towards IT. Would you then blame the occupants of that ship for violating your territory?
Whether you define your hypothetical 1 AU sphere as being relative to the Earth, or the Sun or your colony, the sphere is moving and more importantly, everything else which orbits the sun is moving. A territory like that would cross the circumsolar orbits of vast numbers of asteroids and would make it completely impractical for any other colony or spacecraft to move freely in throughout the solar system because the manner in which things move in space (based on momentum and gavity) is a completely different mode of motion than of any person or vehicle on the surface of the Earth.
Today no one claims ownership of space, but satellite orbits are allocated by an international organization. Notice that it is *orbits* which are allocated, not spheres of territory. The orbit allocations do not include the entire course of the orbit, but are only "orbital slots" which is the right to orbit a satellite at a particular speed and altitude and such that the satellite is at a particular spot in that orbit at a particular time. Thus there are very many orbital slots for each orbit. There are a lot of problems with this system, but it is actually working. Although the matter of "territory" of a space colony is probably way down on the list of priorities of anybody who seriously tries to build such a colony, if the topic is of interest, look at orbit allocations and I think you will see something more suited to your purpose than the traditional notions of territory which have been used on Earth.
Charles
Even now, as humans have begun to deal with the practical matter of satel
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