[117277] in Cypherpunks
RE: Orbital Weapons Platform
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jean-Francois Avon)
Mon Aug 30 20:32:04 1999
Message-Id: <199908310005.UAA15284@cti06.citenet.net>
From: "Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>
To: "Cypherpunks" <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:05:38 -0400
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Reply-To: "Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>
I remember a neat concept but I don't know if it was ever de-bunked...
Maybe it was discussed over CPunks around 1996...
To stop such satellites, all one might think it has to do is to satellize a few
tons of gravel or sand in a counter-rotating orbit... Of course, forget about
usage of space for quite a while after that, but when worse comes to worst,
something has to be done to save one's butts...
On Mon, 30 Aug 1999 14:09:13 -0500, J.A. Terranson wrote:
>As I understand it (and not very well at that), you have highlighted the
*entire*
>[fatal] flaw in the Reagan "Star-Wars" program: The beams required energy
>levels which could *only* be provided by the detonation of nuclear devices (in
space).
>
>This meant that (a) each "platform" could only fire it's beam(s) *once*, and,
>(b) each platform was banned by pre-existing treaty(s) prohibiting nuclear
>toys in space...
>
