On Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:13:12 PM UTC-4, Rick Pikul/Chakat Firepaw wrote:   
   > On Sat, 23 Jul 2016 09:02:54 -0700, Mikkel Haaheim wrote:   
   >    
   > > Le vendredi 22 juillet 2016 19:30:24 UTC+2, Rick Pikul/Chakat Firepaw a   
   > > écrit :   
      
   I've been busy, sorry for not jumping in and leaving Mikkel on his own.   
      
   > >> The guy I initially responded to did.  Furthermore, you did notice the   
   > >> context of that remark, right?  That was pointing out that someone was   
   > >> arguing against the wrong thing in his response to me.   
   > >    
   > He flat out made the argument "you can't hide the sensor platforms    
   > either."  It is 100% relevant to respond to that by pointing out that I    
   > was not making an argument based on hiding the sensor platforms.   
      
   I tend to make my comments in reply to the whole thread, there were arguments   
   that "you won't know where my sensors are" so I was addressing that. I tend to   
   try and comment as expediently as possible. Sorry about the confusion.   
      
   The point about regolith being used as a projectile is an economic one. If you   
   have several thousand sensors constantly jinking with thrusters, they're going   
   to run out of fuel eventually. This means you'd either have to have a resupply   
   network    
   constantly resupplying them or you'd have to replace them. If you want to talk   
   about a huge effort, there you have it. That doesn't mean it can't be done,   
   but it does make it resource intensive.   
      
   If the solar sail concept is indeed functional, the sensors still can't   
   maneuver infinitely because they would fall out of position or out of their   
   orbits. They also have to be autonomous at this point, because you're looking   
   at a whole lot of motion.    
   That means more computing power and more expense.   
      
   If I then have ten to a hundred asteroid stations out in the belt (which one?   
   depends on the scale the war its on), tracking your sensor net, each with   
   multiple mass drivers, I can launch cheap rocks at your net. I can do this ad   
   nauseam because my    
   stations are relatively cheap (maybe they even pay for themselves because I'm   
   using the mined rock as a resource) and my projectiles are cheap. If the two   
   sides economies are relatively balanced, defeating a sensor net is cheaper   
   than building it.   
      
   Now, the question is, is this at the start of a war, as an opening salvo? Or   
   is it a tactic of an ongoing war? Maybe it would be useful as both. I could   
   see these asteroid stations being really useful as a diversion tactic for a   
   real assault or it could    
   be used during the real assault to severely degrade the sensor net and then   
   launch a stealth attack (at?).    
      
   In a war, it doesn't matter that you know I'm shooting at your sensors. If we   
   assume that you go after my astroids with your fleet, I can then maneuver   
   wherever I want with mine. If you bombard my stations at a distance, I wait   
   for you to expend a good    
   amount of energy and resources doing so and then attack while your supplies   
   are low. The sensor net is a tactical disadvantage in a hot war. The same   
   could be said about my asteroid stations, but again, they're cheap to the   
   point of disposable.   
      
   I say all this to debunk that this has to be a surprise attack. In a air war   
   on earth, the regular aircraft attack radar stations. The enemy knows this.   
   They have missiles and aircraft defending those radar stations. But one hit on   
   that station makes it    
   harder to see. Not impossible, just harder. Then a stealth aircraft is used to   
   hit the target the radar station is being used to defend. This isn't the   
   opening attack, it's standard tactics that are followed through the whole war.   
      
   When it comes to space warfare I'm not very knowledgeable. As for a technical   
   attack (hacking/viruses/spies) being too difficult or detectable, in this I   
   know something about. I've worked in the sector at a relatively high level.   
   Honestly, it's very    
   difficult to impossible to detect a new, well made virus that hasn't been   
   activated yet. It's sometimes difficult to find a virus that is active   
   especially if it's designed to be sneaky. In this sci-fi setting, there could   
   be AIs smart enough to monitor    
   every communication going in and out of a computer, but then there would be   
   AIs smart enough to work around them. Stuxnet was one of the computer worms   
   the public knows about that the US military developed and it got into a secure   
   facility with no    
   network connections in or out. A sensor net is going to be leaky since it must   
   communicate with the outside word or it doesn't do it's job. I could honestly   
   think of dozens of ways to compromise a sensor platform and use it to spread a   
   virus and I never    
   have to set foot in a datacenter.   
      
   Now, to backtrack a little, my point about NASA looking for asteroids and   
   having a very hard time of it is largely in response to earlier threads on   
   this topic. There have been many that assert that any ship will be warmer than   
   the CMB and therefore    
   easily detectable. Even a cold running ship because it will absorb solar   
   radiation. If that were true, then asteroids would be as easy to detect. But   
   in the real world, they're not. There is therefore a flaw in the idea that   
   since there's no horizon in    
   space and no air, all objects are easily detectable.    
      
   Since all this is speculative, anchoring the conversation in real life   
   astrophysics is hugely helpful. The fact of the matter is, that even though   
   the sensor platforms to catalog every near earth asteroid already exist, the   
   data processing capability    
   does not. It's not an issue of processing power precisely (although more   
   helps) but one of the ability to distinguish signal from the noise. This will   
   undoubtably get easier as software becomes more capable and processors more   
   powerful, but it still won'   
   t be trivial and that's the point. There's the assumption that detection   
   (which combines sensing and recognition of a signal) is not difficult. Real   
   life says that it is.   
      
   This plays in with Mikkel's point about stealth being relative. It's not about   
   blinding sensors so that they can never see you, it's about preventing   
   detection (denying either the sensing or the recognition criteria). The   
   recognition criteria being the    
   easier of the two in this case.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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