On Thursday, July 28, 2016 at 1:02:23 PM UTC-4, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:   
      
   > 	No. Minor -- and enough distance to be missed by any reasonable-sized    
   > hazard is minor -- deviations won't take them out of orbit, and they can    
   > maneuver BACK to orbit. Sure, if you keep firing huge salvoes in a way    
   > that they CAN'T, yes, you could drive them out of their original orbits    
   > permanently, but jebus, you'll be spending so many orders of magnitude    
   > more to shoot at them than they cost to put there that your opponent    
   > will be winning on pure economics.   
      
   If you're maneuvering with a solar sail, you have some limits to where you can   
   go. I've heard of tacking with a solar sail, and correct me if I'm wrong, but   
   you really can't get back to your original position with one. If you can, I'd   
   really like to hear    
   more on that.   
      
   Given that, you're eventually going to move out of orbit.   
      
   Let's say you can fully "tack into the wind" with a solar sail. Ok, what does   
   that mean? It means that the sensor drone (it's not just a platform this   
   point) is going to leave it's set point and then travel in a random direction   
   for a random but limited    
   amount of time and then turn back and start heading back. There's going to be   
   constraints on it's movement and that makes it predictable almost to a fault.   
   I might take two or three shots (individual shots, not necessarily buckshot)   
   just to up my chances,   
    but this is classic hunting at this point. When I go out and hunt an animal,   
   I don't have any guarantee that my bullet will hit, but I often do. Add a   
   targeting computer to that and I feel my chances are pretty good.   
      
   The inclusion of all that maneuvering equipment and the constant strain is   
   going to lead to equipment failures and an ever increasing spiral of costs.   
   Now you need a maintenance fleet and the sensor drones need to monitor all the   
   other drones to make    
   sure they aren't straying due to a mechanical failure. It also means the drone   
   has to be autonomous and so carries even more processing hardware. The other   
   issue is that this solar sail is going to limit the drone's field of view and   
   therefore require    
   more drones (but that point may have been made already).   
      
   As far as my costs, like I said, I'm probably mining the asteroids anyway, so   
   setting up the mass drivers are my main cost. My projectiles are literally   
   dirt cheap since they're made of undesirable mining waste left over from   
   making money.   
      
   > 	Firing shotgun-concentration loads of pellets to fill gargantuan    
   > volumes of space? No. Really, no, what the hell are you thinking? Let's    
   > leave aside the economic and practical problems of setting up your    
   > asteroid-sized shotgun loads, and note that the end result is you're    
   > going to be basically making the entire near-asset (with "asset" being    
   > "Earth or other area worth going to) space be filled with debris. We    
   > have enough trouble with low and medium-orbit debris as it is, if    
   > someone's firing gargantuan amounts of material at us, that's gonna make    
   > it a pain in the ass for everyone.   
      
   Which sounds like a valid war tactic to me. If my attempts to take down your   
   sensor net also makes navigation hell, well, I'm all for it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)