View Single Post
Old 04-30-2017, 01:43 AM   #196
fchase8
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
Default Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!

Quote:
Originally Posted by TGLS View Post
It's simple. Fly a spacecraft with a few mass drivers out to an asteroid or two (perhaps 69230 Hermes), then run them until the asteroids will smash the Earth. When the right orbit is achieved, dismantle the mass drivers and return to Homeline. Unless a zonemind is looking closely at the asteroid, they won't see it coming, and after it becomes obvious, unless a zonemind solved the N-body problem, they'll assume it was something they don't have the physics for. All you need to do is have them fail to stop it, and the zoneminds are finished.
That's not too simple.

First you'd have to build spacecraft that can make it out to an earth-grazing asteroid and back, with parachronic capabilities.

Add to that carry mass drivers.

The parachronic spacecraft would have to go out to near where the asteroid is on Steel, and then jump (and not be discovered). The asteroid wouldn't be in the same place on Homeline (different time period) and not even Infinity could build parachronic transporters capable of carrying an asteroid.

Then there's the matter of actually getting the asteroid to crash into the Earth. It would take a lot of work in space, a completely new arrangement to Infinity (and with no back-up).

The Zoneminds would notice pretty quickly. More than a few are obsessed with space. They also would worry about their rival AIs (and/or aliens) using an asteroid as a weapon against them.

There might even be plans to divert an asteroid headed towards Earth. If Infinity could divert an asteroid with only a few mass drivers, all of the Zoneminds working together, including their massive space & industrial capacities, could divert it away from Earth before it struck.

And even if they couldn't, Zoneminds are unusually well-equipped to deal with an apocalyptic asteroid strike. They don't need food, or even oxygen, to survive. They have facilities that are extremely well-defended.

And two of them are in space. Orbital and Luna would certainly survive any asteroid strike. Plus whatever's being built in Antarctica.

Oh, and the asteroid strike would kill all the humans, all the life, on Earth.
fchase8 is offline   Reply With Quote