Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
It's not just weapons uses that concern me. Making money is useful too and helpful in acquiring political power. Those laser acceleration schemes pretty much require owning the solar system.
|
I don't think that is true at all. You just need a power source (either being on Earth or Mercury, in canon THS), a big laser array, and enough money/power to get a bunch of power from the power source. I also think that THS has a lot cheaper energy, because of fusion, because of long-term trends for inflation-adjusted energy prices to go down, and also because of Mercury's solar panels.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your thinking, though. Is it just you thinking they lack the power capacity for this? Because I really don't see how B follows A here.
One interesting thing I did think of as I considered this question: the same infrastructure is probably able to (with much more conservative laser intensities/max accelerations so it doesn't cost a billion dollars each time you fire it) push objects back and forth between Earth and Mercury via laser sail, effectively voiding the need to use rockets in that region once you develop this tech. At least, once you've got laser arrays on both planets - realistically, you probably only build them one place, but hey, a space race means duplicated infrastructure.