[ExI] China to Own the Moon by 2027

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 02:46:30PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> On 2012-04-04 08:29, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>> If you have launching facilities you can retaliate by a hail of
>> tungsten at high Mach.
>
> Note that retaliation ground-orbit and ground-ground is actually easier  
> than orbit-ground, since you need to provide enough delta-v to make an  
> Earth-intersecting orbit (and in orbit you will tend to be reaction-mass  
> poor). You don't drop things from orbit, you have to throw them very 
> hard.

Moon-Earth transfer via linear mass driver at multiple lunar
escape velocity. Your biggest problem will be your tungsten
roads surviving reentry.

>
>> And since having the Moon means having access to the entire
>> Solar system you could go out, and divert something bigger.
>> Like few km boulders, precision-guided, or even a 10 or 100 km
>> object.
>
> Big boulders are hard to accelerate, so you will throw them at normal  
> orbital speeds closely along their natural orbits. This means they will  
> take years to arrive.

Of course it's a long campaign. Your best targets would be natural
close flyby candidates which you nudge into intercepting orbits.
Low-albedo stuff coming out of the Sun will be hard to spot until
it's too late.

Anyone commanding the Moon as high ground will have strategic
advantage, all things being equal.