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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Some comments and questions on SDI
Message-ID: <10664@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 27 Oct 89 03:29:17 GMT
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: jon@cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky)
>... The "Brilliant
>Pebbles" concept puts 100,000 or so small (~100 pound) satellites in orbit...

Correction:  not 100 pounds, more like 100 *grams*.  ("Pebbles", not "rocks".)
Putting up 100,000 100-pound satellites would require the entire launch
capacity of the *Soviet Union* for most of a decade.  (US launch capacity
is a joke by comparison.)  One of the major selling points of B.P. is getting
the weight of the individual interceptors down to the point where one can
afford to launch massive numbers of them.  Many of SDI's problems diminish
greatly if interceptors are plentiful and need not be carefully conserved.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu