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From: jr@bbncc5.UUCP (John Robinson)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: REAL Star Wars...
Message-ID: <191@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Dec-85 00:01:12 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.191
Posted: Tue Dec  3 00:01:12 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Dec-85 03:30:13 EST
References: <8511300112.AA08255@s1-b.arpa>
Reply-To: jr@bbncc5.UUCP (John Robinson)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 18
Summary: SciFi, anyone?

In article <8511300112.AA08255@s1-b.arpa> dietz@SLB-DOLL.CSNET (Paul Dietz) writes:
...
>Orion-style ships could lift armored reentry vehicles and scads of
>decoys into space.  Even worse, such a ship could be lifted into
>a retrograde orbit where it could scatter large quantities of gravel.
>An effective ploy would be to scatter 1000 tonnes of 1 milligram
>tungsten particles (say) in retrograde equatorial orbits out to several
>earth radii.  Any satellite intersecting this disk would be hit within
>several months.  Near-earth space could be seeded much more heavily,
>rendering the shuttle useless.

Sounds kinda' like Saturn, no (except for the retrograde orbit)?
Could the rings be the last vestiges of a civilization that burned
itself up (or froze (or moved closer to the sun)) gigayears ago?
Might be a good SciFi theme.  (Maybe current Saturn formation theories
aren't going far enough :-)

/jr