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Cake day: March 31st, 2025

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  • StJohnMcCrae@slrpnk.nettoScience Memes@mander.xyzGod is a dick.
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    2 months ago

    It doesn’t really matter what kind of engine it is if it’s going fast enough.

    Anything with enough mass and acceleration to move a human being from planet to planet in a reasonable timeframe has the kinetic energy required to wipe out a city. Once you start reaching relativistic speeds, you can take out entire planets by simply not slowing down on approach.


  • StJohnMcCrae@slrpnk.nettoScience Memes@mander.xyzGod is a dick.
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    2 months ago

    The fact is that any manned vehicle capable of interplanetary travel is by the nature of the energies involved, also a weapon of mass destruction. A spaceship is a weapon in the same way a car can be a weapon.

    So either you massively restrict access to this technology, or you create a system of surveillance and defense that is so pervasive and effective that it makes 1984 look benign, OR you just say fuck everyone else and use that weapon to remove yourself from range of everybody else’s weapons.

    Proliferation is an existential problem for anyone in range.








  • How so? China has a manpower advantage, but they don’t have the capability to project that advantage beyond the mainland/local territorial waters. In what way would America not “come off well”, when the enemy has no credible way of actually getting to us, and no way of supporting it’s economy without international trade? Are they going to island hop from one American defensive position to the next, all the way across the Pacific, while also securing shipping lanes through the Indian ocean for the oil to make that possible?

    Sounds like a bad time - for them.