There' a difference between ships armed with active weaponry and shuttles that could be used to crash on Earth. Besides, as evidenced by the post above, the RDA was required to sign a contract that they would not use/own any WMD or participate in the militarization of space.
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3. They wouldn't have got permission to build the ship without signing the contract. I'm pretty sure they made sure that the RDA wouldn't cheat on them.
This is the mechanics of how they implemented their intentions, not whether their intentions are justified or make sense which is what we're examining here. They could just as easily made them sign a contract that forbid them from carrying logging or mining equipment. The justifications of which wouldn't support this sort of decision. You're already trusting them control a ship that can end the world, and yet you don't trust them to being able use nukes responsibly?
1. All RDA officials live on Earth. Sure they could hold each mutually hostage, but it would accomplish much
You're confusing two different things. There's trust, and motivation. Both of which support the fact that the earth governments shouldn't really have that much of a problem letting them have small, low yield nukes. This is the same risk, albeit a lot larger than simply letting them carry nukes. You nuke earth, you set of MAD. In any case, they wouldn't have a reason to nuke earth anymore than they would crash a part of the ship into earth. There's really no reason why they would be motivated either way. And since they can
2. Also, using the ship as a weapon would be rather hard.
-The ship requires 6 months to arcelerate
-At those speeds, even a dust particle would blow up the entire ship. It has shields to avoid this, but since the defense systems relies on the first 3 shields being destroyed in the collision, just sending 2 pebble sized objects can destroy it.
-An integral part of the ships arceleration is a giant laser placed somewhere in the solar system. I'm pretty sure this one would be under governement control. [/quote]
You would not need to go at full speed, even at 0.2c the amount of energy that you're packing in 5 tons entering the atmosphere will be still be quite huge. Besides that, just release the payload once you're inside the oort cloud. Space is big, and mostly empty, hitting something once you're in the oort cloud is incredibly low. And travelling at that velocity, it won't leave earth much time to enact countermeasures.
As for the laser acceleration thing, if a ship can stop itself from achieving 0.7c within the time frame of the journey, it still can achieve these this speed albeit in a much larger time frame, this doesn't really change the fact that they're taking this voyage in what essentially amounts to a planet killer.
4. Fusion only happens at high temperatures/high densities. In order to have a fusion bomb you'd need to use a fission bomb to set it off. As for using them to burn forests, why? The RDA doesn't want to destroy the forests, nor anger the natives, the general public or the United Nations if they don't need too. Over it's thirty year colonization, the RDA has cut maybe just enough forest to justify 3 warheads. (The mine, Hell's gate and Hometree). Nevertheless, they would still need to invest in logging equipment, if only to control the Jungle when it grows back. Blowing it up works the first time, but after that your own material gets in the way.
Why yes, you probably need fission to set the bomb off, what does this have to do with the raised points? Aren't you just lampooning your previous statement that pure fission weapons don't exist? Surely there are some bombs that don't militarily require such a large yield that only utilize fission. Tactical warheads are one such possibility.
Also, how do you know the RDA has only cut enough for 3 warheads
? And what yields are you talking about?
The RDA is clearly shown cutting down trees, as well as bringing in logging equipment. It seems a little silly to say they have no intention of clearing the forests, or at least are not prepared to do so. They also don't seem to give much crap about the natives aside from some of the science crew.
Given the danger of anti matter weaponry, it would make sense for the governements of Earth to enforce strict rules and such. Maybe all higher RDA officials are forced to remain on Earth. Maybe there are failsafes build in in the engines. The particle arcelerators that produce the antimatter are most likely heavily guarded and governement controlled too. In the end however, why would the RDA ask for the bombs:
Remember, you are arguing against the earth governments giving the crew nukes. You need to escape the counterargument that any sort of preventative action used against the crew with their already extremely dangerous ship can't also be applied to the nukes too. Tough rules, and such, regulations, and even forcing the execs to be a place that would make retaliation easier can be similarly applied to low yield nukes as well and be much easier to do.
Negative
-Requires breaking a contract with the effects that all RDA's space bound operations would be cancelled
-Will make the natives revolt, immediatly
-PR death
Really, the costs completly outweight possible benefits
#2 I don't know whether this would be the case, nukes do seem to be quite good at ending wars with a 100% chance of surrender from the enemy when they are used
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#3 They have a doom ship, and the Russians already use these things to seal off underwater oil leaks,
right now.
Besides, if you do it well people might be on your side. The level of need for this type of stuff seems to be quite desperate for this type of business venture to be profitable. So long as you make the natives look slightly unreasonable, I don't think the population of earth would be all that angry with the crew. It's kinda like how in some Middle Eastern and Latin American countries outright take the land from people living there to construct oil platforms or factories. Unfortunately the population right now seems quite apathetic to these people.
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Topic: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies (Read 138561 times)