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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!ogcvax!sequent!richard
From: richard@sequent.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Orbital Artillery
Message-ID: <411@sequent.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Mar-84 07:42:49 EST
Article-I.D.: sequent.411
Posted: Sun Mar  4 07:42:49 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Mar-84 07:30:50 EST
References: <16648@sri-arpa.UUCP> <164@ames-lm.UUCP> <5577@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Portland
Lines: 23

>>  The old problem arises again.  If you ban weapons from space how
>>  do you verify compliance??  This is even harder in space since
>>  many usefull tools are also weapons (eg. small rocket engines).

This would indeed be a problem, if the primary concern were weapons to
be used against other space entities.  But the weapons that are the
primary concern are those that have the power to effect earth-based
objects, or missiles/planes in flight.  Anything with this kind of
power is still neccessarily large - farily easy to detect.  The only
type of space-space weapon of concern is a satellite-killer.  This
poses a more serious problem, but still, "tools" won't usually
qualify as anti-sat devices.

If the ban you're speaking of is, indeed, a personal-weapons ban,
measures on the order of the airline security checks should do
for quite some time.

___________________________________________________________________________
The preceding should not to be construed as the statement or opinion of the
employers or associates of the author.    It is solely the belief...

			from the confused and bleeding fingertips of
				...!sequent!richard