On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 1:41 PM, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

> On the fourth tentacle . . . near-c rocks are beginning to look attractive .
> . .

PD meson guns.  Pump enough energy into the rock, and it breaks up
into gravel.  :)

The other problem is that any drive powerful enough to accelearte a
rock to that sort of speed will warm the rock quite a bit in the
process.  All those little IR spotter telescopes should be able to
spot it fairly early.

  Presumably, planets are more economically and strategically usefull
as a populated planet than as a glowing cinder or cloud of slowly
cooling rocks.

Although I am starting to wonder about the utility of high-speed
missile ships, etc.

If you can see them coming, they aren't going to be a tactical
surprise.   (Strategic, maybe, if  you didn't know they were
in-system....)

Zipping through the invasion fleet after spending 4 hours approaching
at 6g will ruin days if your missiles hit, but after that, you're out
of the fight until you can slow down and come back around....

Dan

--

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine
kook." -Alan Morgan