[Raven Bloodmoon]

Mind you, I don't mean to imply that ships would actually be ellipsoids, that's just what i'd use for the calculations.

As far as Canadian military targets, Toronto might be a better choice, but there is something to be said for striking an out of the way location. Makes people in the midwest, like Nebraska, feel less safe. Now you don't have a bunch of corn farmers sitting round thinking they're smart for not living in a real city.

Point is, you wouldn't want Luna to actaully start throwing rocks at Earth, because with very little thought, you can set up a senario in which Earth does not have time to react, adn if they were to react, they'd get hit twice as hard from successive waves that are launched at the same time as the first strike. Imagine enough rocks to whipe out the major population centers on Earth all in the air simultaneously, and if you nuke the person that tossed them at you, then there is no one to stop them from falling. By retaliating, you would ensure the deaths of the majority of Earth's population. If you refuse their demands, you ensure the deaths of the majority of Earth's population. That only leaves one other option on the table.

[Dthclaw]

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Mind you, I don't mean to imply that ships would actually be ellipsoids, that's just what i'd use for the calculations.

K. Just saying that you could use it as a rough basis for funkier shapes.

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As far as Canadian military targets, Toronto might be a better choice, but there is something to be said for striking an out of the way location. Makes people in the midwest, like Nebraska, feel less safe. Now you don't have a bunch of corn farmers sitting round thinking they're smart for not living in a real city.

I take offense at that. We grow as much wheat as corn in Eastern Nebraska. Besides, its the darn air base that throws us into the wonky range of the threat scale. Stupid hub-of-all-military-communications... rawr for painting a target on the corn. And us.

[Axel]

Raven Bloodmoon, on May 4 2006, 02:58 PM, said:

Remind me where the nearest thermonuclear warhead and spare Saturn V rocket is and how long it would take to make the necessary preparations? And also tell me what you would do as a leader that managed to survive the first barrage. Washington DC, New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, Moscow, New Deli, and Bei Jing are in ruins. No one knows how many are dead. You just got a message stating that you have 4 hours to acknowledge Luna's independance or the second wave, which is already en route, will be beyond the point when they can be harmlessly diverted. With that, you get a list of the next cities targeted. On them are New York, Bombay, Kiev, Osaka, Ottowa, Mexico City, and Buenos Ares. What would you do?

Prepare for massive retaliation. Do I not have a space fleet at my disposal, are there no garrisons on Luna? Are we to honestly believe that the Terrestrial governors would allow their citizens to build mass drivers of the scale needed to level cities, that the earth militaries would be completely blind to this organization, that there is no internal security in place? Where the hell was my repressive colonial structure while all this was going on?!

As for ship design, barring insane leaps of technology (I can't be sure, your blog on that subject isn't available) large ships would require the standard massive, rotating wheel to provide the appearance of gravity if you want the crew's tour of duty to be more than a few months before a full planetside rotation. Which, given the distances involved, is almost certain. Other than that, there is no real limitation on what the ship can look like, but contrary to much science fiction, any engineer who designed a ship with lots of long thin supports running between massive areas, or with long things jutting out of the sides, is a complete moron. It's a waste of material and puts undue stress on those members. Honestly, I see a space ship looking very much like a large blimp.

[Dthclaw]

I always pictured huge armored bricks with engines, but each their own.

You do raise a valid point about pre-revolt security, though. One that shoudl certainly be examined and re-examined.

[Rintaran]

Actually, NASA is currently working on internal centrifuges to solve the gravity problem. It may provide an alternative to massive technological advances and giant spinning wheels. You can read about that here

Additionally, there are solar sail projects which may be of some use in terms of the actual transportation. For information of the previous problems with this non-government funded project, you can read about it here.

And for yet another big whatsit that I think may be relevant to this whole space stuff, would be the Air Force report on teleportation, which is found here. Not sure how reliable this last source is, but it's certainly complex enough...

Back to the topic of the revolt and it's probability of success or failure. You're going to have to ask yourself, do the rulers of earth follow any or all of our superlong evil overlord rule list? That would be a major determining factor in what kinda retaliation is possible...

[Raven Bloodmoon]

In response to Axel, read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The railguns might well already be in place for other reasons. Also, it is not difficult to keep some things quiet. Thirdly, you never told me what you would do about the fact that the moon would be in a possition to wipe out a sizable percentage of Earthlings before any retaliation is possible, yet if no retaliation occurs, the majority of those lives would be saved. I can either conclude that you would sacrifice the inhabitants of every major city on Earth or that you just didn't notice that was perfectly possible.

As for the rules of the evil overlord, we are talking about humans here. They probably did not. And personally, I think that the moon would succeed. That does not mean that they would refuse to establish friendly relatiosn with Earth. They'd just want their independance.

[Dthclaw]

Actually, the railguns would probably have been built by the Earth as a means of cheaply launching cargo modules into Lunar orbit. Just the moon-people had... other ideas with them.

[Axel]

What would I do? Pretend to give in, and deploy my military. I do have garrisons, do I not? I do have warships, right? Destroy their defenses from orbit and then send down troops to arrest their leaders to be tried for war crimes. Supress any and all resistance, and shoot to kill. I assume they're rebelling because I'm a despot, well if I'm a despotic ruler then surely I've got the resources available to declare martial law, assuming I haven't already. They aren't going to spontaneously launch an assault and they won't have universal support. They will have needed to gain support amongst the populace, which means coming out into the open, and they will have tried lawful means of gaining their wishes before rebelling. And even after a revolt they wouldn't resort to weapons of mass destruction without good reason. Yes, these are human beings we're talking about, which is why the situation is preposterous. Look at the American Revolution, it didn't come out of nowhere, there was a long history of attempts at reconciliation before events forced a revolt, there was clear and substantial abuse of the colonists, and there were loyalists and British garrisons to defend colonial rule.

[Jimp]

I know you aren't focusing on this campign world anymore, but just incase you take it up again:

The Nanotechnology Revolution

A discussion on Nanotechnology, since there was mention of it existing in your setting.