Ymirites inhabit Jovoid planets and breathe hydrogen. Baburites inhabit a sub-Jovian planet and also breathe hydrogen. Human beings, Ythrians, Merseians and many other intelligent species inhabit terrestroid planets and breathe oxygen. Ymirites are as different from Baburites as Baburites are from oxygen-breathers.
Hydrogen leaks between the atoms of a spaceship hull. Two solutions:
Baburite spaceships require extra volume to carry cyrogenic tanks so that their internal atmosphere can be replenished from liquid gases;
the hull can be plated with a particular supermetal alloy.
Mirkheim, source of supermetals, had not been discovered when the Baburites built their navy so the first solution had to be used.
15 comments:
And the Terrans who supplied the Baburite tech deliberately built weaknesses into it...
Rather like the way a lot of Soviet military tech supplied to third parties was deliberately downgraded in effectiveness.
Indeed. I will come to that point.
Having been in uniform and various other interesting places during the "Ivan is 10 feet tall" days of the late Cold War, it's an arguable point that quite a bit of the equipment the Soviets supplied their own military was, to be charitable, just as questionable as the "export" models.
The Soviets had - on paper - a lot of capabilities that in practice turned out to be just that.
Sometimes Occam's Razor is a pretty sharp tool for analysis. ;)
The Red Threat was not what it was thought to be? The Russian regime exploited its population and bankrupted itself to compete militarily against the US. It should have invested its resources in social development and in encouraging the industrial democracy that it paid lip service to. Mobilization of an engaged population for defence, yes. Threatening nuclear genocide, no. The collapse of that autocratic regime was long overdue.
No, it was not.
Was there a threat? Yes, definitely. Did the people of Russia, eastern Europe, and Eurasia deserve a chance to build their own futures, absent the dominance of Moscow's autocrats? Yes, of course.
Did the US specifically and the West generally have to make many of the decisions during the Cold War that - ultimately - weakened the case for American and Western leadership in the postwar era? No, definitely not, and the world is poorer for them.
Bottom line, the "Ivan is 10 feet tall" perspective led to a lot of questionable and downright wasteful decisions in 1945-91; beware (as has been said) those arguing the "Amphibious Cavalry Gap" (Thompson, 1971) level of strategic analysis - a little critical thinking regarding motivations is time well spent, generally. ;)
Clarke's "Superiority" (1951) is an entertaining short that makes the same point.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree. All socialist regimes, like it or not, are command economies, in which politicians and bureaucrats arrogantly claim they know how to make the millions/billions of decisions that goes into what a makes a real world economy work. Socialism inevitably means despotism and secret police coercion. And its sheer inefficiency compared to free enterprise economics will feed into paranoia and aggressiveness.
Ad astra! Sean
Interestingly enough, Dallas M. Reynolds was writing at the same time as Anderson, and - given his age - had actually seen life at the sharp end in 1944-45. Anderson, as far as I know, missed that bit of experience, as did many of the other "libertarian" SF writers. ;)
Kaor, Dave!
Anderson turned 18 in November 1944. I think I read somewhere he was rejected for military service due to bad hearing and nearsightedness.
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, Poul was 4-F. Though if the war had continued much longer...
It's best to get the degree of an enemy threat just right -- Goldilocks territory, not too hot or cold -- but if you have to chose, overestimating them is better than underestimating, and overspending is better than not spending enough.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, the pessimist in me makes me prefer to overestimate what needs to be done to defeat an enemy. Less risk of being sorry if you guess wrong!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yup. If you don't spend enough on roads, you can always spend more later.
But if you don't spend enough on military preparations, they may -be- no 'later'.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree absolutely!
Ad astra! Sean
It's an interesting point, looking at (arguably) the Big 3 of their era and WW II; Clarke was RAF in the UK, as a radar officer during (IIRC) the V-weapons attacks; Heinlein was 4F, and had been since before the war; Asimov was a civilian and remained stateside, although he was drafted for a short time postwar.
Interesting comparisons with Clement and Miller, who were both combat aircrew and saw their share of the elephant, presumably; same for Kornbluth and Vonnegut.
Note that being a civilian in WW2 Britain was not the same as being one in the US; still less in, say, Russia or Germany or China or Japan.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
At the very least a civilian in all these countries was a person who did not serve in the armed forces.
Ad astra! Seam
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