Extension idea: moon colonizer.

[Destroyer]

Originally posted by sabrewolf

btw: to transport He3 to the earth, it would need a refinery on the moon. and i'm not so sure, He3 would be "light" to transport: to have effective use of space, you'd need to bring it to very high pressure. but then, gas under pressure is very dangerous.

most sensitive use i guess would be for fuelling fusion-driven spaceships away from earth. advantage: to exit moon's orbit you don't need a 10th of the energy of the energy needed to exit earths gravitational pull

What about Mass Drivers? The moons gravity is very low.

[muxec]

WE dont speaking about real life. It's about game patch, not life patch.

[Theodrik]

Folks, Robert Heinlein has ths already covered. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Basicly, unlimited solar power to power a mag lev catapult. Then load house-sized steel encased ROCKS. Can't kill them like fragile missiles, and the impact like small nukes without all the nasty radiation!
Read the story and do the math. He who owns the moon sits at the 'top' of a very steep gravity well. Just drop and watch.

[Ijuin]

The main problem with launching missiles (or even rocks) from the Moon is that they will take two to three days to reach the Earth unless you give them HUGE booster rockets (bigger than the ones used for ICBMs on Earth). Contrastingly, ICBMs can travel to any point on Earth within an hour. The two days it takes for the missile to reach Earth from the Moon gives the defending nation a lot more time to try to shoot down the incoming missile compared to the half hour or less warning for ICBMs.