Steve Higginbotham replying to Lewis Taylor Goss:
>>There was an article in the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society
>>several years ago, in which Marc Miller suggested that nothing was
>>known about Jump Drive physics in our era because a society could not
>>begin to do the proper research until it had set up permanent bases
>>beyond 100 diameters from its primary star. In the case of the
>>Terrans, this meant not until they had developed bases in the Asteroid
>>Belt.
>
>Yes, I read the article. Fascinating. But wrong. 100-diameters from
>Sol is only 139,190,000Km. Which is closer to the sun than Earth is.
>So all you'd really need is a lab about 1,300,000Km from Earth.
Actually, no, the asteroid belt is the likely cantidate for that.
The 1.3 million km. excludes both the Moon and the terrestrial Lagrange
points. Any Mars bases we make are within _it's_ 100 diameter limit.
The only place likely in the solar system clear of major 100 diameter
zones is the asteroid belt. We aren't likely to build permanent bases
anywhere else. There's nothing out in random deep space to make
putting bases there likely 8-)
- -george