starship-design: It's a bad, bad world out there

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

I just read a book yesterday that many of you might find interesting. It is 
a work of science fiction written by a scientist (Charles Pellegrino) 
called "The Killing Star".

It covers several philosophical matters that we have recently discussed in 
this group and he and his co-author George Zebrowski do a much better job 
of elucidating the arguments than we did. It includes a lot of REAL quotes 
from several think tank sessions by various physicists, researchers, and 
authors including Isaac Asimov.

Here is one especially relevant section from pages 114-115:

"...all that we knew boiled down to three simple laws of alien behavior:

1) THEIR SURVIVAL WILL BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR SURVIVAL. If an alien 
species has to choose between them and us, they won't choose us. I t is 
hard to imagine a contrary case; species don't survive by being self 
sacrificing.

2) WIMPS DON'T BECOME TOP DOGS. No species makes it to the top by being 
passive. The species in charge of any given planet will be highly 
intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.

3) THEY WILL ASSUME THAT THE FIRST TWO LAWS APPLY TO US."

They came to pretty much the same conclusion as I did regarding the 
proximity of other intelligent species, there are no intelligent space 
faring species currently within our detection range, but they did inject a 
new idea. We automatically ASSUME because of our own built in prejudices 
that an intelligent, tool using, space faring species must come from a 
terrestrial type planet in a liquid water zone. They point out that it is 
quite feasible for them to come from an aquatic planet which may be OUTSIDE 
the liquid water zone as we currently define it. A large moon orbiting an 
outer jovian planet for instance. And these planets probably outnumber the 
terrestrial planets two or three to one....

Pick up a copy if you have the chance.

                                                          (o o)
------------------------------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo-----  
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Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;

William Allingham, Ireland, 1850