http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/05/30/sustain-forces-world-win-hours-days/ Space Tourism ... and Much More Fri, 24 May 2013 07:16:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/05/30/sustain-forces-world-win-hours-days/comment-page-1/#comment-959 Charles Phillips Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:07:18 +0000 http://www.parabolicarc.com/?p=5056#comment-959 This idea has been around for a while but the challenges are still too great. For one thing – a force of even the best trained special ops people needs to be larger than 15 people, and must be re-supplyable. The numbers of people they are talking about it too small. Would we shoot several vehicles for the people and then more for ammo and food?
And we are gonna take an expensive, complex vehicle and shoot it into a country from which we are unlikely to be able to return it? The chance that it could drop people and then fly back is vanishingly small. And if we can’t get permission to fly people in, we can’t recover our vehicle.
And small groups (lets say under 50) would rather arrive with some surprise, not be dropped from the sky by a large, noisy, craft.
The idea has been around since Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, but is still a very difficult concept.

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