From:	Marc Renouf renouf@********.com
Subject:	People from another world
Date:	Tue, 16 Mar 1999 13:40:19 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 16 Mar 1999 GMPax@***.com wrote:

> > If there's nothing to physically protect, there's no
> > reason to make a remote, hard-to-reach facility on the moon.
>
> Research Facilities. Optical chips with the research data can't be very
> costly to drop back into Earth's gravity well. :-)

And they can be heisted just as easily as anything else.
The sheer cost of constructing, outfitting, and resupplying a base
on the moon is more than enough to guarantee you ample security anywhere
on Earth. You still need to communicate with your "home offices" on the
planet or your research is useless (read "not applied" and thus not
profitable). When you drop chips, send transmissions, or receive data,
you are just as vulnerable electronically as you would be on the planet
itself (decking knows no bounds; where there's a wire, there's a way).
Further, unless you're manufacturing in space whatever it is your research
has discovered, your findings/blueprints/formulas will necessarily need to
be duplicated dirtside, meaning that they're *still* vulnerable to
physical theft even though they were discovered elsewhere.
And if you're manufacturing something in space, you need to get
the manufacturing facilities there (which gets expensive), or worse
yet, get the raw materials there (which gets even more expensive).
All of which demonstrates that a moon-based research facility is
not cost effective if all you're concerned about is security (which was
your original contention).

Marc