[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Well we don't need to send one to each planet or moon. The list of places to send probes is quite small, Mars, Europa (this should be the next major target for exploration IMHO), the other Galilean moons, Titian, and maybe Triton, Titania, and Iapetus.

You are aware that all of those places are very distant, frozen, radiation-blasted, inhospitable hellholes, yes?

Flybys are one thing but landing on a planet or moon is another thing, especially if we are talking about the outer planets. The light speed lag is just too great to allow for ground (or in the case of Europa perhaps undersea) exploration by remote; an hour delay in 1 way signals and occasionally no signal at all when Jupiter is between Earth and the Moon with the probe.

I am aware of this and it is just one more reason to use probes. If you're aware of the light-speed lag, you must have at least some appreciation for the amount of resources needed to sustain a human crew for a journey of such length. More importantly, you must be aware of how much mass those resources comprise and the delta-v required to get them anywhere anytime soon.

Good things come to ye who waits...

I didn't take the time to evaluate this link very thoroughly. As far as I can tell, it's a suggestion for ho to move stuff from one planet to another with minimum delta-v. While I have no doubt that it's a good system, it doesn't solve the problem of getting large quantities of goods in or out of Earth's gravity well.

Once we get there we can detonate a few H bombs on the surface and blast her in to a better orbit...

It would take more than a "few" H-bombs to significantly alter the trajectory of a 15-trillion ton asteroid travelling at I-don't-know-but-pretty-goddamn-fast-velocity, especially given the reduced effectiveness of nuclear blasts in space. Then there's the matter of getting the H-bombs there in the first place, and we're still constrained by the fact that it costs millions of dollars to get a pound of any material into or out of Earth's gravity.

A bird in low orbit is easy to down but one in a high orbit is much harder; the time on target for any ASAT is sufficiently great that any space based platform in a high orbit could out maneuver its attacker or shoot it down...

Not really. You, yourself, pointed out that there is no stealth in space a while ago, and you were right. The extreme detectability of any power source or communications source, not to mention the radar signature, needed to make an orbital weapon platform viable and capable of doging attacks would make it a very easy target for missiles, even ground-based HARMs. Not that we'd need them, we could just as easily fry it with directed microwaves.

unless of course the attacking platform was its self capable of large maneuvers and defending its self... at which point we start talking about space going warships

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That's not going to happen for quite a while yet. There is no reason to attempt to construct a space warship or even a OWP.

Now I doubt that Ion thrusters would be used for SCM, any of the more conventional drives would be better served for that.

I don't know what you mean by "SCM".

And of course upgrading becomes cheaper if those new parts don't need to be built on Earth. Its a lot cheaper to ship from Luna to Earth orbit than from Earth sea level to Earth orbit.

And that's the real trick, isn't it? How, exactly do we manage to get a manufacturing or mining facility onto the moon, and then transit the finished goods back to the surface at a price people are willing to pay? Again, I'm not saying it can't be done, just that the technology and demand aren't there yet.