This is a great story. Hey, if it isn't too much trouble, would you mind explaining the current political situation in this setting? And if you've already got something written about it, would you mind linking it to me? It just seems pretty interesting.

I keep the whole collection together at http://www.datapacrat.com/sketches/ , and the setting reftext in particular is at http://www.datapacrat.com/sketches/NewAttica.html .

In short, a decadeish before the setting's present, there was a 'Blue Revolution' against the power of the various oligarchical elites - and only some of the orbital habitats, hard for Earth's power-groups to send troops (or even just remote-controlled robotic infantry) to, managed to turn that into full independence. Since then, pretty much anyone on Earth who can field a fighter jet and 1980's missile tech has had the power to blow away any habitat they want, and the orbital habitats have had the power to drop rocks anywhere on Earth they want, leading to a Mutually-Assured-Destruction-based stalemate and Cold War. (The main lunar colonies are currently under Earthly control, though they don't exert full control over all of the moon, and some Loonies have their own plans independent of Earth's...)

Hmm. It seems to me like the orbital colonies are in the more tenuous position. Yes, its easier for them to attack cities on Earth, but at the same time, it's not as hard as you'd think to shoot down a satellite. Which is essentially what they are. Plus, it seems like they'd have fewer resources, both with regards to manpower and materials. I really do not envy them.

That's all too true. In addition, there are a whole variety of groups on Earth who each might decide to take a pot-shot at New Attica, and so New Attica has to avoid ticking off /any/ of them too much. Well, ticking them off enough that they'd be willing to suicide from New Attica's second-strike capability, anyway.

A recent story was based on the idea that Dee and her group are amongst the New Atticans who are trying to build themselves an escape hatch, by trying to get ready to set up new homes further from Earth, over in the asteroid belt, and going as far as needed. (In fact, I'm currently hammering out a possible multi-stage plan involving resources from half-a-dozen different sorts of bodies, to build a ship that can hit 10-15% lightspeed and get to Alpha Centauri in 3-4 decades. With the setting's version of suspended animation, the furs taking that trip would only age 3-4 years during it... of course, there's no guarantee that Alpha Centauri would even have the resources to let them refuel, so it would be a good idea to launch a fast unmanned probe first to survey it, and a few other such probes to other nearby stars to check for other possibilities... and so on, and so forth. :) )

So, if they're hostile to the nations on Earth, and the Lunar colonies are allied with Earth (for now), where do they get their resources? I imagine that between the two of them, Earth and the lunar colonies might be able to enforce a pretty airtight blockade. Of course, space is huge, and I don't know very much at all about the sciences involved, so I may be overestimating the threat they pose to New Attica. By the way, where does New Attica's name come from?

Earth and Luna did try such a blockade during the revolution - which gave the New Atticans plenty of incentive to come up with ways to recycle their available resources as efficiently as possible, and once they demonstrated that they could nudge enough asteroidal and cometary material into Earth orbit for their needs, the full blockade mostly quietly disappeared due to pointlessness. So it's currently possible for a group of Space Scouts from New Attica to head down to Luna for a camping trip.

As for the name - classical Athens, often referred to as the cradle of democracy, was the name of a particular city; said city contained about a third of the political-subgroups of their whole political system, which was a region called Attica.

I see. So, what exactly was the original purpose of the orbital colonies?

Initially, to have the industrial infrastructure required to manufacture space-based solar power satellites as inexpensively as possible (ie, by lifting as much mass as possible from Luna instead of from Earth's deeper gravity well), which was initiated to reduce the logistical tail required to power the robotic "proxy-soldiers" which formed the backbone of American military might after the Puppet War. And since once you get to LEO, you're halfway to anywhere in the system, once the satellites were built, and they already had all those people and equipment in space, they found all sorts of things for them to do - such as to nudge a metal-rich asteroid into Earth orbit to mine, ala Zubrin's present-day suggestions.

Of course, then the people in power on Earth managed to accidentally arrange matters so that the people in orbit found it to be in their best self-interest to start ignoring orders sent from Earth... such as by establishing safety rules which would be lethal when followed in micro-gee, and punishing people who didn't follow them. (Part of a standard political playbook on Earth - extra control can be exercised by the oligarchs by passing laws so that everyone is a criminal, and then selectively enforcing them against disliked individuals.)

Oh wow. I'd ask more on this subject, but it looks like it would just be faster to look through what you've already written.

Maybe - and more likely so due to the fact that I'm about to logoff for the night and get some sleep. :)

Heh, yeah. Goodnight!