Fireflair wrote:The obvious thing to do, in my humble opinion, is to launch a probe of some sort on the far side of the planet from the OBS. Send the probe up and away from the planet toward a moon. See what happens and how the OBS responds. If it doesn't do diddly, then consider the possibility of something greater. I'd suggest moving up in stages from probes to an unmanned courier of some sort to a shuttle before letting anyone get off world. But at that point you could establish a presence on a moon and start manufacturing. Watching the OBS the entire time to see what it does at any stage.
Maybe the simple answer about what to do over the temple and the OBS is to let sleeping dogs lie? If they can get off planet, just move to new real estate and start building there.
We have text ev from the first book that OWL sent a probe up toward the OBS and it destroyed it. The implication being that there is just one main bombardment platform. There are, I suspect, more than sufficient deployed sensor arrays around the planet that the OBS knows if anyone is violating the limit on the prescriptions.
While it seems logical and it is the approach I believe I would try (if I were the author) based on the text in snippet #2, I don't think I will bet next weeks beer money that David is leaning that way.
Also, It seems to my (somewhat spotty) memory that Merlin was looking at the stars while he waited to the OBS to react to his 'simulated steam engine' experiment and at at least one other point when he just needed to put things in perspective.
Also, I seem to recall that members of the IC were taken to the edge of the atmosphere for a look.