I don't know about you, but around here, in civilized, completely non-frontier Mid-Western America, police response to violent crime is on the order of an hour or more. Belters, living on what they're often thinking of as the edges of the frontier, espousing self-reliance and all the rest, taking longer than that to get an outside response? I'd kind of assume so.
So yeah, it makes response take longer in the early stages of things when there aren't many major settlements outside of the Earth-Luna area, but look at real world frontier places. The time between the very first Fen going Up and OGJ kicking off is 5 years; what was the American West like 5 years after the first settlers had arrived? In the very early going, even with as many problems are solved by the 'wave, shouldn't "pushing the frontier" be pushing the frontier?
So yeah, it makes response take longer in the early stages of things when there aren't many major settlements outside of the Earth-Luna area, but look at real world frontier places. The time between the very first Fen going Up and OGJ kicking off is 5 years; what was the American West like 5 years after the first settlers had arrived? In the very early going, even with as many problems are solved by the 'wave, shouldn't "pushing the frontier" be pushing the frontier?