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Missile Defense

Nazi engineer and Disney space advisor Wernher Von Braun helped give us rocket science. Today, the legacy of military aeronautics has many manifestations from SDI to advanced ballistic missiles. Now there is a controversial push for a new missile defense system. What will be the role of missile defense in the new geopolitical climate and in the new scientific era?

rshowalt - 06:53pm Sep 30, 2000 EDT (#349 of 396)

William Jefferson Clinton was given the duty of thinking about when to use nuclear weapons, as responsibly as he could. How could a man thinking about such things, and seriously considering doing such things, get concerned about a little fallatio with a willing and eager partner? Or a few lies about the episode? Compared to mass murder, these are small things.

The Lewinsky matter was unfortunate indeed, and Clinton admitted that he had lost his moral compass. I'd agree that he had. (And paid such a price for it!) But how can one be surprised that he did lose something of his good judgement (continuing, all the while, to act well on many things - he most often showed excellent judgement in his day to day duties.)

If nuclear weapons are permitted, how, with careful comparison, can you construct or maintain a moral compass? You can't. Nuclear weapons are corrupting. We should get rid of them.

This shouldn't be a partisan matter, but this year it is. George Bush Sr. can be fairly called "the Vice President from the CIA" and then "the President from the CIA." While President he, on CIA advice, made a botch of the beautiful military work of the Gulf War commanders that will be remembered for centuries. The bad effects of halting that war at the moment of truth continue to this day. Now, a younger Bush, carefully indoctrinated and motivated by his father, may be called "son of CIA."

The institutions most identified with nuclear weapons, and the patterns of lies and intimidation they require, are on the Republican side this year. I believe that there are excellent reasons for outlawing nuclear weapons, and voting Democratic, this year.

I can't understand how a responsible clergyman of any faith, interested in the moral welfare of the people she counsels, or this country, can possibly vote for the Republican presidential candidate this year. Perhaps someone willing to discuss the morality of nuclear weapons on videotape can explain the matter to me.

I think the Republicans should be ashamed of the arguments that they are making this year, and what they are advocating.

There are good reasons to want to morally straighten this nation, good reasons to want to get us all "reading on the same page" about what day to day moral conduct is and is not.

None of these reasons argues for voting Republican this year.

If we renounced first use of nuclear weapons, faced what we've done and become, and got rid of nuclear weapons, our nation, in a serious sense, could be redeemed. President Clinton could be redeemed too, and he could take a leading part in a national redemption America needs.

I pray that this happens.

lunarchick - 07:27pm Sep 30, 2000 EDT (#350 of 396)
Barrier Reef - not the place4 - NUKE SUBs !

.... how long do we hold the silence .....

lunarchick - 08:27pm Sep 30, 2000 EDT (#351 of 396)
Barrier Reef - not the place4 - NUKE SUBs !

I wouldn't know much about missiles ... but ... there is knowledge regarding arching (electrical fires) in aircraft. The electrical history of aircrafts that crash is not investigated re crash findings. The investigators are stakeholders in the parties that produce the aircraft. The concerns of government wiring expert investigators are 'filed' and ignored.

The military aircraft have been rewired. The passenger aircraft are using wire for up to 100,000 hours. 10,000 being the max life.

The wire-process in planes needs review, as do the recording of aborted flights and crashes.

See 'Sunday' 1stOct2000 http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/

" Fire in the Sky Eighteen months ago, Sunday investigated what caused TWA flight 800 to explode in mid-air in 1996 soon after taking off from New York, killing all 230 on board. Reporter Ross Coulthart spoke with an aviation expert who blamed damaged electrical wiring, which is also the suspect in several other baffling crashes. The American report into the 1996 crash has now been released... and it points the finger at the Kapton wiring, which is still found in nearly half the world's passenger jets, including those of Ansett and Qantas. Nine years after safety regulators were first warned of the danger, will something now be done? " more

lunarchick - 10:42pm Sep 30, 2000 EDT (#352 of 396)
Barrier Reef - not the place4 - NUKE SUBs !

From the above i noted that Washington DC has a 'Center for Public Integrity' (Hogan)

kalter.rauch - 05:21am Oct 1, 2000 EDT (#353 of 396)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

Worse, even, than Kapton(?) insulated wiring may be Kynar coated wire. When heated in strong electric fields, and then cooled, it (the insulation) can acquire strong peizoelectric properties...it becomes intensely capacitive and, to me anyway, liable to create significant spark discharge, if adjacent materials happen to present a certain dielectric between the wire and another conductor.

rshowalt - 08:47am Oct 1, 2000 EDT (#354 of 396)

Unintended consequences, coupled to great penalties for mistakes, can, have and will make for tragedies. If these mistakes involve nuclear weapons, which are now, accepted doctrine notwithstanding, coupled like a string of firecrackers, the world will end.

The technology of control, with the advent of the internet, is metamorphising, and, if control is very highly valued, as it must be in the nuclear weapons field, may be said to be growing like a cancer. No one man, no one group, can sort out changed, continuously shifting new patterns of disorganization that are being made possible. That are now inevitable. That are here now, and that are going to be radically worse within another year or two.

Our nuclear weapons "balance" has been corrupting,and inherently unstable, from the start, but things are getting worse quickly, and I personally believe that an effort to take these weapons out of service, by Christmas, would be well worth the effort.

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