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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

dirac_10 - 07:37pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1733 of 1737)

eurocore - 06:23pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1719 of 1730)

On the air contact faces of the plane this is absolutely true (the air's relative kinetic energy means the effective temperature is high),

I donno' man. The air must speed up on the top of the wing to lift it. That's why the top has more of a curve etc.

But I'm on shakey ground since we are talking about supersonic speed which is a new ballgame.

They do say that the SR-71 used to drool fuel as it took off since the metal expanded so much from the tremendous heat that it had to be built loose. That it glowed red hot at speed.

Of course, it is preferable to shoot it down long before it gets to the atmosphere.

rshowalter - 07:40pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1734 of 1737)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

dirac - on the top of the wing, pressures are lower by a few percent -- it is nothing like a vacuum.

In any case, for lasar pulse times, atmospheric cooling isn't significant.

rshowalter - 07:44pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1735 of 1737)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I repeat

rshowalter 3/29/01 7:01pm

the basic physics here is all unclassified. Why doesn't the military, or Lockheed Martin, or some other reputable source of engineering talent, get a real person, with a name and a face, in front of a video camera, with me or any of a number of other people who could do the job, with UMPIRES there so he couldn't lie ---- and establish, beyond any reasonable doubt at all, that this stuff isn't respectable engineering, but is a fraud instead.

So that the proceedings can be put on a video feed on the internet -- for everyone to see.

rshowalter - 07:48pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1736 of 1737)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The U.S. Patent Office has people with sufficient competence and integrity to do the umpiring job, but the British Patent Office -- or people from their opposite number to our NIST - might be better.

Some Russians watching might make it even clearer.

It should be possible to set this out in public, so that anyone, at leisure, could get on the internet and look, believe their eyes, and check details.

rshowalter - 07:58pm Mar 29, 2001 EST (#1737 of 1737)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

guys, this is life and death. Some people might be reminded, if they took time to listen to a sermon, by a very able, mainstream clergyman, preaching to very comfortable, generally economically well off folks, mostly republicans. http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/sermon.html

to get to meat on nuclear stakes, skip the first 9:20.

But we are talking about the end of the world, if mistakes are made here, and we are anything but lucky.

And "mistakes" are being made.

Though I wonder if the word "mistake" is rather too kind.

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