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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

rshow55 - 08:02am Jan 17, 2002 EST (#10835 of 10840)

Time for examination and review - - in terms of resonable accountings of national interest, and fact.

Weapons of mass destruction are a big problem - and I'm for reducing the risks of them, which are grave - as efficiently as possible.

And dealing with them with resources that are proportionate to other real needs and priorities, as well.

In medical research, people examine a lot of alternatives -- most don't turn out to work, for one reason or another -- and everybody understands that. But when there are solid reasons to see that an approach cannot possibly work -- then human and financial resources are redeployed.

Medical research has a big advantage - much of it is, in various ways, "played close to the chest" -- but it isn't classified. So hard decisions get made. Robert Bork's phrase about " the real world of compromise, half-measures, and self seeking" applies (in part) to medical research and every other field of human endeavor. So mechanisms of checking are important.

In a classified context, the mechanisms of checking, hard enough in open areas, are much hardder, and the temptations to dissemble greater. Does checking work at all? Perhaps, but my impression is that "Star Wars" - as of now, is full of many snafus - piled on top of each other, elaborately patched and concealed -- to the point that massive resources (human and financial) are being wasted.

It seems to me that the responses from gisterme and catelli , especially since rshow55 1/16/02 7:31am , indicate that I'm on to some things that are very important, that they can only try to deflect -- and cannot deal with honestly.

I'd call that unpatriotic.

rshow55 - 08:07am Jan 17, 2002 EST (#10836 of 10840)

Interesting change in tone on Catelli's part since guy_catelli 1/16/02 10:51am responded to three postings from MD10798 rshow55 1/16/02 7:31am .

Could it be that some "establishment" people looked at problems, decided they were too serious to face, and went on a defamation offensive?

rshow55 - 08:27am Jan 17, 2002 EST (#10837 of 10840)

ENRON AND THE GRAMMS by Bob Herbert

" How long will it take? How many decades and how many scandals have to come and go before we catch on? We're human. We're self-interested. And when left to our own devices, some of us will do the wrong thing.

Where the public interest is involved -- and it is involved in missile defense - certain questions need to be answered.

lchic - 11:04am Jan 17, 2002 EST (#10838 of 10840)

Surreal as it may seem, at least Enron was eventually subject to public scrutiny ... MD on the other hand is surreal - yet the machinations of it, are 'hidden' from public perusal.

rshow55 - 11:45am Jan 17, 2002 EST (#10839 of 10840)

There are some good reason for hiding some of it. But this question can be answered in public, and should be:

" How far beyond what is possible in the open literature does a MD project have to be to have any chance of working -- how many "triumphs" or "miracles" are needed?

Missile Defense would cease to be surreal (and all the valid parts of it would remain classified) with questions of this form answered - technical questions. MD10764 rshow55 1/14/02 7:36pm

That posting includes this:

" Right answers, on this subject matter, are worth getting. In the national interest, and the interest of the whole world. With some cooperation from the Bush administration, so that clear, unclassified questions could be answered by real people, with real names and real P.E. tickets, I believe that nongovernmental resources could be brought to bear to get this done. Contested questions of fact or analysis, on unclassified but technically decisive issues could, I believe, be determined, in ways that would work in public, by "umpires" - operating in the open, who are responsible for preparing the professional engineering exams in the relevant fields, in the US and other countries with analogous credentialling."

Perhaps, if some people in the US and abroad supported this sort of thing -- it could be done. There are people, worldwide, who are technically literate, and support reduction of nuclear risk. Here is a very good organization, one the won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1985: http://www.ippnw.org/

This Missile Defense forum, as it stands, can't take things to closure. But a format that could do so would be readily constructable.

On a basis that has already been discussed here, at length, with gisterme and people (s)he is in contact with.

lchic - 12:02pm Jan 17, 2002 EST (#10840 of 10840)

If you're saying:
'Let the bright-light fall across the Shadow?'
you'll need these.

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