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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

mazza9 - 04:11pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10923 of 10946)
Louis Mazza

RShow55: If the reflective coating is so easy to implement then why: Russian Hopes to Limit U.S. Shield?

rshow55 - 05:04pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10924 of 10946)

They've been enronned .

You've heard of "win-win" situations?

This is a "lose-lose" situation.

A lot of sequences based on deception turn out that way. This set of misunderstanding and deceptions, which has been part of a pattern of psychological warfare going on for fifty years now, ought to be fixed. For our sakes, for the Russian's sakes, and for the safety of the world.

The Russians are absolutely right about this -- international weapons control is important - - and essential if we are ever to realistically eliminate (or nearly eliminate) the very large risks we all face from weapons of mass destruction (including our own.)

An excellent step would be an "engineer's court" -- to establish some facts about what can be done in the open literature.

MD10764 rshow55 1/14/02 7:36pm We need some "islands of technical fact" to be determined, beyond reasonable doubt, in a clear context, beyond politics. We're talking big risks of mass death here -- we shouldn't fool around.

gisterme - 06:08pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10925 of 10946)

rshow55 1/18/02 3:51pm

"...Is that a realistic prospect?..."

Absolutely!

"...All the same, the difficulties show a good deal about what is not reasonably possible..."

What difficulties, Robert? You're the one who claims not to have enough knowledge (due to lack of checking) to be able to make a judgement about the facts while simultaneously stating your judgement of impossibility based on your technical feelings. Go figure. Does that equate to a confession of bad judgement? It seems so to me.

gisterme - 06:38pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10926 of 10946)

rshow55 1/18/02 3:53pm

"...The engineers who did this will know how very easy it is to get 95% (or 99% - or 99.9%) in a decal. What does that do to the effectiveness of their system?..."

That's exactly why I'd confidently bet you dollars to pennies that there is not a decal on the mirror surface, Robert.

And yes, they probably do know how difficult it would be to make a decal with 95%+ reflectivity...as you say, they'd have to...for reasons previously stated and ignored by you such a decal would be far more difficult to make than the laser mirror. And, Robert, did you ever build model airplanes when you were a kid? Do you remember how difficult it is to get even a plastic decal to be flat on a multiply curved surface? Now that does approach impossibility!

"...Note that the missiles involved are not especially likely to reside in silos..."

Right. That means they'll be dusty and dirty just like cars get. Dust! The perfect "shine" remover.

"...This ABL system is so easy to defeat that it is not worth building as an operational MD system..."

Your opinon, Robert. However, you haven't presented one iota of tangible evidence to back the up. Imaginary decals are not tangible evidence. I stand by what I said before in:

gisterme 11/9/01 4:36am

. You still haven't answered that yet and it won't go away as long as you don't. Harping about imaginary decals has nothing to do with that process that you pointed out for getting the high reflectivity through thin-film deposition. That process would never work for a flexible surface. "Thin film" in that case means angstroms of thickness...can't flex something that thin without ruining the integrity of the layer. The multiple layers described in your original reference make that even less likely.

Robert, if you can develop a decal like you imagine for under $100K, then I'd say it's your patriotic duty to do so to save the rest of us tax payers a lot of money on BMD laser system developoment. Why not make a proposal to the Air Force rather than just whining about it here? I'll bet I can guess why...

gisterme - 07:02pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10927 of 10946)

guy_catelli 1/18/02 9:40pm

"...but also their stupidity and utter lack of common sense. this is not surprising -- silicon computers, as well as human ones, have no judgment."

"Lack of common sense" brings to mind a woman I dated many years ago. She was bright, articulate engaging...university educated; but every once in a while she'd do something that seemed inocomprehensibly stupid. After one such event, as I stood slack-jawed in the aftermath, I finally gaterhed myself enough to ask if she was entirely devoid of common sense. She looked me right in the eye and said "Everybody has common sense!".

I asked her how she would define "common sense"...she said "it is common knowledge, stuff that everybody knows, like how to use a drinking glass or spoon".

Sheesh! That explained a lot of things to me and I'll say that relationship didn't develop much beyond that point.

So as not to leave anybody hanging, here's Miram Webster's take...

common sense...

1 : a sense believed to unite the sensations of all senses in a general sensation or perception

2 : good sound ordinary sense : good judgment or prudence in estimating or managing affairs especially as free from emotional bias or intellectual subtlety or as not dependent on special or technical knowledge *too absurdly metaphysical for the ears of prudent common sense— P.E.More*

3: among Cartesians : something that is evident by the natural light of reason and hence common to all men b (1) : the intuitions that according to the school of Scottish philosophy are common to all mankind (2) : the capacity for such intuitions c : the unreflective opinions of ordinary men : the ideas and conceptions natural to a man untrained in technical philosophy — used especially in epistemology synonyms see SENSE

...maybe she was a cartesian. :-)

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