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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 - 07:38pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10937 of 10946)
Louis Mazza

Rshow55:

You harp on this supposed decals but offer no proof of their existense. You profess that their "possible" existence is sufficent evidence to cancel development of the ABL.

When the US discovered that we could destroy the whole world, and especially our enemies, we could have struck first and no one would have been left to complain,(there were 4 - 6 atomic bombs and we owned all of them!) That has never been our policy. Mind you, in 1946 we could have said very simply, "We rule, you don't!" We could have disarmed and occupied the world. Everyone would adopt baseball, apple pie and democracy, (we did this to Japan and it kinda worked out!), but that has never been our way.

Your premise that a US BMD would present the world with the fear of a US First Strike. We've always had that capability and last time I looked, it hasn't been used.

Von Daniken wrote the "Chariots of the Gods". He based his thesis on his ignorance. "I don't know why the figures were drawn on the Nacza Plains therefore they must be UFO navigational aids. I don't know how or why the Egyptians made the Pyramids. Therefore, they were built by space aliens.

I've seen facts concerning the development of the ABL and the predecessor BMD system. I draw conclusions based on these facts. Your opinions have no basis in fact and as such weigh ever so lightly on this discussion.

LouMazza

gisterme - 07:40pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10938 of 10946)

lchic 1/19/02 7:58pm

"...if America can't regulate and run a little company like Enron -- how much faith can regular people have in it's running of the Big-ly dangerous nuclear mess?..."

Your knickers are showing, chick. It is not govenment's business to "run" private companies in a free-market society. The absolute failure of communist-style centralization of industry is proof enough for me that the risks involved with free enterprise are well worthwhile.

To answer the second part of your wierd linkage, umm, the nuclear "mess" as you call it is not a free enterprise. So if it is a mess as you say, and the government has been running it, then why would you want to apply the same management genius to private industry?

Still, I don't agree with you at all that the US nuclear arsenal a mess in terms of management on the part of the US government. It's the governments of the other big players that worry me.

That's why we need a ballistic missile defense.

gisterme - 07:44pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10939 of 10946)

mazza9 1/21/02 7:38pm

"...Your opinions have no basis in fact and as such weigh ever so lightly on this discussion."

So far, all of the MD opposition "weight" has been by quantity, not quality, Lou. :-) They already know that.

lchic - 07:52pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10940 of 10946)

The Swedes run their private companies via regulation. The guys who audit don't consult!

Whereas in the US the career stepping stones run

~
• Audit job
• Audit + some consulting
• Consultant
• Creative Consultant-Auditor
• Time to move in on the actual company
• Work as creative Consultant within company
• Push Company real funds into Director bank a/cs
• Pretend Company has subsiduaries off-shore
• Off shore subsiduary's AnnualReportBalanceSheet unstated
• Ignore financial staff within the company who say - *@#&%@* - as bells start ringing - Enron is sinking!

rshowalt - 07:55pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10941 of 10946)

gisterme , mazza , I think I'll let you guys run for a while, and eat a good dinner. I appreciate the vigorous way you change the subject, and the broken field running.

again: rshow55 1/21/02 7:13pm

OUT.

lchic - 07:55pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10942 of 10946)

There is no such thing as a 100% Capitalist Country, there is no such thing as a 100% communist country.

There is such a thing as a MIXED ECONOMY !

Moving to money put to Missile Defence by the tax payer ...

What sort of CREATIVE ACCOUNTING happens here ... ?

rshowalt - 08:00pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10943 of 10946)

Maybe enough "creative accounting" to justify a lot of evasion -- in disregard of any reasonable concern for that national interest? That would fit what I've seen.

now, really out.

gisterme - 08:04pm Jan 21, 2002 EST (#10944 of 10946)

dejaxxvu 1/20/02 12:48pm

"...Would there be any 'creative people' in the Military-techno environment who are reduced via routinisation to 'ordinary' ..."

There are pleny of them, deja.

'...How are loses of 'potential' measured by an economy - are they measured?..."

That's a nearly impossible thing to measure while such folks are actually in the military per se; but your next question suggests the answer...

"...What might such people have been able to provide for us had they not been submerged in dead-end routine?"

I suggest that we almost always find that out because few truly creative people find a military career very satisfying. So they get out after two, three or four years. What the military experience does for them (my own experience too) is to transform them from boys and girls to men and women. They get out of the military at age 22 with "practical life" tools and experiences that they'd take much longer to accumulate had they just continued living with mom and dad and working at McDonand's or gone to some Ivy League college to party for four years. You find very little practical application or stimulation of creativity in those places either.

So I'd say the existance of the military probably stimulates creativity rather than attenuating it over the long run.

Thanks for the little expose on intelligence, dejaxxvu.

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