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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?

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mazza9 - 11:45am Feb 3, 2002 EST (#11204 of 11209)
Louis Mazza

lchic you got it rong. de fence is around my backyard.

Gisterme thanks for the help with the numbers.

When I did some research on adaptive optics for a speech I presented to the the Texas Astronomical Society, I referred to an article in Scientific American. There was a picture of a technician working the adaptive mirror which had finger sized actuators to deform the mirror to cancel out atmospheric turbluence. Interestingly, this technique has lead astromomers to predict that the next generation of ground based telescopes will have a better resolution then the Hubble!!

At the DARPA site they have a whole section on MEMS, Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. This is the nanotechnology which will change our entire way of life. Imagine a thermionic power supply the size of an aspirin powering a Palm. It's pictured there. Imagine small fuel cells powering Laptops, GPS receivers and cell phones. Prototypes are now being field tested by the Marines. Their fuel? Butane. In the future the soldier will fuel her Zippo, Night Vision goggles, laptop, etc, etc with lighter fluid! Since batteries are a logistical nightmare these things are going to happen. Oh did I mention the wankel engine the size of a penny that produces 1 watt of power? Imagine a brick sized package of these engines, running on butane or propane. You have a 1 kilowatt power source for electric cars, (oops wrong forum. but I posted this at the Future Energies forum.)P> Finally, small actuated mirrors about 1 micron in size. The can be used for an adaptive mirror which would be ,more precise then the current generation. Also, these small flapping devices could be used to improve the flow of gases through a jet turbine which would increase fuel efficiency. Somebody once said,..give me a platform to stand on and I'll move the world." I'm sure it wasn't RShow55.

LouMazza

lchic - 01:02pm Feb 3, 2002 EST (#11205 of 11209)

mAzzA in the GREEN corner moving left of centre, mode Small is beautiful ... just back from church?

rshow55 - 01:22pm Feb 3, 2002 EST (#11206 of 11209)

Ken Lay was not distrusted, but trusted. He was a friend to many powerful people. People took his word for things -- took the word of Enron for things.

Look what happened. For trust to work, there has to be accomodation, on a routine basis, of checking -- that is, an accomodation of distrust. We live, all of us, in a world where things have to be checked -- because otherwise, mistakes can easily happen, and deceptions can as well.

Enron Panel Finds Inflated Profits and Few Controls by KURT EICHENWALD http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/03/business/03ENRO.html makes very interesting reading in this regard.

" A report from a special committee of the Enron Corporation (news/quote)'s board concluded yesterday that executives intentionally manipulated the company's profits, inflating them by almost $1 billion in the year before Enron's collapse through byzantine dealings with a group of partnerships.

"The 217-page report describes an across-the-board failure of controls and ethics at almost every level of Enron, the Houston energy company. It was issued just before scheduled testimony in Congress by Enron's top executives, and during criminal and regulatory investigations into what has emerged as one of the landmark scandals of American business.

"As oversight broke down at Enron, the report says, a culture emerged of self-dealing and self-enrichment at the expense of the energy company's shareholders. The report is also harshly critical of Enron's accountants at Arthur Andersen and the company's lawyers, saying they signed off on flawed and improper decisions every step of the way.

"The transactions, which resulted in the collapse of the company, were caused by "a flawed idea, self-enrichment by employees, inadequately designed controls, poor implementation, inattentive oversight, simple (and not so simple) accounting mistakes, and overreaching in a culture that appears to have encouraged pushing the limits," the report says. "Our review indicates many of those consequences could and should have been avoided."

" What emerged at Enron, as described in the report, was a culture of deception, where every effort was made to manipulate the rules and disguise the truth as part of an effort by executives to falsely pump up earnings and earn millions of dollars for themselves in the process."

Gisterme , Mazza , your patterns of support for missile defense sound similar -- sound like defense of a "culture of deception, where every effort was made to manipulate the rules and disguise the truth" - - saying all the while, of course "trust us."

Is the "missile defense culture" like the "Enron culture" -- when you look at much of the record --the comparisons are disquieting.

For stability, people and organizations -- and organizations in cooperation -- have to be able to check things - - and that means that there is a presumption that mistakes and deceptions are possible. An assumption of distrust.

Wrong answers, incorrect assumptions, and deceptions lead very often to instability, in a simple, basic sense.

rshow55 - 01:29pm Feb 3, 2002 EST (#11207 of 11209)

The things people have to do are unstable in a simple sense. There are lots of ways for them to go wrong. For things to go right, many actions have to work together, and in sequences, often complicated ones. For that, information applied to cases has to fit those cases.

People are clear that this applies to the jobs an auto mechanic has to do. Mistakes are easy, and possible mistakes very many. Success is hard. This applies to the conduct and maintenance of military function, or alliances, or businesses, as well.

The US is now in serious trouble in its most basic alliances -- if it were more truthful, it could do much better.

MD11065 rshow55 1/26/02 12:50pm ... MD11068 rshow55 1/26/02 4:14pm
MD10759 rshow55 1/14/02 1:48pm

(2 following messages)

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