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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 - 05:05pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11420 of 11426)
Louis Mazza

RShow55:

"which has fancy but not absolutely perfect optical characteristics."

Okay, LASER 101!

Light Amplification (by the) Stimulated Emmission (of) Radiation.

A laser has absolutely perfect optical characteristics.

This is why my laser pointer, ($14.95 at Sams), my laser printer, ($299.95 at Sams) and my DSL link, ($49.95 from SBC) work!!!!!

What's the problem? My daughter's 8th Grade science class got it. The pictures of the atmospheric wrinkle being "cancelled by the deformable mirror" impressed them. Why not you?

As I mentioned in a previous post, optics is not a new discipline. The optical maser invention was a direct descent of the maser which now pops our popcorn in our microwave ovens. In the same time frame the optical maser is now printing our Walentine missives on our laser printers.

It's called collimated light. the photons (waves now that's an interesting physics discussion all by itself since light sometimes acts like a particle and sometimes like an electromagnetic wave. BTW Einstien received his Nobel for this discover). The same gentle push that is called the solar wind becomes a "hurricane when focused through a set of mirrors, (aka laser). The gentle wind can pack quite a punch, just like a wind through a fan.

Heck, I've run out of analogies and patience.

LouMazza

rshow55 - 05:10pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11421 of 11426)

Absolutely perfect? Not for this purpose. You're mistaking a "cosine almost exactly 1" -- for a sine of an angle, accurate to micro-radians.

Not the same thing at all. Lasers do NOT have "absolutely perfect optical characteristics" - in the sense needed for ABL.

rshow55 - 05:10pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11422 of 11426)

While I'm working on refining MD11416 rshow55 2/10/02 4:12pm . . .

I enjoyed these postings today, and think some others might, as well, just in passing.

MD8500 rshowalter 9/5/01 3:04pm ... MD8501rshowalter 9/5/01 3:07pm
MD8503 rshowalter 9/5/01 3:18pm

rshow55 - 05:16pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11423 of 11426)

My little hand held calculater gives the cosine of a milliradian as .9999995 .

Cosine of 5x e10-4 radians is .99999999

The "cosine very close to 1" sense of "optically perfect" that Mazza's using doesn't come near to the level of perfection ABL needs.

rshow55 - 05:23pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11424 of 11426)

Suppose, for the sake of argument, I did grant that the focus needed to damage was just barely possible technically? (Haven't granted the point, but suppose.)

How many OTHER "just barely possible" (or impossible) things have to be done together to make ABL, and the other MD programs work?

These programs are stunts . . not tactically realistic proposals at all.

And they are so marginal that you can find lists of things wrong with them - just looking at simple sketches.

For example, when you consider that optical imperfections in the laser part of the assembly have to be compensated, the "where's the feedback path?" question has redoubled force.

There are many problems with these systems.

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