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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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gisterme - 05:25pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11425 of 11476)

rshow55 2/10/02 4:12pm "...If you're interested in getting right technical answers - not my answers, or your answers, or anybody in particular's answers..."

Huh? You've made it obvious from the beginning that you're not a technical person, Robert; but this is the first time that you've practically admitted it.

If you were a person with technical training and experience, Robert, you'd realize that the technical community is not some vast sea of disconnected "smart people", but rather a community that is quite tightly connected by common knowledge. A scientist or engineer of any particular specialty is trained pretty much the same wherever the training takes place because there's a general diffusion of knowledge within the community.

You seem to imagine there are some "magic" folks such as preparers for engineering licensing exams that somehow know more than anybody else, are less opinionated or more honest. Guess what?.. they're just engineers too. Trained just like all the rest. Actually, those particular folks you suggest are ones who may have had their careers limited to the academic environment and so may have less real-world experience than many others.

The acquisition of real-world experience is the true education of engineers and scientists. All that the years at University provide are the basic tools needed to get started with that real education. The point is that any competent scientist or engineer can recognize sound technical data that comes from within his or her own field of expertise. And all that are worth their salt have enough general technical savvy to know when they're being fed a line of BS on nearly any technical topic. The really good ones can rise above the constraints of limited imagination and create never-before-imagined things.

Because you don't seem to know that, Robert, is how I know you're not a competent technical person.

What you describe as "Concerete bridges to the abstract" (as if the idea were something unique that you're doing) is nothing more than mathematical modelling, Robert. Every scientist and engineer is trained to do that. That's probably the most basic tool and one that is taught in Universities...how to use math to model real-world things. If you can't do that then you don't get past your junior year without changning your major.

So there aren't any golden magical arbitors who are going to pick your bottle up for you, Robert. You need to grow up enough to do so for yourself.

And I'm still wondering where that Clinton-promised "bridge to the 21st century" is.

mazza9 - 05:32pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11426 of 11476)
Louis Mazza

RShow55

Hockey Pucks! When looked at as a frequency, all the wave fronts are in "in step", (collimated) and the same frequency. There is no variablility due to "angles" The photons can be focused and just as Gisterme mentioned of "using a hand held magnifying lens to "zap" ants on the sidewalk" the energy of the COIL is focused on the missile body. We're talking megawatts (or kilo joules!!)of power!

Ever make a mistake and "nuke" your popcorn in the microwave? Who hasn't? Well that's focused energy!

Put your cosine away. We're not talking about angles, (although I think Gisterme has your angle figgered out!).

Since the COIL uses three fuels, I suspect that it is tunable over a certain frequency range. I don't believe that this would be an unclassified fact but chemical lasers do demonstrate a tunablility!

Try again.

LouMazza

gisterme - 05:36pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11427 of 11476)

"...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.)..."

Your grant of anything is not a necessary precondition for possibility, "barely" or otherwise.

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

None, Robert. Don't forget that human flight was accomplished for the first time when gasoline engines, arifoil structures and aerodynamic controls were all just barely possible given the technology that the Wright brothers had available to them. They had to invent ways to accomplish some of it.

"Of course we know that the prospect of human flight is just a stunt and will never be a really practical proposal..."

I'm sure that was said by opinionated folks of the day who were just lacking in imagination. Folks just like you.

rshow55 - 05:44pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11428 of 11476)

As I've said, "the key problem, it seems to me, would be to get representatives of the military, or the contactors, with names, and PE tickets at stake, to participate in clear engineering discussions of what is possible in terms of the open literature, and what is not."

Nobody would have to be especially imaginative. Only clear.

Military contractors insist that people, above a certain level on the engineering side of the organization, pass the P.E. exams. Not that it is the only credential. But it is one valued one.

If the DOD could pass tests, they wouldn't be so evasive -- work so hard to avoid them.

gisterme - 05:45pm Feb 10, 2002 EST (#11429 of 11476)

"it's the mirror that's being manipulated"

"...Yes, I understood that --- "

At last.

"...but there is no feedback between the laser and the target, as you've described the situation -- where the exhaust plume is the reference area (I say area, rather than point, because that is what it is.)..."

That's been explained to you several times, Robert but the bottle that contains the explanation now lies on the floor where you tossed it. I'm not going to pick it up for you again.

Crawl down an find it yourself. Last time you dropped it was day before yesterday.

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