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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 - 06:35pm Feb 11, 2002 EST (#11487 of 11502)
Louis Mazza

RShow55:

I don't doubt that your mathematical statements are correct. Don't you think that there are individuals who are as knowlegeable, (and maybe more creative in this area), and have solved the issue you raise?

I just reviewed the forum question one more time. Implicit in the statement is the fact that the initial SDI attempts were unworkable,"Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? "

The use of the term "Star Wars" is, in and of itself, denigrating. It has no relevance in a studied, intelligent dicussion on matters scientific.

The SDI researches of the 80s had some fascinating results. I remember the picture of the hole punched through a 2" steel plate by a plastic projectile the size of a beer can! The rail gun was coming along quite well until SDI funding dried up after the collapse of the USSR. The Clementine probe sent to the moon grew out of SDI research as did launching systems, command and control software and LASERS!!!.

In the early 90s the SDI program developed a sodium laser to act as a reference point for a ground based AO system for a Laser BMD. Maybe you shold read Clancy's "Cardinal of the Kremlin". BMD at its best

LouMazza

rshow55 - 07:21pm Feb 11, 2002 EST (#11488 of 11502)

Mazza:

You ask a good question, ask it with civility:

" Don't you think that there are individuals who are as knowlegeable, (and maybe more creative in this area), and have solved the issue you raise?

I think there are plenty of other individuals who are as knowledgeable as I am in this area, probably many more knowledgeable - and many probably more creative, too. All the same, my answer, now, is no. I don't think they've solved the problem because I don't think the problem is soluble. No, though of course I could be wrong. I've been wrong plenty of times before. But this one looks very tough to me, and it seems to me to be one of many problems that would have to be solved together.

I think that the amount of creativity and technical effort on ABL is enormous -- and think that if the people on that project were attempting to do possible jobs -- they could do great good. I wish they could be redeployed to do jobs that could be done. But I don't think they're going to make it, this time, on this project. Not because I doubt that they're good. But because I think they're trying to do too many hard-impossible things, all together. .

- - - - -

"In the early 90s the SDI program developed a sodium laser to act as a reference point for a ground based AO system for a Laser BMD."

I'd appreciate any references you have.

rshow55 - 07:24pm Feb 11, 2002 EST (#11489 of 11502)

MD11484 gisterme 2/11/02 3:31pm asks: "So you think a one-time expendature of a few hundred billion dollars to save couple of hundred thousand lives and prevent perhaps a trillion dollars damage for each WMD-armed missile destroyed is not a rational investment, Robert?"

The question here isn't that simple. Let's look at some cases.

. If a one time expenditure of a few hundred billions dollars would with certainty save a couple of hundred thousand lives, and save a trillion dollars in damage then it would be a sensational investment - - - but only if it were the cheapest effective way of doing it. If an alternative approach could do the job just as certainly for a tenth as much --- it would be terrible decision to fund the more expensive way. So even when technical uncertainty is zero (and that's not the case with MD) - alternatives make a difference, too. Costs and payoffs exist in a context, and that context includes the existence of alternatives.

Let's look at another case:

. If a one time expenditure of a few hundred billions dollars had one chance in a million of saving a couple of hundred thousand lives, and saving a trillion dollars in damage then it would be a lousy investment - - - and not worth doing - people would have to look for another way.

So technical odds matter.

And when something matters enough -- you may be willing to "pay whatever it costs" to solve the problem -- but the solution has to work , and it has to make sense, in the context of other things that can be done, and need to be done. If something is important enough, you're willing to pay "whatever it actually costs" -- and with some margin for error. Even so, it doesn't make sense to throw money away - even if the solution works.

If the "solution" can't work, then it isn't a solution, and it makes no sense to spend money on it. It makes sense to find a solution that does work. Or some alternative solutions -- so you can choose the best ones.

There's more to say -- but it seems to me that most people would be agreed, this far, in terms of what I've said, on the assumptions stated.

rshow55 - 09:05pm Feb 11, 2002 EST (#11490 of 11502)

Out.

Have to rest. My eyes hurt some, and I know I'm running tired - tired enough to make bad mistakes. Very bad ones. In 11439 I wrote down the sine and cosine series, which I ought to know better than the palm of my hand, looked at what I'd typed, and didn't notice that I had the series terribly wrong. Wrenched my guts. So nobody has to tell me that I can make mistakes, and bad ones. Just like everybody else.

I'm trying to come up with good answers. If, as gisterme sometimes suspects, I have a few things wrong - - well, I will try to check, and get them right. Hope others do the same.

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