New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 01:38pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6689 of 6694)
lunarchick@www.com

! dec97-hubble butterfly

rshowalter - 01:46pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6690 of 6694)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Beautiful Hubble pictures --- go down, and look at the detailed ones, and get a physical sense of what astronomers mean when they say that an angle can be "resolved."

Wonderful pictures.

Now let me give an example from Chaison. Space telescope can just resolve the difference between a car with one headlight, or two, from a distance of 2000 miles

(if that car happened to be in space - so that smearing by the atmosphere didn't make the seeing worse.)

Wonderful resolution. But not nearly good enough for some of the "death ray" schemes people seem to have been imagining.

rshowalter - 01:48pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6691 of 6694)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

nb. The stars are so far away, that they are essentially point sources -- with angles like 10e-12 radians -- -- the imperfection of the optics smears them into "blobs" with a resolution of 5 x 10e-7 radians, or "worse."

gisterme - 01:50pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6692 of 6694)

rshowalter wrote: "...Get closer still, and a 50 caliber machine gun would be an effective boost phase interceptor."

Ahhh...the good ol' ma deuce. Why didn't we think of that before? :-)

lunarchick - 01:53pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6693 of 6694)
lunarchick@www.com

Pity Hubble can't look forward - to Wimbledon final .. Aussie's could take it! The 'Superpowers' have blown it :)

Almost dawn, Nite!

rshowalter - 02:11pm Jul 6, 2001 EST (#6694 of 6694)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Nite dawn. Those Hubble pictures were beautiful and constructive, as your references so often are!

THANKS !

You're right that "the Superpowers have blown it."

Blown it "big time" -- in a lot of ways -- ugly ways --- ways Casey, and a lot of other people, knew about, and know about.

We should be careful to see that we don't blow it for good.

We need to get nuclear weapons down, and prohibited. Effectively. Step by step. In a way that works, for the people involved, as they are.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense