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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.

lchic - 08:45am Mar 3, 2002 EST (#142 of 153)

Hubble

It is believed the blockage may be debris from a welding job carried out during the shuttle's recent overhaul. http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1852000/1852003.stm

lchic - 08:57am Mar 3, 2002 EST (#143 of 153)

_{US steps up security over nuclear attack fears Washington has deployed hundreds of sophisticated sensors to US borders, overseas facilities and choke points around the US capital, to protect against nuclear or radiological attack by terrorists.}

The Washington Post reports the new radiation sensors are imbedded around some fixed points and temporarily at designated "national security special events" such as last month's Olympic Games in Utah.

The newspaper says the US Government also has placed the Delta Force, the nation's elite commando unit, on a new standby alert to seize control of nuclear materials that the sensors may detect.

The Delta Force has been assigned the mission of killing or disabling anyone with a suspected nuclear device and turning it over to the scientists to be disarmed.

"Clearly ... the sense of urgency has gone up," a senior government policy maker on nuclear, biological and chemical terror told the newspaper.

"The more you gather information, the more our concerns increased about Al Qaeda's focus on weapons of mass destruction of all kinds."

The Post reports the White House has also ordered a crash program to build next-generation devices at the three national nuclear laboratories to address the technological limitations of current sensors.

The intelligence community believes Al Qaeda may already control a stolen Soviet-era tactical nuclear warhead or enough weapons-grade material to fashion a functioning, if less efficient, atomic bomb . see

lchic - 09:08am Mar 3, 2002 EST (#144 of 153)

It's possible to gather a lot of D A T A ... the harder part is interpretation.

lchic - 09:12am Mar 3, 2002 EST (#145 of 153)

Israel stunned ! .. what goes around comes around ... No room for MD activity on close neighbours !?

lchic - 09:22am Mar 3, 2002 EST (#146 of 153)

Russia

You realise I'll have to confiscate your car."

This is a standard opening gambit. Rules is rules. Except that in Russia rules are there to be bent - it's what makes it possible for society to function.

"Mr Robert," he said, avoiding my eye, "how about a little present from England?"

Police find it hard to live on their pay

Russia muddles on in this sort of way. Yes, the police are venal and corrupt but everyone knows they cannot live on their official salaries. Nor, for all the talk of economic recovery, can the majority in this vast and deeply traumatised land. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_1684000/1684962.stm

.... Wasn't it time to forget past pretensions to greatness and start building a society in which the welfare of the individual at last counted for something?

As ever, Russia seems unsure which path to take.

rshow55 - 09:42am Mar 3, 2002 EST (#147 of 153)

Good morning.

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/ducksoup/555/storyshape.html is a MASTERPIECE.

We need to get some stories straight and some facts straight .

The world needs fictions - assumptions accepted, but not proved -- because it couldn't do without them.

Systems of ideas, of course, are for more than just explanation. They order and justify too.

But when assumptions are clearly fictions and clearly lead to ugly results doesn't it make sense to reconsider, shape, bend or replace, the assumptions?

If that were done more often, a lot might get better.

It is now pretty clear that "missile defense" as the administration is proposing it is an expensive fiction.

But of course, in other ways, it is successful. It pays college tuitions, funds families, buys all sorts of things for the people who work on it . . . good things! But couldn't the people be doing something else?

Don't we need to get some facts straight, and make some adjustments?

We need to get some ideas straight, some facts straight, craft some better stories - - may be possible.

But we need some better understandings than we have -- better expositions, and in spots, there may have to be some force - the moral kind that has practical consequences.

Some applications of the "golden rule" - an idea President Bush supported in a speech last year -- would be useful, too. With enough understanding of details so that reasonable applications of the "golden rule" are possible.

lchic - 10:02am Mar 3, 2002 EST (#148 of 153)

So what is the story, and what are the facts?

" http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/ducksoup/555/storyshape.html is a MASTERPIECE.

We need to get some stories straight and some facts straight. " RS

lchic - 10:06am Mar 3, 2002 EST (#149 of 153)

There may be many stories ... using the same 'facts' .. ?

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