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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.


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mazza9 - 10:12pm Apr 11, 2002 EST (#1278 of 1283)
Louis Mazza

The lies regarding the so called Palestinian state have been propogated like just so much propoganda. The UN resolution that established the state of Israel has been ignored. The Arab world has fought and lost 4 wars in the last 50 years.

So now the Arabs resort to aiming suicidal hatemongers at the Jewish state.The Arabs have transformed the sayings of Jesus from, "The meek shall inherit the world" to "The weak shall blow up everyone and take over the world."

If all the Palestinians would promise, I say let's give them all the C-4 they need to enter paradise. Say, Do Lesbian freedom fighters get their quota of virgins?

The United States is a country which honors the rule of law. Yes we're imperfect but at least we try to have rules and follow them. There is NO justification for crashing civilian airliners into the WTC nor blowing up people at a religious setting, (the Seder massacre). We Americans will hoot and holler over a blown football call or strike or ball in a baseball game. But guess what? We do have referees, umpires and judges.

Your value system and soul is warped and black. Your postings show a degree of hate for your fellow man that is frightening. Why are you anti semetic? Why are you so bitter, blighted and bellicose?

If the world is so bad why don't you strap on some C-4 and come looking for me? You're pathetic. Have a nice night!!

LouMazza

lchic - 01:41am Apr 12, 2002 EST (#1279 of 1283)

mAzzA i'm familiar with 10-4, not C-4, over and out :)

Powell:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/1349.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1924000/1924706.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1553000/1553125.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1920000/1920183.stm
Interesting program here telling of the differences between the EU perspective of Palestine and the more distant (JewishLobbyNY) American mode: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/analysis.shtml

    MIDDLE EAST - DIFFERING VIEWS
    The crisis in the Middle East has highlighted differences between the American and European views of the conflict.
    The United States, with its large and influential Jewish community, has long been a strong supporter of Israel and sympathises with its right to self-defense. Europe, geographically closer and with longer historical ties to the middle East, was quicker to demand that Israel withdraw its forces.
    The conflict is also portrayed in very different ways by the American and European media. In Analysis, Belinda Rhodes examines where these different views come from and asks whether Europe and America will be able to work together in trying to restart the peace process.

lchic - 01:45am Apr 12, 2002 EST (#1280 of 1283)

Palestinian Saga 1930-2002

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=282454

gisterme - 03:00am Apr 12, 2002 EST (#1281 of 1283)

rshow55 4/10/02 6:40pm

"...QUESTIONS: :

" How technically challenging are the missile defense programs that have been set out in public (laser and midcourse interception ) in terms of what is known, and what has been achieved, in the open engineering and scientific literature?..."

Wow, Robert. That question doesn't make much sense, but let me try. Let's see...allow me to remove some of the word salad that's not making sense to try to get to the question you're trying to ask: How technically challenging are known missile defense programs in terms of what is known, and what has been achieved, in the open engineering and scientific literature.

Hmmm. That's shorter but still doesn't make much sense. I think you're asking "how difficult" is missile defense given known technical data. That's an unanswerable question. "How much?" is a request for a quantity. What would the units be? That question is simply nonsense as asked. I'm not being evasive here but I won't waste my time trying to answer the question as asked. What I will say is this:

Midcourse interception system - It's working through its test program now. It has been able to intercept four out of six incoming targets. How difficult is that? I'd say very difficult out obviously it is doable and so there are no laws of physics being violated.

Airborne Laser - There are tons of open literature about lasers in general and how powerful they are, tons of open literature about adaptive optics, tons of open literature about angular resolution of telescopes and accuracy of their pointing mechanisms in non-ABL applications like the Hubble Space Telescope that, applied to the ABL as-is would be good enough. We've already been through all this, Robert. I've posted the links. If you hadn't ignored them (evaded response) you wouldn't be asking this question.

All the pieces-parts needed for integration into the ABL system are there in the open literature. You've been shown at least what I've posted, had it held up in your face, and you're still in denial. Skepticism comes naturally to many folks before they've seen seen a thing, but I have to admit that you're unique in that you deny things can work even after you've been shown. Once again, I'd suggest you join the Flat Earth Society.

"...Are the objectives for these specific kinds of systems compatible with the laws of physics?..."

You'd know that they are if you bothered to check the open literature. Obviously the individual parts couldn't work prior to integration if they violated any laws of physics.

(continued)

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