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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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rshow55 - 11:51am May 9, 2003 EST (# 11536 of 11541)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

There have to be cycles of invention - for reasons that are basic to the logic of technical development.

This is an area where Casey and I were pretty clear - a major motivation for AEA - which set out to do first principle based redisign of the internal combustion engine.

Consider the case of the railroad - and particularly a simple component of railroad technology - the railroad wheel-axle bearing.

The first commercially successful, mechanically powered rail road was built around 1830 - the Baltimore and Ohio RR was among the first in the world - and from the beginning, the key, essential advantage of railroad transportation was low friction transport. Friction losses in a railroad are the sum of the (small) hysteretic and squirm losses between metal wheel and metal rail - and the (usually much larger) losses in the bearings. By the time of the US Civil War, railroad bearing design was well advanced - bearings in use in 1860 were very similar to the hydrodynamic (or pillow) bearings still in use today - and in wider use 20 years ago. When I looked at RR bearings in the mid 1970's - and more seriously in the early 1980's, I was impressed that the last major respecification of the hydrodynamic bearings (as opposed to roller bearings) occured in 1876.

The design was stable. Satisfactory. Proven. And consumed in friction many billions of dollars more fuel than was really necessary - year after year.

With roller bearing friction not very much better.

No doubt a boring problem. Problems of friction in engine bearings, pistons, and piston rings involve similar "boring" problems - with similar stakes.

When solutions stablize of that kind - redesigns that permit radical change may be technically possible (in my opinion, they usually are) but they are not possible according to current socio-technical arrangements.

That was a kind of problem I worked on at AEA - and had well solved. The solution, to work, involves system building - and invention - and power.

Power that someone in Casey's position could have exerted, informally but effectively - with a few phone calls when they mattered. I was planning on having that power behind me, and ran AEA assuming I had it.

To make progress worth making, in a lot of places - there are technical problems and social problems that are linked. In the ones that interest me particularly, the technical solution - stripped of human concerns - is usually fairly stark, clear and soluble. Given the solution, at this technical level - one has to fit the solution to the human beings involved - in ways that are fair and workable to these people. That is inescapably a social and political issue - and inescapably requires power.

rshow55 - 12:01pm May 9, 2003 EST (# 11537 of 11541)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

If you "happen" to have found a problem at the interface between mathematics and modeling that is 350 years old, and happen to want to get that solution worked into the mathematical-engineering-scientific system in a nontrivial way - with human beings as they are, that requires power, too.

I happen to have been asked to look for that problem. My financing for AEA was stopped to "give me time" to find it. I got injured, and by the time things were ready to sort out - Casey was dead. I did, insofar as I could, what Casey suggested I do if he died and couldn't help me - and continue to do so.

A change, even a simple one - deeply embedded in a socio-technical system is hard to implememt. To accomodate such a change may be "logically" simple - and only involve a relatively small amount of work - less, perhaps, than the construction of a municipal parking lot in a small city.

But to accomodate the change in human terms is much harder - and all the avoidances of fundamentals seen on the recent shuttle disaster are to be expected.

For such changes to happen - it takes power, and exception handling - and decent, workable ways to deal with the needs of the people involved.

Other major changes have similar problems. Casey understood that.

Putin might, as well.

Without power, there are a lot of "logical" things that are only dreams. The world is poorer because that's not understood.

lchic - 12:14pm May 9, 2003 EST (# 11538 of 11541)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Invention >>> Innovation >>> capital raising >>> r&d >>> process >>> production >>> marketing >>> sales >>> consumer

On small products an inventor can take through the invention. The pay-off is product matching current, percieved, induced needs.

On small unit product - arrived at via large capital investment by Government/Institutions - the product may require large investment to give people the necessities at lowest cost.

Invention >>> Innovation >>> capital raising >>> r&d >>> process >>> production >>> marketing >>> sales >>> consumer

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