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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.

fredmoore - 10:23pm May 12, 2003 EST (# 11627 of 11633)

Rshow ...

The following piece from one of your posts also attracted my attention.

'In "Geniuses, Crackpots and a Grand Unified Theory" JAMES GLANZ makes an important point. People with ideas off of the mainstream, right or wrong, are a nuisance. There's an extraordinary presumption against them. That presumption is statistically justified. Nor are individual scientists, or scientific organizations, or journalistic operations, well set up to handle them.'.

The problem here is that Galileo, Edison, Franklin, Bell, Einstein, Gates .... etc were all 'crackpots' who were way outside their contemporary mainstream, but who now form the basis of our mainstream. That is the way science works. I haven't read Glanz but I am not impressed with the above statement. Who knows we may all soon be driving cars with what for all intents and purposes is a laser printer ('FBI' fuel cell) under the hood instead of an internal combustion polluter. Mainstream is nothing less than our finest imaginings backed by sound science. Innovative 'crackpots' should be better paid and not corralled by lesser minds.

lchic - 10:34pm May 12, 2003 EST (# 11628 of 11633)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Mainstream has to be defined

Implies it's a flowing course

With tributaries

So what is the 'mix' of mainstream

or is it tightly related to fulfilling the NEEDS of individuals

fredmoore - 11:18pm May 12, 2003 EST (# 11629 of 11633)

Mainstream .... like we should all still be riding GG's. That was the mainstream. Why shouldn't it still be thus?

Answer: Some crackpot nut invented the Internal combustion engine.

Under Glanz's dictum he should have been locked up.

:-) grin

lchic - 03:22am May 13, 2003 EST (# 11630 of 11633)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

3 Crackpots:

Nikolaus August Otto: Inventor of the Internal Combustion engine Nikolaus August Otto: Inventor of the Internal Combustion engine. Nikolaus August Otto was born on June 10. 1832 in Holzhausen, Germany

Rudolf Diesel Inventor of the Diesel Engine ... Rudolf Diesel Rudolf Diesel was the inventor of the diesel-fueled internal combustion engine

Benz was the first inventor to integrate an internal combustion engine with a chassis - designing both togther.

lchic - 05:35am May 13, 2003 EST (# 11631 of 11633)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Human Combustion Engine

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=news&thesubsection=&storyID=144198

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