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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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lchic - 07:12am May 16, 2003 EST (# 11707 of 11713)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

American artist Rowena Morrill - known for fantasy-styled, brightly coloured works - has told the BBC of her shock at the discovery of her paintings in Saddam Hussein's private collection.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3025163.stm

http://www.grex.com/rowena/

rshow55 - 09:05am May 16, 2003 EST (# 11708 of 11713)
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.

When Astronauts Were in Peril http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/opinion/16FRI2.html

The flaws unearthed by a board investigating the Columbia disaster are embedded deep in the culture and habits of NASA itself.

my 9204 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.o3LeaD1s9bU.723026@.f28e622/10731 includes this

For an atmospheric temp of 200K - a low estimate where the shuttle broke up - T stagnation at mach 20 is 16,200k -- far higher than the melting point of any material.

So anything coming in from orbit will melt, and vaporize - unless heat transfer rates between that object and the gases flowing around the object are low enough.

And those rates can vary by 10 - 100 - 1000 - 10,000 fold - depending on flow geometries. Geometries that determine turbulence, eddy formation - and heat transfer.

If flow geometry is bad enough in even a small locality near the leading edge of a flowing body - so that local heat transfer is high enough - things burn through.

For instance - the substrate of a missing tile can quickly melt - and the adhesive from adjacent tiles can quickly be burned-ripped away in the turbulence.

Geometry is critical . Including local geometry around a single tile - or the place where a single tile was supposed to be.

Or local geometry that has been changed by a surface collision.

If you look at flow visualization pictures, it can be easy to see how critical geometry is in the kinds of flows that had to be occurring around the shuttle.

It should have been clear that the shuttle was vulnerable if tiles were injured - and a report from Stanford and Carnegie Tech a decade ago assumed that people could see that.

But people, much too often "believe only what they want to believe." That's how it is for human beings - unless enough crosschecking occurs that people can see for themselves in enough detail for good decisions.

And when people do understand the "obvious" they may be ( usually are) stopped by flaws embedded deeply in the culture and habits of the sociotechnical system that they live in - that surrounds and limits them.

rshow55 - 09:08am May 16, 2003 EST (# 11709 of 11713)
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.

Missile Defense #8801 - rshow55 Feb 11, 2003 07:34 am http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.o3LeaD1s9bU.723026@.f28e622/10328 refers to

. Spending Spree at the Pentagon http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/opinion/10MON1.html

and asks a question that ought to be asked specifically - and applied specifically to essentially all human organizations.

" . . . is there anything in the way of logic or evidence that will get "members of the team" in the military-industrial complex (including NASA) to admit to anything that might significantly change program priorities - or devalue programs. The questions make a big difference when the issue is money and status. Similar big differences - plus additional differences of life and death, when the issue is war."

We face many questions of just that kind - and ignore these questions too often.

There are problems of groupthink everywhere - and as the Blair case shows, not even the New York Times is an exception to this.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense