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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (11753 previous messages)

rshow55 - 09:57am May 18, 2003 EST (# 11754 of 11762)
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.

fredmoore - to modify the systems that we have working now so that they could solve the world's energy problem, and do a lot else - would cost a lot less than that.

But there would have to be solid ways to evaluate technical proposals - so that proposals could be implemented, in the real world, and brought to fruition.

AEA was partly about that.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/ScienceInTheNewsJan4_2000.htm dealt with that class of problems.

I know I "don't have all the answers" - nobody does - but I have some - well worked out - at considerable inconvenience to me, to investors, and to the government - and getting them so that they would be usable, from here - would mostly be a matter of getting my security restrictions workably clarified - in ways that bureacracies could actually use.

"Revolutionary change" has to be accomodated in "conservative" social and government structures that can actually work. There's a good deal of precedent for that.

One example, still probably the most general and important, is the U.S. Patent Office .

There are bunches of other examples - a lot of them very well established by now. We need to remember things that the Roosevelt's knew - that the Eisenhower's knew - and that good administrators of every one of the major combattant nations in WWII knew.

rshow55 - 10:03am May 18, 2003 EST (# 11755 of 11762)
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.

Old solutions that worked very well have been discarded - even forgotten - in large part because patterns of "exception handling" have been screwed up.

Some of our biggest problems today are a lot like the problems with implementation of the railroads that were dealt with from 1840-1895.

Some of our other big problems are a lot like problems solved well in the late 30's to the middle 50's.

Some things screwed up - there were corruptions -but we ought to remember what worked. Often, we need to do things that were tried before - and worked before - going back long enough to get to "when the objective was to drain the swamp" - and remembering all the screwups can and do happen as people deal with problems and are "up to their asses in alligators."

Especially when those people cover their tracks - as they typically do.

lchic - 10:34am May 18, 2003 EST (# 11756 of 11762)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Bali

The use of the term 'mastermind' is urksome.

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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  / Missile Defense