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.

rshow55 - 02:57pm May 18, 2003 EST (# 11764 of 11764)
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.

Real, sustained work between people and organizations is only stable and comfortable with a reasonable balancing of books in terms of status and money.

If a project needed political support - as an essential fact - how would people involved in the project reasonably pay and praise people who helped with the political power involved?

Is there an answer, in the 21st century, that would not be called "corrupt"? Is there an answer, in the 21st century that "the average reader of The New York Times" would approve of?

The answers that Leland Stanford would have known, and felt reasonably comfortable with, have now all been forbidden.

How would you build a railroad system - or some other enterprise with similar problems - today?

Unless there are affirmative answers that can actually apply to large scale conduct - a great deal that might otherwise be possible is classified out of existence.

Issues of social control, and fairness, and transparency are essential here - and better answers than the ones involved in the building of the railroads need to be found if some otherwise "easy" jobs are to get done.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense