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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 - 05:45pm May 30, 2003 EST (# 12215 of 12253)
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.

Mockup Wing Is Torn by Foam in Shuttle Test By JOHN SCHWARTZ with MATTHEW L. WALD http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/30/national/30SHUT.html

HOUSTON, May 29 — A piece of insulating foam shot at a mocked-up shuttle wing opened a long slit in its leading edge, which may help to explain what caused the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, investigators said today.

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That is why an expert outside the investigation suggested that today's experiment had solved the mystery. "That's the answer," said Paul A. Czysz, a professor emeritus at Parks College of Engineering and Aviation at St. Louis University, when told of the test results. A slit the size of one created in the test would let in a stream of gas three times as hot as a blowtorch."My God, that's like a barn door at those temperatures," he said.

Investigators have already concluded that a hole in the shuttle's left wing let in the superheated gases that destroyed the wing, and they knew that a piece of foam struck the wing on launching. But they would not have been able to link the two convincingly without experimental evidence, and some of them had been worried that the experiments might not produce any wing damage.

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Missile Defense #9204 - http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.XEYtbMfSceZ.2951161@f28e622/10731 defines adiabatic temperature from a clear engineering calculation Relationship between temperature, stagnation temperature and Mach number http://www.optimal-systems.demon.co.uk/appendix-c.htm - what's meant by "three times as hot (in absolute temperature) as a blowtorch." - Which means that even a small hole is "like a barn door"

And made some engineering points that have been borne out, too.

search "adiabatic" - this thread - to see how gisterme resisted.

rshow55 - 05:57pm May 30, 2003 EST (# 12216 of 12253)
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.

My own guess is that the sum total of Einstein's contribution (and the fact that he got some things earlier than would have been possible otherwise) has raised world GDP by less than 1%. I doubt if Einstein would have disagreed.

But he wasn't assigned to work on economic growth, as I was - specifically to handle the "show stoppers" that were standing in the way of effective planning and economic growth.

The first piece of that assignment got handed to me, by Flugge - just before the summer after my first full undergraduate year. I was working on something I called "qued bills of actions" - responding to the question - how do you define optimality - in the way a manager can use - when you're dealing with MANY discrete choices - many systems of constraints - and incomplete information.

The obvious start was - - you guess - but how do you guess - what procedures do you want to know?

I "got a piece of it" - and that got me into a lot of trouble. But I did get to meet a very great man.

The question how do you "do the best you can" - is an interesting problem - and a practical one.

A big start is you define constraints - and kinds of constraints - and do the strictly technical optimality problems first - not forgetting the organizational and social constraints - but deferring them.

Asking "what's the best you can possibly do physically - on a problem that makes enough assumptions that an answer is possible? ( In terms of the assumptions? )

Eisenhower wanted to know how Edison (and "Kelly" Johnson) were so productive - well enough to teach it. And wanted optimality theory that people could actually use to do real jobs. All he had that worked was linear programming - and he knew where he was stumped.

I also worked on combat theory - some very applied - but maybe some of that ought to be classified. If only anybody in authority would talk to me. It would be nice to "get out of jail."

rshow55 - 06:03pm May 30, 2003 EST (# 12217 of 12253)
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.

The government had big problems in modelling hooked to some sort of "buried problem" in differential equations, too.

And a guidance problem - for air-air missiles and other things - that had big tactical and strategic significance.

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In strictly mathematical terms - from the point of view of searching - some of these were "harder" and "more important" problems than Einstein's were - but there were some big differences. Einstein picked his own problems.

Mine were mostly assigned to me. His were physics - mine administration and engineering, mostly.

In some ways, I had about as much discretion as Mimi Fahnestock when I got recruited - - but like her - I did my best.

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