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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.

lchic - 06:06pm May 30, 2003 EST (# 12218 of 12253)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Krugman - Guardian Talk International

Leave it to Paul Krugman to say what most of us are thinking.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.4a913ef9/69

jorian319 - 06:09pm May 30, 2003 EST (# 12219 of 12253)

lchic,

Please who is "Mr. Poster" ?

Enquiring minds want to know!

rshow55 - 06:15pm May 30, 2003 EST (# 12220 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.

Quick estimate. If I were permitted to function as Eisenhower intended - we could more than double economic growth rates - with much lower pollution - in ways people could clearly understand - in ways consistent with human values.

Reason is that, most of the time - the big showstoppers are few - and at times where there are no showstoppers - people can make a lot of progress.

For a long while past, energy has been the biggest showstopper - the biggest constraint on economic growth. The biggest military problem.

If you are asking for full and stable solutions to the world energy problem - as a whole - the number of kinds of possible solutions is a fairly short list.

Solar and nuclear power are two broad classifications on that list.

A comforting fact is that there are likely to be unique optimal solutions - far better than competitive solutions - if you can find them.

My main economic message is "you can."

rshow55 - 06:18pm May 30, 2003 EST (# 12221 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.

Jorian319 - "enquiring minds" may only guess - but the NYT could easily find out - if it does not know now. Might be plural - posters .

rshow55 - 06:19pm May 30, 2003 EST (# 12222 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.

Eisenhower was naive - a real boy scout - in one respect. He felt that - if the answers were available - the President of the United States, and the organization under the President - would have the wit to use those answers.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense