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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 - 12:40pm Jun 30, 2003 EST (# 12764 of 12764)
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.

gisterme: "For every two atoms of hydrogen separated from the distilled seawater, there will be one atom of oxygen released also. If I recall correctly the atomic weight of oxygen is about 16 times that of hydrogen. So for each ton of hydrogen produced there would also be eight tons of oxygen. What would the oxygen be used for? Maybe an increase in percentage of atmospheric oxygen that would occur over time be a good thing? I doubt that environmentalists would go for such tampering with good ol' gaia. :) "

The oxygen would be vented to atmosphere. Hydrogen used for fuel is recombined with oxygen soon enough - the change in atmospheric concentration of oxygen would be negligible and without effect for any scale connected to human energy needs. The environmentalists do good enough arithmetic that they'd recognize that. It might concievably be economic to transport some oxygen as well as hydrogen to large scale electrical power plant installations.

Gisterme raises ocean ecology issues that depend on solar collector scaling. He asks about the impact of a single huge collector array ( he mention a square 460 km on a side) on ocean temperature, oceanic currents, weather patterns, including cloud formation, and marine and bird life. For example, the array might drown sea mammals that swam under the array(s).

All these are reasonable concerns. No large scale energy project occurs with zero ecological impact. But I believe that the ecological costs invoved here would be small, and readily controlled. Most of the environmental concerns gisterme mentions become less - even for the same total area - as the arrays become smaller. I've been thinking of rectangular collector array units 1 km/10kms, in part for ecological reasons. If the arrays reflect more light than the equatorial ocean does - they'd inhibit cloud formation, if less, there might be slightly more clouds over the arrays. The arrays will cast a shadow on the ocean area they cover - and also form a evaporation barrier. For 1 km collector array width, ocean convection on a 1/2 km scale would equalize any (small) heat transfer effects. This is a small scale relative to ocean current scales. Marine and bird life on most equatorial seas is very thin - because K and N in biologically usable forms are depleted - these waters are often very clear. My "guess" is that birds, whales and fish could accomodate 1 km wide collectors after a little learning on the part of both the animals and people involved. To assess ecological concerns and work out problems - it would make sense to float a 1 km/10 km prototype - even if it didn't have working photocells - and see what happened.

I'll be continuing with the questions gisterme set out in 2136-7 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.gubGb3E5lTT.1257129@.f28e622/2652 this afternoon.

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