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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 - 07:44am Jul 7, 2003 EST (# 12873 of 12874)
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.

A few years ago, Boeing proposed a faster passenger jet - and published a beautiful picture of it. That's been revised - and the odds are that it will be some time before the market can justify radical changes in airplane design to move much closer to Mach 1 or beyond it. The key to the story, I believe - is that Boeing sold - and to some degree sold itself - an aesthetically beautiful picture that was not consistent with all the physical relations that a passenger plane has to have.

3289-91 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_3000s/3288new.htm

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1247382

It now bears little resemblance to the sketches released when Boeing launched the concept a year ago, in order to disguise its retreat from the “super-jumbo” market. Those sketches owed more to public relations than to aerodynamics. The new shape should actually stay airborne.

3313 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_3000s/3310.htm

A difficulty with military contracting is that, far too often, "sketches that owe more to public relations than to engineering" - often very beautiful sketches - are the basis of promises made to military officers. These military officers accept these designs in good faith, and enthusiastically sell them. The history of military contracting after the 1960's is full of these stories - because engineering firms have been asked, again and again, to do jobs for which they've lacked basic analytical tools. That's a problem that the government used to be aware of. I was assigned to solve it - or find ways of making progress about it. The issue involves circumstances where multiple physical effects have to be accounted in the same equations, in terms representing the same time and space.

Military officers are "sold a bill of goods" by engineer-salesmen -- and so are Senators and Members of Congress.

( The military officers cannot be expected to be fully competent engineers by commercial engineering standards any more than commercial engineers could be expected to be good military oficers - and the commercial engineers have been engaged, too long, in a competition for who can make the most imaginative promises - and who can bluff with greatest facility -- a competition on which huge money flows rests.)

A lot of problems have built up, and a lot of people, for a lot of reasons, have shaded some inconvenient truths.

4016 http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_4000s/4015_4016.htm

There are plenty of laws of physics that haven't changed since Wright's time -- and they constrain what can actually be done. The people in airplane design have had a good while since the Boeing 707 was the first commercially successful near-sonic jet airplane. There's been plenty of progress since - with plenty of work from the best mechanical engineers the world could provide. . . . (Current commercial planes) fly at subsonic speeds for basic reasons.

( Sometimes key facts don't change - won't change for all time. )

Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, Edwin Teller - and a whole bunch of other technically competent people have known that for a LONG time. Competent, honest technical people still do.

We need to to better at the basic level of

Be sure you're right . . . then go ahead.

and that means better simulation - done reliably. There's a lot of improvement possible now - compared to years ago - but the improvements possible now are not operational.

That has human consequences. We're still struggling with the consequences of errors of simulation and judgement made long ago - including some key ones in the 1950's and 60's about energy.

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