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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 - 03:46pm Jul 8, 2003 EST (# 12896 of 12904)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

SAUDI

Where in the USA Global Terrorism POLICY is a plan to de-limit the strategicVision of the 'religious_police' of Saudi.

Saudi money is washing through Indonesia ....(?) the funding behind the Bali bombing.

Saudi dollars were integral to Sept11 NY.

Did the world miss something, or, has there been NO ACTION as yet by the USA to redress this matter?

lchic - 04:06pm Jul 8, 2003 EST (# 12897 of 12904)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

International Money is going back into the STOCK Markets ...

$Aussie falls back 3cents | Gold price falls

rshow55 - 04:41pm Jul 8, 2003 EST (# 12898 of 12904)
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.

COLUMBIA: FINAL MISSION A `Primetime' Special Edition

Teri Whitcraft and Deborah Katz, producers; Eric Avram, senior producer; Rudy Bednar, executive producer; Charles Gibson, host.

was on ABC TV last night - - - it was much as John Schwartz described in his Unheeded Concerns and the Columbia Disaster http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/07/arts/television/07SCHW.html and may have benefitted from some last-minute editing in response to that piece.

I thought the show was well done.

The processes by which bad decisions were made and validated were well set out - TV can do some things that print can't do.

"Systems" that "look good on paper" can start out effective - and easily become empty shells. That happened to safety systems at NASA.

And whole groups can be "sure" - forcefully sure - of wrong answers. On matters of life and death.

Does anybody really think out "fail safe" nuclear controls - and much of our other decision making is much better ?

I don't.

- - -

The shuttle disaster ought to warn us not to trust the "team play" that Bush seems to trust so well - without better checking than is usually there.

Where checking is forbidden - there's every reason to suspect that realities are much worse than claims.

rshow55 - 04:59pm Jul 8, 2003 EST (# 12899 of 12904)
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.

Test Shows Foam Was Likely Cause of Shuttle's Loss By MATTHEW L. WALD with JOHN SCHWARTZ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/national/nationalspecial/08SHUT.html

A test meant to replicate damage caused to the shuttle Columbia by foam debris punched a gaping hole in a wing panel.

• Video: Foam Impact Test

• Complete Coverage: Loss of the Shuttle http://www.nytimes.com/national/nationalspecial/index.html

rshow55 - 05:01pm Jul 8, 2003 EST (# 12900 of 12904)
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.

NASA: Gases Breached Shuttle Wing in 2000 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Shuttle-Earlier-Breach.html Filed at 3:27 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Superheated gases breached the left wing of shuttle Atlantis during its fiery return to earth in hauntingly similar fashion to the demise of Columbia nearly three years later, according to internal NASA documents.

"The small leak through a seam in Atlantis' wing during its return from the International Space Station was disclosed in documents sought by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. The mission commander was James Halsell, a shuttle veteran who is coordinating NASA's effort to return the shuttles to flight.

People with engineering experience - really, any operational experience - should look at this and be outraged.

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