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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.

gisterme - 01:27pm Jul 25, 2003 EST (# 13134 of 13267)

"...KAEP puts the ball past the post."

Wheter or not the negative effects of buring fossil fuel are contributing to global warming, I do think we should continue trying to reduce the negative impacts of those effects. Nobody likes smog. Obviously the best way would be to quit buring fossil fuel or other things that produce unwanted atmospheric byproducts; but until we can find a different way to release the energy we need it would seem we're stuck with burning something. At this point hydorgen would seem to be the most promising technologically viable large-scale alternative to fossil fuels as the "thing to burn". Geothermal power plants might also be suitable for some locations although I'm not certain that the technology for exploiting that potential at very large scale is as far along as it is for hydrogen.

My own opinion is that the US and other nations could do a lot more by developing the technology to make hydrogen or some other source a viable alternative to use of fossil fuel than they could by just throwng money at trying to clean up after continued fossil fuel burning. All the latter will do is increase the amount of time that we burn the fossil fuel. The best way to solve a problem is to eliminate it...not perpetuate it.

It's the same principal as pointed out by: "Give a man a fish and he's fed for a day. Teach a man to fish and he's fed for a lifetime."

The other thing I think is that nations should be responsible for cleaning up their own environmental messes. In the US and Europe manufacturers and even car owners pay a significant price to burn fossil fuel. We no longer see the soot-belching smokestacks that seem to have been the symbol of industrial development during the first half of the last century. Today, harmful automobile exhaust emmissions are only a tiny fraction of what they once were. That's paid for by "we the people", thank you very much. So a lot has already been done at great expense to mitigate those problems. The result is that air quality in most areas, at least in the US, has improved greatly over what it was at the end of the 1960s. That's an undeniable fact and a positive continuing trend. We are doing our part to reduce our own impact on mother earth's atmosphere. So far, we've probably done more than anybody else.

wrcooper - 02:22pm Jul 25, 2003 EST (# 13135 of 13267)

gisterme et. al.

I noticed Robert's discussion of an idea to produce power via a PVC towed array in equatorial waters. I liked the idea very much.

We discuss such issues in detail in the Future Energy forum. Perhaps you could join in there.

It would then be "on topic".

Will

wrcooper - 02:26pm Jul 25, 2003 EST (# 13136 of 13267)

gisterme

I have been promoting hydrogen and fuel cells in the Future Energy forum for a long time. Not everybody agrees that it's an advisable strategy. There have been recent studies at MIT and elsewhere that raise issues detrimental to the notion that hydrogen is the future's fuel of choice. Nothing that's a show stopper, but serious challenges that need to be overcome. Hydrogen's still the pony I'm riding, but it will need some long-term work and a little luck.

rshow55 - 03:32pm Jul 25, 2003 EST (# 13137 of 13267)
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.

I need some basic credentialling problems solved before I can do anything much. If I had them solved, I think a lot might be accomplished. Not long ago, I sent an email to one of the "powers that be" - - and perhaps there's been a response on this thread since.

I made a request to come into Langley . That was denied.

A contact I asked for in that email to a powerful man might help.

There are credentialling problems that do have to be handled, if a person is to get anything effective done in the United States.

wrcooper - 03:44pm Jul 25, 2003 EST (# 13138 of 13267)

A "response on this thread," Robert?

By whom?

Why wouldn't the mysterious people you wrote to not write you back at your home or office directly, using the US Postal Service?

This is not a back channel used by the CIA, Robert. The President of the United States isn't popping out of cabinet meetings and diplomatic counsels to rush to his PC to log on for a round of logomachy with Robert Showalter. Top cabinet officials aren't measuring the pulse of the nation by sounding out an unemployed mathmatician in Madison, Wisconsin. I hate to break it to you, but you're not a titan wrestling with the gods.

You're connecting the dots, all right. They're ink blots in a Rorschach test, and what you're seeing is the dark inner workings of your own mind. You connected the dots and concluded I was George Johnson. You were wrong. You connected the dots, and concluded Lou Mazza was an important Washington insider. You were wrong. You're connecting a new set of dots and are concluding the gisterme is President Bush. So far you've been batting zero. What is the probability, Mr. Mathematician, that you're right about gisterme?

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