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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 - 09:36pm Jul 25, 2003 EST (# 13146 of 13267)

rshow55 - 03:49pm Jul 25, 2003 EST (# 13139 of ...) http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?16@13.Z9exbJU7wf8.2132449@.f28e622/14818

"...What are the odds that gisterme is the President, or close to him?..."

The odds are zero, Robert.

"...High enough that it would be worthwhile to check..."

You might think that odds of zero are high enough for you to check, but I doubt that anybody else would feel that way. You were quick to point out that Thomas Edison was a man who was wise enough not to pursue any but the best bets. You should take your own good advice to heart.

gisterme - 10:27pm Jul 25, 2003 EST (# 13147 of 13267)

Fred...

"...I loved that 1999 film ... "Blast From The Past" with Brendan Fraser and Christopher Walken..."

Haven't seen that one yet.

"...Where Missile Defence comes in is the fact that EMERGY is ALL that people really want..."

It is? Although I looked at the UT website you previously posted I didn't come away with a very clear idea of the practicality of the idea of emergy. So I did a web search on the term "emergy" and found a lot of sites that reference the topic. Here's one that was a little more clear to me:

http://dieoff.org/page170.htm

Definition of EMERGY from that website:

" Emergy (spelled with an "m") evaluates the work previously done to make a product or service. Emergy is a measure of energy used in the past and thus is different from a measure of energy now. The unit of emergy (past available energy use) is the emjoule to distinguish it from joules used for available energy remaining now. Scienceman describes emergy as energy memory...

...There is a different kind of emergy for each kind of available energy. For example: solar emergy is in units of solar emjoules, coal emergy in units of coal emjoules, and electrical emergy in units of electrical emjoules. There is no emergy in degraded energy (energy without availability to do work). Like energy, emergy is measured in relation to a reference level. In most applications we have expressed everything in units of solar emergy."

"...As thermodynamic systems, the' human mission directive' is to decrease entropy..."

Directive from whom, Fred? I don't ask that because I disagree with the idea...I do agree that the observable emperical effect of all life is to swim against the entropy stream...kind of like a salmon working its way up a fish ladder. Isn't our burning of fossil fuel, or even a natural wildfire just an undoing of the anti-entropy "effort" of ancient or modern forests? I think it is. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Since emergy is by definition a "measure of energy used in the past" and not a measure of present energy potential or use, I'm having a little trouble getting my arms around the practical usefulness of the concept. Does it have something to do with hindsight being "20-20"?

"...and it is apparent we are capable of the severest means (including the development of sophisticated missile systems) of ensuring our ability to fulfil that mission..."

Now there's a connection of dots who's logic entirely escapes me.

Wouldn't a term to describe the anti-entropic energy storage accomplished by life processes, something like "untropy", be more useful? I suppose that would be a measure of energy stored or moved from a lower to a higher potential state by whatever process.

Please help me out here. Dispel my ignorance. What's the practical application of knowing how much energy a particular process required and why is it all that people really want? Wouldn't emergy measured in mjoules simply be an integration or summation of joules used in the present?

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