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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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gisterme - 03:15am Sep 23, 2003 EST (# 13870 of 13875)

The way to do that would be for the industrialized nations to build their own plants first (because they could afford to capitalize them) and once that intial capitalization was covered, the extra profit could be dedicated to building plants in other places that can't otherwise afford them. That would be a sort of backdoor way of redistributing wealth over time without making any impact to the cost of living that folks are already used to. Why not just let KAEP pay for itself as it goes? The more geo plants that came on line, the more money that would become available for other plants and parts of the KAEP infrastructure. It would also provide a built-in "as you go" assurance that the system was actually working and profitable. If it weren't then why continue?

"...Explain the motivation of a megalomaniac in thermodynamic terms? I think I have done that in terms of the Human Laser concept..."

Well, the human laser concept, slick as it is, only (hypothetically) explains a mechanism to accomplsh something for better or for worse. Not the motivation that brings it into existance.

"...Lincoln and FDR?..."

Lincon's problem was how to preserve the Union. In my view, the Gettysburg address was certainly the single greatest speech made by any US president and arguably the greatest speech made in history. However, it was directed toward preserving the Union of the United States and not the world. Certainly we can now extrapolate the high ideals expressed there to bigger things but I sincerely doubt that that's what Lincoln had in mind.

FDR's problem was how to recover from a crashed economy while the US was enduring the worst drought in its history. By the beginning of WWII, the drought was taking care of itself and the patriotically supercharged near-volunteerism that lead to the spectacular efficiency and growth of US industry during WWII along with fantastic market opportunities subsequent to the war took care of the economic part.

Those aren't selective rationalizatons. They're historical facts.

I regret making the little "playing field" picture because it's not really appropriate to the nature of this discussion. We're both wanting to see the same goal reached. The picture just doesn't fit that idea. If the questions I ask seem adversarial to you then just think of me as the devil's advocate. Certainly much harder questions from folks a lot smarter than me will have to be answered before something like your vision of KAEP will ever come to pass.

I think the financing suggestion above is an improvement over asking sovereign nations to dedicate a percentage of their GDP to some international slush fund. Too much of that money would wind up creating a new bureaucracy and covering its overhead...not to mention the endless bickering (pissing contests) that would likely result from sovereignty issues. No doubt France would feel that it had the divine right to run the whole show. :-)

I think that given the proper directives, grants and incentives, private energy firms in the industrialized nations could develop the know-how to build the powerplants, thermo-electric fabric, engineered wetlands and other KAEP features. I also think that they could do the job directly with financing sourced as suggested above under appropriate govenmental oversight. Existing governments could cooperate by treaty. That shouldn't restrain free market competition and would therefore asssure the best "bang" for the buck. Not only could that approach break that "nexus" of fossil fuel dependency but it could do so without much negative impact to the existing labor force in that industry.

That's because the transition from fossil fuel dependency to alternative energy sources would happen over say a generation or so. The fossil fuel industry would slowly decline as the KAEP replacement came on line. There would be time for people to retire and leave the

gisterme - 03:17am Sep 23, 2003 EST (# 13871 of 13875)

That's because the transition from fossil fuel dependency to alternative energy sources would happen over say a generation or so. The fossil fuel industry would slowly decline as the KAEP replacement came on line. There would be time for people to retire and leave the oil industry by normal attrition. Their jobs just wouldn't be replaced. Instead, other KAEP-related jobs would become available for the next generation.

That would work for me.

gisterme - 03:17am Sep 23, 2003 EST (# 13872 of 13875)

Sorry about the botched "continuation" effort. 'Clicked the wrong button. :-)

gisterme - 03:25am Sep 23, 2003 EST (# 13873 of 13875)

Rshow -

I'm sincerly sorry to hear about your family's loss.

(2 following messages)

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