New York Times on the Web Forums
Science
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.
(14251 previous messages)
rshow55
- 09:16am Oct 3, 2003 EST (#
14252 of 14256) 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.
WISHING WON'T MAKE STAR WARS SO http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/03/opinion/03FRI3.html
reads as follows. I add some supporting material
President Bush's rush order to begin fielding a costly,
unproven system for ballistic missile defense by next
September is proving to be riddled with risks for technical
failures and budget overruns. Congressional investigators have
found the current state of antimissile technology hardly up to
the actual threat.
A detailed report by the General Accounting Office warns
that the hurried attempt to blend 10 separate high-tech
defense systems into one program is proceeding full speed
ahead, as Mr. Bush ordered, but without adequate preliminary
demonstrations that the pieces will ever work well together.
Most pressing, a crucial Alaska radar system at the heart of
the plan has not yet been shown to be ready for the job it is
being adapted to do.
Still, administration officials are stubbornly pushing
ahead with plans to start opening 10 West Coast missile
defense bases next year. They are betting that the technology
can eventually be shaped to fit Star Wars, the
bullet-hits-bullet dream first envisioned in the Reagan
administration.
13302 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.rOV3bskZKmY.187070@.f28e622/14989
quotes Sieve City In our nation's capital, leaking
is a way of life. By JANE MAYER http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001203mag-essay.html
including this about the Reagan staff: ""The White House
was so subject to everything being immediately leaked,"
Morris concludes, "that its essential business was done by
three people -- the president, his chief of staff and maybe
the national security adviser -- talking for a few minutes
while the water was running." Leaks were so endemic
that real secrets, like Reagan's Strategic Defense
Initiative, were, as Morris puts it, "literally hot air -- a
few quick words exchanged while walking across the lawn." .
. .
There is no belittling the true concern that rogue
nations like North Korea are intent on developing
ocean-spanning nuclear weapons. But until the prodigious
innovations of an antimissile defense have been clearly proved
trustworthy, the nation is installing "no more than a
scarecrow, not a real defense," in the words of Dr. Philip
Coyle III, a former head of weapons testing at the
Pentagon.
The Coyle Report http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nmdcoylerep.pdf
. M.I.T. Studies Accusations of Lies and
Cover-Up of Flaws in Antimissile System By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/02/national/02MISS.html
Search "Keywords: Challenge, questions, and
invokation" this thread . . . 12878 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.rOV3bskZKmY.187070@.f28e622/14554
The investigators warn that the uncertainty and haste
make it more likely that the system, once its pieces are
linked, will balk when put to actual flight tests. This would
mean more funds to try to fix the program, whose eventual cost
is already tabbed at $50 billion.
Critics maintain that the president's timetable is as
much about the next election — about homeland security as a
political issue — as it is about a credible defense. He still
has a chance to deny opponents a political weapon by ordering
more time and testing to show the system is workable.
cantabb
- 09:17am Oct 3, 2003 EST (#
14253 of 14256)
rshow55 - 08:15am Oct 3, 2003 EST (# 14250 of 14250)
Cont'd....
- including some recent assistance,
regarding perturbation and damping, from Cantabb .
ASKING you to tell us what you think you have been doing
here on the Forum for 2+ years [working so 'hard] AND for
substantiation of ther global claims you have been making :
May be "perturbation and damping" for YOU -- because you seem
UNable to focus or answer staightforward questions asked of
you on your 'hard' work here for so long.
We need to Iearn how to agree to disagree
clearly, without fighting, comfortably, so that they can
cooperate stably, safely, and productively - and when it
matters enough, we need to learn how to agree about facts.
Where do you get the idea that asking questions and asking
you to focus is "fighting."
Where does the question of agreement/diagreement arise when
most of us don't know what specifically you have been doing on
MD ?
I believe that this thread is now, and has
been for a while, the largest interconnected corpus devoted
to negotiation practices in the world - or at least one of
very few. It includes some probably distinguished, if
anonymous, posters.
Your "self-aggrandising." Delusionary.
We're dealing with serious problems - and
dealing with policies based far too much on tactics of
"slime and defend."
Another cryptic comment. Another insinuation.
(3 following messages)
New York Times on the Web Forums
Science
Missile Defense
|