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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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(15812 previous messages)
rshow55
- 03:27pm Oct 28, 2003 EST (#
15813 of 15825) 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.
Jorian , I wrote 15810 without seeing your post.
Trying Diplomacy on North Korea http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/opinion/21TUE1.html
Offers an example of a kind of mess that is now not at all
well handled for technical reasons.
But an example that is personal - and involves
instabilities - with big stakes in national security - is the
large-scale solar energy "solution" suggested in these
references.
" . . I was encouraged to do things. I was assigned
projects. Every single thing I was assigned to do required
some essential support from a nation state in two ways.
First of all, they all involved such complex
cooperation that they were fragile - they could be stopped
with "a few well placed phone calls."
Secondly, they all involved such complex
cooperation that occasionally, the idea that the government
wanted the work done had to be conveyed.
The solar energy project set out (with some responses to
comments by you) is an example of just that situation.
13039 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.API2bRokS8G.5389935@.f28e622/14716
13040 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.API2bRokS8G.5389935@.f28e622/14717
13041 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.API2bRokS8G.5389935@.f28e622/14718
13042 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.API2bRokS8G.5389935@.f28e622/14719
You can't do a workable job "building a railroad" - or
doing other stark, large scale optimal jobs - starting from
small - without government help well prior to fruition. That's
just the way things are.
Now the solutions I was looking at were particularly
fragile. But the impasses in diplomatic messes like the one
with the North Koreans are fragile, too.
For some very similar reasons. Issues of clarity, closure,
and fairness are involved. Issues of status, too. As for money
- I haven't asked the NYT for money - and haven't even given
that much thought.
rshow55
- 03:30pm Oct 28, 2003 EST (#
15814 of 15825) 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.
The shortfall, these days, between what is
technically possible - and in the interest of people -
and what is sociotechnically possible is very, very
large.
In wasteful and dangerous ways. We could make it a lot
smaller.
For the amount of work and expense the NYT has gone to
keeping me down - you could have solved my key problems long
ago. And they are problems a lot broader than my own interest.
rshow55
- 03:45pm Oct 28, 2003 EST (#
15815 of 15825) 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.
From Jorian's poem:
as long as you can stand your ground,
making sure we hold you down
Wars happen for just that sort of reason. Again and again
and again and again. Perhaps we're modelling how such things
happen.
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Missile Defense
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