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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (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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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  / Missile Defense