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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 (5692 previous messages)

kalter.rauch - 03:15am Nov 13, 2002 EST (# 5693 of 5701)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

manjumicha 11/7/02 7:39pm

Commondata...Your common sensical suggestion re: potentially devastating impact of E-bomb trend on future US war strategy is, in case you haven't noticed, completely lost on mazza and kalter....(

WHAT...ARE...YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?!? I'M the one who brought the whole subject up!!! You, Commondata...and most certainly NOT "rshow", who initially greeted the idea with stupid derision...never gave it a thought. But now that you DO reluctantly include it in your (heh)..."calculus"...all you are capable of is expressing the delusional utopian hope that the "good, right-thinking peoples of the world...on BOTH sides" can put the genie back in the bottle. Your strategy didn't work for nuclear weapons and it certainly won't work for a wide range of breakthroughs in "conventional" warfare.

Don't be rshow's fool......

kalter.rauch - 03:37am Nov 13, 2002 EST (# 5694 of 5701)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

mazza9 11/7/02 11:20pm

(groan)...I still have ~150 posts to go over in this forum......

I have to wonder if rshow and his ilk aren't "reason-hardened" against common sense......or worse...that they see the Truth but prefer to pervert and twist it towards purposes as dark as a torturer's use of medical instruments.

You cited Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. You know as well as I do that that industry source is NOT given to flights of fancy. Yet rshow would dismiss this valuable resource as "not well thought out", and no doubt a "tool of the military-industrial complex".

What galls me the most is that he's going to be blythely spewing out his drivel even as the beam emitters sweep his demise out of the sky right over his head!!! He won't even pause to say "Thank You" to Western Science as he pours foul condemnation upon its leading savants!!!

kalter.rauch - 04:15am Nov 13, 2002 EST (# 5695 of 5701)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

rshow55 11/8/02 8:21am

For example, see Fig 2 Explosively Pumped Helical Flux Compression Generator in The E-Bomb - a Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction by Carlo Kopp Department of Computer Science http://www.infowar.com/mil_c4i/mil_c4i8.html-ssi

Well......well...well!!! How WONDERFUL that you've jumped on the bandwagon!!!

And THEN!!! You miserably wring your hands that...

The design could easily be made as a hand grenade, a mortar round, or the kind of small grenade launched from a rifle grenade launcher. In mass production, such weapons could probably be manufactured at a cost under $50 each - likely under $20 each. So sized, it could knock out a socio-technical system as complicated as a hospital - or ANY major internet or telephone or semiconductor manufacturing facility in the world.

...and your solution???...you intellectually impotent charleton...

We should take the damn things down, as a compelling matter of public safety. A matter of aesthetics, as well.

You...unmitigated...FOOL!!!

As a matter of aesthetics, we all ought to Ascend to Heaven by means of the Blessed Virgin's spotless apron strings!!!

Yeah, rshow....The Truth IS Out THERE!!! And it's now in the hands of the most bestial terrorists and dictators. What to do about it......no sense in asking YOU!!! You casually admitted last week that you "haven't kept up" with EMP (hah)..."bombs". Well!!!...luckily for you, your deputy "lunarchick" aka "lchic", and all the legions of darkness under your sway, science is now working on a defense against tactical EM weapons... Plasma sheaths, magnetically entrained around a target, will both block and absorb RF radiation. Such technologies, recalling the radio "blackout" experienced by the re-entering space capsules of astronats, are still in the future. So, there IS a dangerous "window of vulnerability" before such defenses come on-line......a time in which you may broadcast your message of defeatism to the Unwashed and Downtrodden Masses!!!

almarst2002 - 04:41am Nov 13, 2002 EST (# 5696 of 5701)

The U.S. concedes it has lost momentum in Afghanistan, while its enemies grow bolder - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101021118-388964,00.html

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