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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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kalter.rauch - 05:47am Dec 19, 2002 EST (# 6840 of 6851)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

It's amazing, isn't it Lunarchick?!?!? Even YOU want to take the held and PUSH THE BUTTON!!!

kalter.rauch - 05:48am Dec 19, 2002 EST (# 6841 of 6851)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

...(heh)......."helm"

commondata - 06:29am Dec 19, 2002 EST (# 6842 of 6851)

rshow55 12/18/02 8:05pm - call me on the phone

I may well do that one day, rshow - it often takes me some time to look and think before an indignant paragraph issues forth - so it may be a boring conversation. There's a warm welcome and a few beers waiting for you in London if you choose to visit (though I'm hitting the road and heading for Central and South America and the Antipodes within a few months).

The US knows a good deal about the limitations of MD - it only "works" as a bluff.

I'm coming to think that "missile defense" is only the fraudulent public justification for this system; it's a phrase that doesn't best describe the system's utility. Whether or not you can hit a bullet with a bullet is irrelevant - there'll be an inescapable US military logic that says "We live in a world of targets so let's make the best bullets we can." And that's what they're doing and no amount of checking will change that. There's going to be some fights about it, but they're going to do a brusque trade selling the new bullets, and within a decade or two this system will be pervasive.

We need a new thread - the "Missile Offense" thread. God bless America.

lunarchick - 08:07am Dec 19, 2002 EST (# 6843 of 6851)

""The pressure to change stems from the math. Since the early 1970's, the number of state prisoners has risen 500 percent, making corrections the fastest growing item in most state budgets.

With more than two million inmates currently in state and federal prisons and local jails, the bill for corrections has reached $30 billion, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/19/national/19CRIM.html

lunarchick - 08:23am Dec 19, 2002 EST (# 6844 of 6851)

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/18/opinion/18FRIE.html?ex=1040878800&en=1f2bdf41d8432fde&ei=5059&partner=AOL

rshow55 - 10:19am Dec 19, 2002 EST (# 6845 of 6851)
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.

A lot of times, the pressure to change stems from the math. A time comes when issues of balance matter.

Often, when people actually look at things clearly - with "words, pictures and math together" - or (this is much the same thing in key ways) "words, pictures, and an active aesthetic sense, together" -- adjustments get made that make things better.

I thought commondata 12/19/02 6:29am - - was an excellent post - but before I respond, I'll do some bookkeeping. And note that some things are going better than analogous things might have gone some years ago - in the Lott matter, and some other things, too. Maybe 2002 will be a good year.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense