Missile Defense

This schematic diagram of the process involved in adaptive optics is very good, and I hope people look at it carefully. I expect to be referring to it again. http://cfao.ucolick.org/images/aos_small.gif

Below the diagram, from the same site, is this passage:

"The most basic systems use a point source of light as a reference beacon, whose light is used to probe the shape of the wavefronts...

That's 13.7 watts/cm2 for 2% absorbtion, or 1.37 watts/cm2 for .2% absorbtion at the source.

Now how small is the optical dispersion over a hundred miles?..

" You've got the links read the facts! "

you act like you have some confidence in your links and facts...

"Once again I say, this laser stuff is all BS anyway since it has no bearing on the BMD system currently being tested."

I disagree with gisterme on this, and I think the evidence of some of his other postings indicates he doesn't discount the significance of the laser stuff either.

Last year, Russia hosted a meeting on the militarization of space - something like 104 countries attended. The United States did not...

"...The more noise you make, gisterme , the easier it is for me be stand up to your "challenge.""

So do it, Robert!... But, why should how much noise I make have anything to do with how easy it is for you to "stand up to the challenge"? My noise level has nothing to do with the physical prolems involved...

""The medieval cloth trade turned Florence into a prosperous commercial center...

And to do so, needs controls far better than anybody has, and less optical dispersion than Space telescope .

" Why wasn't ABL rejected out of hand, after the first design sketches and calculations?..

Reflective Coatings

"Utilizing the phenomena of constructive and destructive interference, engineers may create a multitude of thin-film coatings with different reflective properties...

"There is a wide-spread suspicion in Russia that a real aim of the NMD is to ensure the US military domination."

You've made that clear, and set out a lot of good reasons for the concern -- which is the central one you've expressed, all through this thread, as standing in the way of all steps toward nuclear disarmament.

Another big reason for MD is to give the military, and especially the Air Force, something to do that makes sense to American taxpayers.

Both issues are adressed in

The Next Battlefield May Be in Outer Space By JACK HITT http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/05/magazine/05SPACEWARS.html?pagewanted=print

A big question -- on missile defense and space weapons too -- is

what can realistically work?..

If professional engineers, with names and credentialling at risk, said the technical things gisterme has said -- well -- it would be possible, reasonably directly, to see if those engineers were right, or if I was -- on specific issues.

And if arguments weren't good enough, they could be refined...

I'd written:

" it is easy to immunize missiles and reintry vehicles with optical coatings with reflectivity greater (and much greater) than 99% at the wavelength of the lasar. http://www.phy.davidson.edu/jimn/Java/Coatings.htm I don't see how anyone who knows how reflective coatings work, and how easy they are to make, can continue to want to support lasars as serious weapons...

Given a desire to get at the truth. Often that's easiest on technical matters...

I'd said that, though the lasar and guidance image system resolution of lasar "space weapons" might eventually match the Hubble Space telescope's wonderful resolution, that wasn't " nearly good enough for some of the "death ray" schemes people seem to have been imagining, and drawing pictures about, and writing about without considering the numbers.

I cited space telescope images, which show stars as blobs of light...