What a manure-laced article

Post #32,370 by wharris2 3/15/02 3:19:33 PM Reply	What a manure-laced article Basic problem is, you can't prove a negative. So the things they did may not work (or, depending on your interpretation, may not work as well as reported.) So? Space-based lasers, ground-based lasers, intercepting missiles, etc. cannot be proven to not work. I'd rather at least have someone working on the problem than continue to rely on MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) to protect me from some current or future nuclear-capable country. Sure, that doesn't protect against someone smuggling a bomb into New York's harbor, but the smuggle-bomb, while destructive, is sure as hell going to be less destructive than an all-out ballistic missile attack. Where each demon is slain, more hate is raised, yet hate unchecked also multiplies. - L. E. Modesitt
Post #32,428 by Silverlock 3/16/02 7:59:47 AM Reply	It's not that it can't work It's that, as currently designed, it won't work well enough to provide an acceptable level of defense. There are ways around this. I am not an engineer, so my ideas lack definition, but it seems to me that targetting must be more accurate than is currently possible with known tech. It also wouldn't hurt to have contractors stop falsifying data on the tech. With this much manure around, there must be a pony somewhere.
Post #32,485 by mhuber 3/16/02 10:16:17 PM Reply	It's the marketing that bugs me It's sold as a space sheild, protecting us all. But designed (correctly, I think, if you take as given that the thing is worth building at all) to protect a few key military assets. It isn't an end to MAD. It is just another strategic asset, yet another way of assuring the other side's destruction. The most positive interpretation of Star Wars I: Bonzo shoots skeet was that it was intended to up the ante so that we would have second-strike capability, requiring more expensive Soviet hardware to restore the balance of terror. It (assuming that the people who said communism can't fly were wrong and the USSR wasn't about to self destruct anyway) worked, in that the USSR couldn't afford the hardware. Version 2 has no such use. It's just a way to pay back some campaign contributions. ---- United we stand Divided we dominate the planet without really trying
Post #32,492 by Ashton 3/16/02 11:58:14 PM Reply	But it is a great 'umbrella' for An overall aim, as seems to fit the machinations all around: Unilateral US control of space, by any other euphemism - whether or not a part of this 'officially' includes also: future explorations, mining of the moon, asteroids yada yada. The short-term vastly increased expenditures to select Mil-spec Corps - is only the tip of this simplistic-minded iceberg. The tech details have been discussed for decades already - physics hasn't changed, but attention span has noticeably shortened. I heard Bushie admonishing Congress just recently to, "get with the program" and not do anything to destroy this (~~) "unity of purpose'. Shit. Will we ever learn how to substitute blab for such doggerel? and immediately laugh in its face, forcing a rewording into English. ('Course it's hard to rebut a Resident on Tee Vee; that's never part of the format - to hear the minority / the loyal opposition - except after that annual pageant, The State of the Nation ghost-speech.) Hmmm a precedent? Ashton

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