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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?

lchic - 06:54am Jan 5, 2002 EST (#10650 of 10657)

Climates are said to have been hotter ... the hottest years flow in each breaking a new ribbon on the statistical 'end of race' posts. The thought is that the climate could suddenly 'turn', that gulf streams might reposition themselves, that the world might be very different and more difficult!

'Honour thy father and mother' is a cultural given. The earth is mother, motherland. The earth is father, fatherland. Honour the earth.

Nukes don't honour the earth. The last sixty years have been a comedy of blatent error. The saddest parts - exposure to fallout, ignorance ruling knowledge, and no one facing up to the big problem - how to clean the mess up.

The spirit of Uranium ground in Australia is Bulla Bulla ... folklore says 'keep away' from this hot earth or sickness will befall!

Tolkien had concerns that massive wrongs had occurred ... so how to put these right? This is a problem of the current age that demands considered leadership.

As great Ecologists appear in 'Obituary' still regarded as 'left' (which i read as future) rather than 'right' ( which may be future and correct or alternatively ignorant with false past).

Obituary says there goes a life that was devoted
* to hammering on closed doors,
* to writing communicating and educating
* a life spent begging politicians with cares for NOW

Holistic accounting honours the MOTHER, the FATHER, the EARTH, the LAND. Accounting of process has also to relate to the wider and real world.

guy_catelli - 11:22am Jan 5, 2002 EST (#10651 of 10657)
editor in chief, Romance sub Rosa

is your physician aware that you have stopped taking your medication?

lchic - 04:24pm Jan 5, 2002 EST (#10652 of 10657)

JawG - always 'the boy'!

lchic - 04:27pm Jan 5, 2002 EST (#10653 of 10657)

Nukes - can they assist the 10,000 starving of Moscow who live on the Streets without adequate nourishment or shelter.

Can Nukes assemble themselves to run 'Soup Kitchens'?

Can Nukes do anything useful?
'Nuke on your life they can't' - Nuking at all!

The statistics of death for Moscow this January will be a cold stiff figure.

lchic - 04:33pm Jan 5, 2002 EST (#10654 of 10657)

USA newsmedia - who owns what .. the what made up of whos ... who inturn serve their masters ... while trying to write the news http://www.cjr.org/owners/

rshow55 - 04:33pm Jan 5, 2002 EST (#10655 of 10657)

I was very glad to see gisterme 1/3/02 7:57pm and said so in http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/262

People who've followed this forum will know that gisterme and I have had some disagreements in the past, and we don't agree on everything now. But I had some very positive feelings, reading gisterme's post above.

We agree that (taken in isolation)

"One powerful argument in favor of an effective ballistic missile defense is that it would eliminate the effect of a small-scale launch whether that launch was by accident or by conspiracy. "

Even so, we disagree about how important that argument can be in context, when the real technical possibliities involved are considered. I remain much more pessimistic about those technical possibilities than gisterme , for reasons I've posted before.

We disagree significantly about the risks and probabilities.

When evaluating risksit makes sense to follow economists, actuaries, statisticians, gamblers, and many soldiers, and consider "risk" as the product of (estimates of) probability of occurrance TIMES the cost of the occurrance. Call it

P x C

I might agree with gisterme that the probability that "one, two or a few bombs may fall into the hands of evil men who just want to spill blood" may be greater than the probability of "an accident or sabotage initiated large scale launch." (I wouldn't be confident about that agreement.) Suppose we grant that this "one or two bomb" scenario has a much higher probability of occurrance than a large scale launch.

Even so, the cost of the "one or two bomb" scenario, at worst, is of the order of 10 million dead, and proportionate devastation. Call that C1

To imagine C1, imagine actually looking at the three thousand dead from the WTC - at 5 seconds average attention each, that would be more than four hours, without breaks.

Then, count to 3300, at each count remembering that you are adding another number of human deaths, with a similar set of human connections.

This is a lot of work -- enough to be wrenching, but enough to give a sense of both the magnitude of the human loss, and your own imaginative limits in taking it in. If you've done such a thing, you can, within human limits, roughly and weakly appreciate what 10 million deaths would mean.

The cost of a large scale launch might well be the end of the species, and of most higher forms of animal life. Score that (with a small allowance for the unborn) as 10 billion dead. Call that C2 = 1000 x C1

Though this is an inimaginably larger number, you'd get some (rough and weak) sense of it, counting to 1000 -- with each count, this time, standing for 10 million deaths.

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