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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?

rshow55 - 04:12pm Jan 14, 2002 EST (#10762 of 10764)

gisterme , Lots of great things have been done on computers. You're absolutely right when you say:

" Things routinely modelled with great success using computers today, were absolutely impossible to model by any means in 1952. Many of those things weren't even imagined back then."

Advances in a lot of areas of interest to the military, however, have been disappointing. Very disappointing. That applies, many, many times, to missile defense.

You're also right when you say

"Just because computers use numerical methods to integrate or differentiate, that doesn't mean it's not calculus.

And problems that defeated engineers using paper-and-pencil calculus can defeat people using computers for the exact same reasons.

I think computers are absolutely wonderful. Just as good as they are. Just as limited, too. I hope, some day, that they can be as useful as many hoped they'd be, on things like guidance problems, in the early days.

But when there are mistakes in computer programming, or in the models the programs represent -- boy, can they go wrong. For instance, there's an error in the standard finite integration program used all through industry and military modelling - built into the computer code. It can be small, or cause explosive errors, depending on circumstances.

When things are forgotten, or answered wrongly -- very big bodies or work can be invalidated.

We're agreed that lasar weapons based on destroying a target by heating are completely defeated by a clean reflective decal?

And that there are detection problems, too?

Something very "obvious" that was forgotten. Computers can't help some with problems like that, but they still happen.

Glad to hear from you, Gisterme.

rshow55 - 04:28pm Jan 14, 2002 EST (#10763 of 10764)

mazza9 1/14/02 4:08pm

Some common ground.

"Yes a clean, reflective coating would deflect a laser beam if it could maintain its sheen throughout the flight regime."

There are a lot of photographs of missiles, very many from NASA - it ought not be too hard to judge how dirty a decal would get during launch (outside a silo, for example.) And of course, the issue can be tested.

A degradation of reflectance from 99% to 95% might represent a pretty dirty case - - and reflection of 95/100ths of the lasar energy would be a very effective countermeasure. (Even if you assume 100% absorbtion of lasar energy, boost phase destruction of a missile with a lasar looks very difficult on a number of other grounds. If not "impossible" -- then "extraordinarily difficult" in the sense John Pike used on related problems.

The decals also work on both decoys and warhead packages -- which are well protected on lauch. They'd be clean and invulnerable. And, in many scenarios, invisible.

Putting decals on satellites is easily done, too.

There are many objections to the administration's missile defense programs. Good that we've taken steps toward closure on this one.

We need missile defense programs that can WORK. Not Buck Rogers stunts, which can't.

rshow55 - 07:36pm Jan 14, 2002 EST (#10764 of 10764)

MD10716 rshow55 1/9/02 5:57pm ... We need some "islands of technical fact" to be determined, beyond reasonable doubt, in a clear context.

MD8211 rshowalter 8/28/01 4:35pm ... MD8212 rshowalter 8/28/01 5:07pm
MD8213 rshowalter 8/28/01 5:15pm .... MD8214 rshowalter 8/28/01 5:23pm
MD8215 rshowalter 8/28/01 5:42pm

I believe that now is a time where progress can be made, for peace, by solidly establishing "islands of technical fact" about missile defense and the weaponization of space.

Right answers, on this subject matter, are worth getting. In the national interest, and the interest of the whole world. With some cooperation from the Bush administration, so that clear, unclassified questions could be answered by real people, with real names and real P.E. tickets, I believe that nongovernmental resources could be brought to bear to get this done. Contested questions of fact or analysis, on unclassified but technically decisive issues could, I believe, be determined, in ways that would work in public, by "umpires" - operating in the open, who are responsible for preparing the professional engineering exams in the relevant fields, in the US and other countries with analogous credentialling.

I suggest that the whole thing could be done on the internet, with anyone interested in the whole world watching.

A lot of waste and wasted time would be avoided. The nation, and the world, would be safer. Missile defense is a valid concern. There are strong reasons to be concerned about weapons of mass destruction of all kinds, and the ways they might be delivered.

But we need to deal with these issues in ways that can work . Not ways that cannot possibly work.

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