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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 06:35pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10997 of 11008)

No basis?

MD6751 rshowalter 7/7/01 7:49pm and some postings by me and gisterme before it deals with some of the reason to be concerned by issues of reflectance. We've been discussing this issue a long time (and some basics haven't been disputed.)

A reference, supported by gisterme , said that to destroy a missile, you needed 1 kw/cm2 of laser light on the missile for 5 seconds.

For 100% absorbtion, that's enough energy to boil away a 2.4 cm layer of water, over that area. For 2% absorbtion, that's only enough to boil away half a mm layer of water. Much less!

(For .2% absorbtion, only enough to evaporate a 05mm layer of water -- very little.)

You're saying this doesn't matter?

Mazza said:

"You can't just cast off the ABL in such an offhanded manner."

Conservation of energy is "offhand?"

rshow55 - 06:44pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10998 of 11008)

So with gold leaf, the ABL, and the orbital lasers, using very optimistic assumptions about beam coherence and control, would only deliver to the surface of the missile or warhead enough heat to evaporate half a mm of water (about .02") -- or, for better reflectances, only a tenth or a hundredth of that.

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? "

seems like a fair question to me.

lchic - 06:58pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#10999 of 11008)

Why wasn't it?

lchic - 06:58pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#11000 of 11008)

W H O -- C H E C K S ?

lchic - 07:00pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#11001 of 11008)

Give me MORE says ...

rshow55 - 07:02pm Jan 23, 2002 EST (#11002 of 11008)

People need to check. Because if they don't, there are no "good questions" - or "solid answers."

Because when one is part of "the culture of lying" -- all one needs is to keep evading -- and distracting.

(search "culture of lying" -- this thread -- there is a red "search" key below.)

Wish I could stay, Lchic, but I have to go.

Out.

(6 following messages)

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