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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?

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rshow55 - 08:11am Feb 4, 2002 EST (#11228 of 11259)

To get a bigger, clearer image of http://cfao.ucolick.org/images/aoscheme.gif . . . go to http://cfao.ucolick.org/ao/index.shtml and click for a larger image.

This is in the "adaptive optics" part of the Center for Adaptive Optics web site.

rshow55 - 10:28am Feb 4, 2002 EST (#11229 of 11259)

We've made some progress towards clarity in the last few days, and I've gotten some substantial responses from Mazza and gisterme that have made convergence to the truth easier. MD11192 rshow55 2/2/02 3:42pm

We should not forget the stakes here:

Plan to Stop Missile Threat Could Cost $238 Billion by JAMES DAO http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/01/international/01MISS.html

" Building and operating the major missile defense programs now under development by the Bush administration could cost as much as $238 billion by 2025....

Is it becoming more and more plausible that some of the worst patterns on show at Enron apply to the missile defense programs, as well?

Perhaps I've got it wrong. Some things depend on facts - - - and it is sometimes easiest to deal with facts when they are common ground.

Is it common ground that there is no reference source, focused on the missile or other target, that is available for the adaptive optics of ABL to work from?

If there is such a source, is there anything, of an unclassified nature, that can be said about this miraculous source?

If not, we can score this as one "technical miracle" that the classified researchers must solve - - - and then go on to others.

There are some more.

mazza9 - 02:06pm Feb 4, 2002 EST (#11230 of 11259)
Louis Mazza

RShow55:

At the ABL site, Lockheed isresponsible for the Beam Control System which will:

A. Target acquisition and tracking

B. Fire-control engagement sequencing, aim point-and-kill assessment

C. High-energy laser (HEL) beam wavefront control and atmospheric compensation

D. Jitter control, alignment/beam-walk control, and beam containment for HEL and illuminator lasers

E. Calibration and diagnostics provide autonomous real-time operations and postmission analysis.

In essence this is the eyes of the system. It will illuminate the target, provide feedback for atmospheric transients, and sense platform movements, (aircraft "jitters") so that the HEL can remain focused on the target as the kill shot is delivered.

The ABL will carry sufficient fuel for 100 laser shots. I don't know how many seconds of lasing that includes, (I suspect that this is classified because it would divulge too much about the operating parameters of the system)so some of your curiosty cannot be assuaged.

LouMazza

rshow55 - 02:53pm Feb 4, 2002 EST (#11231 of 11259)

The MD community has built up patterns that assume that they can't be checked -- that they can simply ignore consistency relations.

Here's a quote I really like, from -- Dashiell Hammet in The Thin Man 1933, speaking of a sexy, interesting, treacherous character named " Mimi ". He's asked by a police detective what to make of what she says:

" The chief thing," I advised him, "is not to let her wear you out. When you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to take its place, and when you catch he in that one, admits it, and gives you still another, and so on. Most people . . . get discouraged after you've caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying, and you've got to be careful or you'll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you're tired of disbelieving her. "

Similar patterns of enronation are standard with Mazza.

Here's an old saying in shops:

" It can be truly said that you can't make what you can't measure. . . . For how would you know if you'd made it or not?

The ABL can't possibly work, and the people involved have to know it. Especially after they "notice" that reflective countermeasures are possible. But before, as well.

Adaptive optics has to adapt with respect to something -- and with respect to what it is supposed to adapt to.

mazza9 2/4/02 2:06pm is intentionally deceptive, and Mazza and his associates have to know it. Time to look at some "miracles."

mazza9 - 03:11pm Feb 4, 2002 EST (#11232 of 11259)
Louis Mazza

RShow55: I thought that I was providing additional information so that you could "adapt". I was wrong. You obviously don't have the capacity to understand the complex systems described from these unclassified sources. Rather, you choose to quote Dashiel Hammett's Thin Man from 1933!!!

My retort, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". the song sung by Professor Potts, "Toot Sweet"!

You return to form by your ad hominem attack. But hey, we know who you are and your pontificating will not hide your putrid prognostications.

My daughter's 8th grade science class got it, (adaptive optics), so did the Texas Astronautical Society, but in your case too many syllables!!!!, (time to call out lchic or is it Eyegore!!)

LouMazza

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