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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 11:27am Jun 8, 2001 EST (#4610 of 4618)
lunarchick@www.com

! !! !!! !!!!!

rshowalter - 01:58pm Jun 8, 2001 EST (#4611 of 4618)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I wonder how Senator Levin and his Michigan constituents, who know the auto industry, regard Rumsfeld's idea of "winging it" -- deploying "missile defense" systems that have not yet even worked satisfactorily in prototype.

You sure couldn't be that casual in automobile manufacture --- cars are MUCH too complicated for that to be practical. Anybody who has been near automotive design and production knows it.

And a missile defense system is much more complicated than an automobile.

And in addition to the complexity, there are the very tight tolerances.

rshowalter - 01:59pm Jun 8, 2001 EST (#4612 of 4618)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In some other areas -- solar energy and global warming control, for instance - we face large scale but simple problems. With loose tolerances, and many different ways to proceed on many of the technical details involved.

The estimate of all the conventional oil that there ever was or ever will be is less than the amount of sunlight that hits the earth in one day.http://www.oilcrisis.com/debate/oilcalcs.htm Exactly the kind of "wing it" approach Rumsfeld just proposed for MD might actually work for solar energy -- we need to find ways to use very extensive areas available on earth -- and the equatorial oceans look like a good place. For "space available" we might SOLVE essential military and economic problems for the whole world --

md4519 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?7@184.RkcJaPXEpZA^346977@.f0ce57b/4829 md4524 rshowalter 6/5/01 9:08pm

The energy content of world oil consumption (70 billion barrrels/day) could be matched, if 2.1 x 10^11 square meters of photocell area - at 5% efficiency, could be equatiorially placed -- there's plenty of room for that in equatorial oceans (that area, in one floating square 460 km on a side would look very small on a map).

We could have unlimited energy -- and the engineering resources to make that supply real seem to be available - in the form of people and organizations, now "going wrong for want of something to do" -- trying to make weapons that nobody really needs, and that nobody can figure out how to make work -- where there are simple but large scale jobs, fundamentally more important, that could actually be done.

rshowalter - 02:13pm Jun 8, 2001 EST (#4613 of 4618)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

One of the things this thread has shown is that overt and covert war, these days, is largely about oil . If the world had a secure, ample, expandable supply of energy, that could not be monopolized --then the military problems of the world -- the problems of peace, would be much more possible to solve.

For the money people are talking about wasting on missile defense systems that may never work -- the key problems of global warming and energy supply might be solved.

By people and institutions available.

rshowalter - 02:14pm Jun 8, 2001 EST (#4614 of 4618)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The key technical problem is floating thin assemblies of sheet plastic (perhaps 30 microns thick in all, including top sheet, bottom sheet, and bubble floatation) with very extensive areas -- and having the assemblies stand up to wind, rain, wave, and whale problems, on the equatorial seas.

A sloppy kind of engineering problem. Once it was solved - getting photocells onto the top surface would be straightforward. From there to a hydrogen based economy -- the engineering is all doable. - And the world's energy problem would no longer be the current "hopeless" one. Easier than Star Wars.

Actually doable. By engineers and institutions that have been struggling with missile defense, and failing.

And more important, just in military terms, than a limited missile defense could ever be.

rshowalter - 02:16pm Jun 8, 2001 EST (#4615 of 4618)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Solving the CO2 problem, by growing algae, and pulling carbon out of the biosphere on a "heavy industrial, mass production" basis -- is about the same difficulty level problem.

Actually doable. No show stoppers at all. Just a lot of sloppy, wide tolerance work -- the sort that engineers, given time, can be confident that they can do.

rshowalter - 02:17pm Jun 8, 2001 EST (#4616 of 4618)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The same engineers who, if they do honest bookeeping, have long been absolutely sure that missile defense is barely possible, if it is possible at all.

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