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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 Apr 10, 2003 EST (# 11233 of 11235)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Sometimes it takes people a long time to learn - and they can only learn things that they are able to learn.

If people are "not stupid" they are surely organized in such a way that somehow they act as stupidly as they in fact do - and make the ugly mistakes that in fact they make.

Why?

To sort that out, you have to consider details.

And sometimes, in a situation where the Emperor's New Clothes story seems to be going on again and again, monotonously - lies and fictions have to be confronted with some force, combined with some tact.

The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Chrisian Anderson http://www.deoxy.org/emperors.htm

We should check questions of fact - and decent balance - fit to circumstances. If leaders of nation states wanted facts checked - it would happen. By conventions that say "statements of leaders can't be questioned" - it won't.

When facts and relations matter enough - there should be a moral obligation to check them. Now there isn't.

If that changed, when the stakes were high enough - we'd live in a much better world.

10617 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.fWgXaBTW6TG.1464183@.f28e622/12168

It should be becoming more possible to ask for this, when it matters, and get it. But it is still very difficult - much too difficult.

There are things where the Arab world ought to be confronted - and where the clergy of Islam should be confronted. There are plenty of things in the world that are imperfect. Quite a few of them - that matter today - are embodied in the cocksure statements of a lot of Islamic clergymen. They should be ashamed - we should be ashamed of them - and Arabs, all over the world - should be ashamed of themselves when they defer to them.

fredmoore - 09:24am Apr 10, 2003 EST (# 11234 of 11235)

Gisterme ...

In answer to your well thought out points.

A. The treaty would phase in, over a 10 year period, one 600MW geothermal power station at a suitable dry rock location for every city over 1 million people. This would be a shared global endeavour. As each unit came on line one equivalent fossil fuel unit would be scaled back or closed. All cities would have a number of suitable locations, the half life of such locations is of the order of thousands of years and the geological effects would be negligable except in unstable fault zones.

B. Thermoelectric fabrics require globally coordinated research and funding to be realised. When operational they would be used specifically on house roofs in urban settings and over crops in agri settings to power low level requirements such as lighting , refrigeration, pumps etc. They would take huge amounts of power out of fossil fuel stations because ultimately every house and farm on the planet will be serviced by at least 1Kw of Thermoelectric power.

C. Space based solar collectors are capable of supplying ALL earth's future power requirements. The radiation from the sun is for all intents and purposes endless and available 24/7. The amount collected is only limited by the surface area and ultimate efficiency of collectors. The collectors eventually would be light weight, easily deployable thermoelectric fabrics. Further, it would eventually be the prime source of power for all space exploration.

D. The engineered wetlands in my local area have been constructed to exacting standards and degeneration to wastelands is not possible. Do you have references to failed engineered wetlands? Poor engineering or construction does not count.

The area around engineered wetlands experience what I term ' local climate control' from such projects and clearly this will reduce energy consumption in these areas. Entropy will be dissipated more slowly from these areas with a resultant calming effect on local temperature ranges. This is a step towards the reverse of the Heat-Island effect so common in densely populated riverine catchments around the world and which we confuse with global climate change. Also, because of the lower entropy in these new areas there will be an increase in thermodynamic order. This translates into a feeling of well-being and intelligence at the human level ... the very things which we use so much ENERGY in trying to attain.

E.The Financial structuring would require all signatories to contribute a percentage of GDP to a global fund to implement the 4 schemes over the 10 year period. Larger countries will thus contribute more but in return they get a broader knowledge base, a cleaner, more environmentally motivated planet and a good will factor that translates into peace and prosperous markets. The last benefit alone would pay for the US contribution many times over as we have seen in the $120 billion price tag of the Iraq war. The cost for all 4 schemes over ten years would be about $500 billion and ALL nations would be contributing.

Its all doable, gettable and it won't take much of a spark to kick it off.

As for food and water and air being more important than ENTROPY to living things .... IN the thermodynamics of living systems, entropy flows come first followed by food , air and clean water. Then life evolves and is sustained till the entropy source falls below a critical level when competion creates chaotic extinguishment of those living systems. We are entropy seeking machines and that is all, but that is enough for it encompasses the full spectrum of human endeavour.

This not a naive attempt at UTOPIA. It is a less than 1% of GDP global effort to understand what our civilisation really is about and slowly setting about coordinating our collective efforts to form a COHERENT approach to bring about a sustainable pathway for our own future and for future generations. The alternative is the chaos we are seeing NOW in I

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