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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 - 05:48pm Jul 3, 2003 EST (# 12833 of 12843)
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.

Oil companies, and the oil industry - and the states and nation states much connected to the oil industry - are adapted to do what they do - and what they do is, and has been for a very long time - extremely complicated. The people who run the oil industry, and depend on it, are risk averse - and you would be, too, in their place. If the world economy ran better - current oil companies might profit, and profit significantly. But these organizations, impressive and admirable in many other ways, are not set up for optimizations that require large scale change.

Solutions have to be worked out - in detail - all the detail real socio-technical systems need - if large scale changes are to occur. That's what AEA was about. ( Search AEA, this thread.)

And change can be difficult. The status quo is a situation where " The Prize" Yergen refers to is finding oil - or owning an oil field. To change to a situation where you can just float an "oil field" - for costs comparable to development costs on oil fields now - that's a big change.

But a practical change. It is in the interest of the United States as a nation and, almost all people in the world, to see this change happen.

You can't expect such changes to be welcomed by people committed to and supported by the status quo - and you have to proceed on a basis where the people who'd like to slow or stop the progress can't do so.

As a practical matter - and a moral one - you also have to consider the interests of the people whose interests are effected.

That's a challenge different from the job of technically definining an optimal large scale solution - even if the solution was absolutely perfect.

On the big issues - it is important to get the solutions so that the most basic answers are absolutely perfect - even though a great deal of supporting detail is needed. With current scientific knowledge, engineering knowledge, and simulation capacities - that's a practical thing to do.

gisterme - 08:39pm Jul 3, 2003 EST (# 12834 of 12843)

rshow55 - 08:12am Jul 3, 2003 EST (# 12819 of ...) http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.c0fUbTdzmVy.324870@.f28e622/14490

"...The long and the short of it is you need both long and short.

The long has to be right - and has to come first..."

That seems to run contrary to the way the real world works, Robert. I can hardly think of a single thing that starts big and then gets small or starts long and then gets short.

Ideas start small and then grow. Even movies are a composite of small parts assembled into a whole. I'm sure many movies grow to be longer than directors and producers find practical and then lose some scenes on the cutting room floor; but the point is that they don't start long and then get shorter. They grow too long and then get shorter. Do you disagree, Robert? I just don't understand how you can say the long has to come before the short. Time doesn't allow things to work like that.

How many too-long posts do you write that aren't set out first one letter, then one word and finally one idea at a time? How many do you shorten up because they've grown too long. Not many, I'd wager. :-)

lchic - 10:09pm Jul 3, 2003 EST (# 12835 of 12843)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

A balloon starts big

Mushrooms 'grow-big' in the dark

'Public health' is 'big' thinking

An airbus is an economy of scale

Logistics and transportation are 'big picture'

Representation - gets 'too big' - money locks out democracy

----

Land degredation starts small - becomes gigantic

Hopelessness may start small - it too can become big ... make that 'too big'

lchic - 11:40pm Jul 3, 2003 EST (# 12836 of 12843)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

RU | Balance of Power --- BP?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/international/europe/03CND-RUSS.html

gisterme - 03:35am Jul 4, 2003 EST (# 12837 of 12843)

...Hopelessness may start small - it too can become big ... make that 'too big'..."

I'll grant that you sometimes seem hopeless, lchic.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense