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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 - 06:52pm Jul 22, 2003 EST (# 13103 of 13106)
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.

gisterme's http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.17Mabm6Hrdo.489821@.f28e622/14779 includes this.

I'll humor you, Robert. Why wouldn't a fast, fuel effiecient VTOL aircraft find a good application as a civilian transport? Perhaps you have a reason I hadn't thought of.

Questions are how fast - - and how fuel efficient - - and how good an application?

And how safe . . ?

Also how expensive?

A Final Push for the Bedeviled, Beloved Osprey By LESLIE WAYNE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/business/06CHOP.html never so much as mentions "spin offs" - but it does mention a price tag. More than 12 billion has been spent - and 458 Ospreys will cost 48 billion .

That's more than 100 million dollars per plane.

The plane has had big problems for a long time - and has been under development for more than 20 years. Designs that are straightforward and well understood go much faster - and cost much less.

Gisterme, if you're arguing for Osprey on the basis that it has a reasonable chance to lead to a "fast, fuel effiecient VTOL aircraft" suitable for civilian transport - - you're really stretching.

If the plane is justified, for its cost - it is justified on military grounds.

gisterme - 07:45pm Jul 22, 2003 EST (# 13104 of 13106)

"...The plane (Osprey) has had big problems for a long time - ..."

That's true.

"...and has been under development for more than 20 years..."

Right again.

"...Designs that are straightforward and well understood go much faster - and cost much less..."

And yet they can't do what more advanced designs can do. A Boing 767's design is neither straight forward nor easily understood when compared to that of a Douglas DC-3. The DC-3 (military version was the C-47) was the premier cargo and passenger aircraft of its time. However after more than thirty years of developmental evolution 767s are far more common (and useful) than DC-3s even though the price tag is probably a thousand times higher.

Don't forget that it took us at least 50,000 years to learn to fly at all. An investment of twenty years time or even twice that to learn to fly better seems small by comparison.

"...Gisterme, if you're arguing for Osprey on the basis that it has a reasonable chance to lead to a "fast, fuel effiecient VTOL aircraft" suitable for civilian transport - - you're really stretching..."

Naa. For example, individual transistors used to cost twenty bucks apiece or more. Now you can get a couple of million, already hooked up in a useful circuit for around twenty bucks. Tilt-rotor VTOL technology is not simple but the idea is straightforward far more straightforward than solid-state electronic technology. What's being done with the Osprey is a technological challenge, not a conceptual one. I for one thind that things worth having are worth paying for.

The cost of developing the technology utilized by the Osprey probably is justified on military grounds as you suggest. So were the other exotic technologies that I mentioned before...technologies that now permeate and benefit our culture. Few would argue that the civilian benefits of those military development projects are not the frosting on the cake and the long term payoff for their initial developmental costs. You know the sorts of technologies I mean...like the ones we're using right now...that make this forum possible.

So far as "how fast, how safe (reliable) and how expensive" goes, well, those are all categories that have been shown historically to improve as technologies mature. Would you disagree?

I think you should try to be a little more forward-looking, Robert. It might make your world a little bigger and a lot brighter.

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