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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 - 01:49pm Aug 9, 2003 EST (# 13275 of 13275)
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.

Menken on politics, from Quotes From H. L. Mencken http://watchfuleye.com/mencken.html

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - - That's not inconsistent with practical, responsible patriotism.

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right... The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds."

But even the "frauds" do enough right that we do as well as we do.

"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."

And that can apply to journalists , too. But often - journalists, politicians, and other people are capable of honor .

I think Menken would have appreciated some of Fredmoore's postings, as I do. But I think Menken might well have been a constructive optimist - and a practical help - where Fredmoore http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.wG8dbB28xPK.2433107@.f28e622/14948 takes a position that C.P. Snow called his "least favorite." The position that, in the particular case, seems to me to be both cynical and unworldly.

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.wG8dbB28xPK.2433107@.f28e622/14948 includes this.

Even if an equatorial towed PV array were feasible, and it is not, corporate states would tie it up in knots and knobble it, lest it be competetive and interfere with their bottom lines.

Not feasible? When I went to the Patent Office monday - I got the opposite impression - and if Fredmoore had been there, he might have as well. I know I would have been proud to have him examine the material there - I think the Patent Office, in its stark way, is an inspiring place. I think, with the stakes as they are there would be a duty to check.

When I was at the Patent Office, I was elated at how much fit together - and felt, once again, that the focusing set out in http://www.mrshowalter.net/DBeauty.html was a real advance. If Lchic had been with me - I think she would have seen that, too - and been very proud.

Even if solving our energy problems - in a way that would make the whole world safer were technically feasible - Fredmoore seems to think it would be suppressed. Would it be? I don't think that Fredmoore's conclusion necessarily follows.

To the extent it does follow - responses often seen at The New York Times are a part of the reason. Responses that might be "easy to change" - and might even be in the process of changing. Though the TIMES is careful to avoid "laser like" effects - except sometimes.

If someone with power, and Eisenhower's good sense were involved - the thing could be done. Menken, were he alive, might have had the will and the wit to be instrumental in getting it done. People would talk to him.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense