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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 - 08:43am Sep 10, 2003 EST (# 13583 of 13598)
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.

Edward Teller Is Dead at 95; Fierce Architect of H-Bomb http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/10/obituaries/10TELL.html begins

Edward Teller, who was present at the creation of the first nuclear weapons and who grew even more famous for defending them, died yesterday . . . He was 95.

and ends

While, unlike many atomic scientists, Dr. Teller did not argue against dropping the bomb on Japanese cities, he repeatedly said afterward that doing so had been a mistake. Far better, he maintained, would have been to fire a bomb in the evening high enough above Tokyo to spare the city but to flood it in blinding light.

"If we could have ended the war by showing the power of science without killing a single person," he said, "all of us would now be happier, more reasonable and much more safe."

. . . Walter Sullivan, a science writer and editor for The New York Times, died in 1996.

This article from three years ago is interesting, too.

Who Built the H-Bomb? Debate Revives By WILLIAM J. BROAD http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/24/science/24TELL.html

After suffering a heart attack, Edward Teller took a breath, sat down with a friend and a tape recorder and offered his views on the secret history of the hydrogen bomb.

"So that first design," Dr. Teller said, "was made by Dick Garwin." He repeated the credit, ensuring there would be no misunderstanding.

Dr. Teller, now 93, was not ceding the laurels for devising the bomb — a glory he claims for himself. But he was rewriting how the rough idea became the world's most feared weapon. His tribute, made more than two decades ago but just now coming to light, adds a surprising twist to a dispute that has roiled historians and scientists for decades: who should get credit for designing the H-bomb?

The oral testament was meant to disparage Dr. Stanislaw M. Ulam, Dr. Teller's rival, now dead, and boost Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a young scientist at the time of the invention who later clashed with Dr. Teller and now says he would wipe the bomb from the earth if he could.

Here are discussions on this thread, before March 1, 2001, linked to Teller, with some interesting articles available on the web.

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md2000s/md2547.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md2000s/md2562.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md2000s/md2565.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md2000s/md2575.htm http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md2000s/md2579.htm

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md6000s/md6889.htm

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md7000s/md7072.htm

7074 - - - project chariot

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md10000s/md10690.htm

http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md11000s/md11050.htm

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Armed to Excess By BOB KERREY http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/02KERR.html

The risk of a nuclear attack still poses the greatest single threat to our survival.

REHEARSING DOOMSDAY Even with the end of the Cold War, U.S. missile silos are poised to launch . . . text adaptation of CNN's Special Report, . . . which aired Sunday, October 15, 2000 at 10 p.m. EDT. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/democracy/nuclear/stories/nukes/index.html

CHEYENNE, Wyoming (CNN) -- The wheatfields of America are strangely peaceful and reassuring. It's hard even to imagine that the most destructive weapons in history are hidden away under these farms.

Here, at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, is the biggest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) base in the United States, on 12,000 square miles in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It's business as usual here, as it was during the Cold War. "Nothing has changed," says Col. Stacker.

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