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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

bbbuck - 10:56am Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3889 of 3904)
'I will change my tagline when the strike starts'....8 days til strike, 4days to 25k, 5days to us.open. 30days to fall.

kalter.rauch yes, life with lchic must be one fascinating environmental/ecological/libertarian/educational tap dance. Not having any pictures of her, I am not planning on permanently butting in. But I will make these observations.
I uhhhh , think, uhhh... She must be ...uhhh...
Her taunting style is nice.
And to have these links here in a neat package is nice.
I have been tapping her on the shoulder to see if we can get some demographic info. So far I have been able to get.
She references an emu. So I'm thinking she might be austrailian.
She starts posting at 1:00 am so I thought she might be european, but that flies in the face of my first conjecture.
She(?) seems to be a caring and concerned person.

buck-out. back on spaceman watch. If I see any I will post at you.

lchic - 11:29am Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3890 of 3904)

"" We visit the past in memory, and alter it by remembering it differently. The future lives in anticipation, and we try to change it to benefit ourselves. The further away from the present, in either direction, the fuzzier and more uncertain things become. We've been in the past all our lives, so we have some clear grasp of what that end of the timeline means. We haven't been to the future yet, but we will,we just don't know for how long, and we don't know what we should do when we get there. Tomorrow, for example, is the future, and with any luck I shall indeed visit it, and live there for one full day, and then leave. But I won't be back. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/goines/goin4.html

lchic - 12:03pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3891 of 3904)

Showalter - the odds are, that sooner or later, you'll post ... though George has been very entertaining!

rshow55 - 01:02pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3892 of 3904)

It seems to me that, with Lcic's help and support, I'm making progress sorting something out - and I'm trying to be careful.

Just now, I have a " Eureka" feeling - a feeling that something I've been worrying about for a long time is coming to fruition.

Something that I can brag about - that the NYT can brag about - something very broadly useful.

Can I be connecting the dots rightly? What are the odds of that?

Look pretty good to me.

It seems to me that something's focusing that would have interested Bertrand Russell - and Plato - and mainstream philosophers over the past 2500 years - and also kindergarten kids, teachers, housewives, and all sorts of other people.

Something basic. Something simple. Something obvious. Something that is a biggish step toward uniting the "two cultures" a way that C.P. Snow and "the average reader of the New York Times" would appreciate - and be exited about.

rshow55 - 01:04pm Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3893 of 3904)

Any inventor, in such a state - ought to move slowly and carefully. Fearfully. But hopefully, too.

This thread has accomplished a lot MD1999 rshow55 5/4/02 10:39am . . . and I think there are good things coming into focus right now.

This thread has been about more than missile defense -- though there has been plenty of that MD84 rshow55 3/2/02 11:52am .

This thread has also been about finding TRUTH - in ways that matter for people - in ways that make LARGE advances possible.

What are the odds of finding such advances? I think people have been much too pessimistic (in some ways) and not nearly cautious enough, in some others.

Maybe I've got some key things wrong - but it doesn't look that way. I think Bill Casey would be proud.

I'm hoping that a lot of elected officials will be, too.

MD3361 rshowalt 7/31/02 7:45am

Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee into the collapse of the Enron Corporation . . . . 21 U. S. Senators spoke, and very interesting excerpts are set out in http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/13/business/13TEXT.htm

After a point, we have common values. And common concerns for right and wrong. We have to find better ways of finding right and wrong - in both the factual and the moral sense. The senses are related. We can do so.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense