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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.

gisterme - 03:51am Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6909 of 6923)

kalter.rauch 12/22/02 3:30am

There is something weird going on, kalter.rauch. After I saw your post I tried to page back to some of my own on the last couple of pages and they seemed to be gone too. Just going back to the nytimes home page then returning to the forum didn't fix the problem. I had to exit my browser completely then return to be able to see everything again.

"...I expect the Forums will be going down very soon for "Urgent Maintenance"!!!

That could be right. One thing I did do was try to delete a post so I could correct some mistakes. The access problem seemed to appear after that attempt failed. Might be a coincidence, might not. It may be that there's some sort of elusive bug in the nonfunctional "delete" routine that's causing an indexing problem, even though no data seems to have actually been lost.

kalter.rauch - 04:33am Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6910 of 6923)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

gisterme 12/22/02 3:51am

Try doing what I did. Go back to your post #6883. Then hit the "More" button. All that happened to me was that I kept seeing your post #6883 (eg... with the little green men comment to Rshow).

Volchin at the Space Exploration Forum noticed a couple weeks ago the "Delete" feature was "Access Denied"......myself and others have verified that.

......but there ARE missing, delayed, and duplicated posts...and it seems to be more than just routine moderator deletions of material like my "Rshow is a chronic wino" post I left yesterday.

I'm NOT volunteering you understand......but SOMEONE is going to have to take all this evidence to THE SHOP and make an abject, grovelling request for an audience with...(shudder)..."KATE"......

commondata - 05:34am Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6911 of 6923)

gisterme 12/21/02 9:05pm

Thanks for the reply, Gisterme; the argument "things that fly too fast can't turnaround very quickly and hit aircraft" appeals nicely to my common sense, such as it is. I'll concede that an Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) fitted as the payload might not make the best anti-aircraft weapon. Though, it'd be great for knocking out satellites, eh? Now what of the booster itself? - from the link you give at http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/gbi.htm (August 05, 2000):

Three options are being examined for the GBI booster: the Minuteman III ICBM; a combinations of other existing solid- rocket systems; and an entirely new booster.

We seem to be talking about a very flexible system, one where new boosters can be pushed into service at any time and where the payload could be nuclear, biological or chemical as well as EKVs. This military lego will be supported by a new infrastructure of ground, air, sea and spaced based sensors. But it's not offensive? It could never be offensive?

Ask yourself how you would view such a system if were currently being built by NK or Russia or China. Would you trust them or prefer to play catch-up?

kalter.rauch - 06:11am Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6912 of 6923)
Earth vs <^> <^> <^>

Ummmmmm......we (the US) already HAVE a cost-effective ASAT system integrated with and successfully tested on high flying F-15 carriers.

...as far as your other fears go, the US already has an OVERWHELMING Deterrant deployed in the field against the likes of Iraq, North Korea, etc. etc.

lunarchick - 06:25am Dec 22, 2002 EST (# 6913 of 6923)

The problem with the systems administration may be that 'Kate' the leader is taking time out, it's almost Christmas ... and bottles and cartons are finding their way into human systems .... the double post would be that time period back-up 'save' was re-incorporated onto the database - unintentionally .... of course at first i thought it was just a tribute to my genius .. but when i saw they also reposted 'Johnston' ... well ... :)

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense