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    Missile Defense

Keywords: lasar

n Missile Defense #6130 - rshowalter Jun 27, 2001 10:39 am
I can't prove that something doesn't exist beyond a wall - without getting a look. And so "we have it, but it is classified" is an answer that cannot be proven wrong, in the most direct possible ways.

Some facts are useful as guides to the possible, however...

n Missile Defense #6098 - gisterme Jun 26, 2001 07:33 pm
rshowlater wrote: "...For instance -- lasar missile defense requires, at MANY stages - system precision greater than has been achieved on the Space Telescope. That's a checkable fact..."

Okay, Robert show why tracking a flaming rocket booster at say 10,000 km distance would be impossible for the space telescope but tracking and photographing a disintegrating asteroid out by the orbit of Jupiter, about 778,000,000 km would be possible?

We both know that's an "apples and oranges" question, just as it was when you first proposed it...

n Missile Defense #6081 - rshowalter Jun 26, 2001 05:47 pm
gisterme , it seems to me that I asked a reasonable question in 6075.

Language has an unfunny characteristic -- that is, it in nonquanitative -- so, as any academic knows, people can quibble forever.

We're talking here about huge costs and huge risks to the world...

n Missile Defense #6059 - rshowalter Jun 26, 2001 01:35 pm
I'd like to repeat the posts that ended this thead on June 24th.
MD5978 rshowalter 6/24/01 9:00pm .... MD5979 rshowalter 6/24/01 9:01pm
MD5980 rshowalter 6/24/01 10:21pm

Let me add a fact that I believe a loyal United States citizen should be permitted to post...

n Missile Defense #5998 - rshowalter Jun 25, 2001 02:45 pm
Old saying in shops:

" It can be truly said that you can't make what you can't measure. . ...

n Missile Defense #5995 - rshowalter Jun 25, 2001 01:30 pm
smartalix , you're an optics jock, aren't you (you edit a magazine that sometimes deals with lasars, as I recall?)

If I remember, the lasar "hot spot" to take out a ballistic missile on boost phase has to be on target for the order of a second (ON THE SAME SPOT) -- would you care to comment on how "easy" it is to get that resolution (say 1 cm) over the distances involved, from a moving platform (plane or satellite) shooting at a moving target?

If the distance is 100 km, isn't this a target of 10e-7 radians diameter, that is moving ? Shot at from a moving platform with some degree of vibration and "unwelcome motion" to be compensated for?..

n Missile Defense #5419 - rshowalter Jun 19, 2001 08:55 am
Date: June 15, 2001 General Says Missile Shield Needs Money and Prudence By JAMES DAO

-- "The head of the Pentagon's missile defense program warned Congress today that accelerating development of a missile shield without a major infusion of money would be a mistake. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/world/15MISS.html

And the money would be a mistake, if the technology and the strategic consequences are not both subject to real scrutiny.

Strategically, this thing is a disaster...

n Missile Defense #4889 - dirac_10 Jun 12, 2001 03:13 pm
rshowalter - 03:05pm Jun 12, 2001 EST (#4886 of 4887)

"Big lie" strikes again.

From one of your old "associates" like me?

Now, just so I can be informed --

That's why I'm here, to "inform" you...

n Missile Defense #4886 - rshowalter Jun 12, 2001 03:05 pm
"Big lie" strikes again.

Now, just so I can be informed -- what angle through the atmosphere does a ground base lasar need to shoot down a missile, before warhead separation? How close does the lasar have to be to target?..

n Missile Defense #4844 - rshowalter Jun 12, 2001 11:45 am
Solve the problem with NOISE with calibration questions, and with real people and real equipment -- (add a little chaff, say -- ) Well, it might be done. ... But if you look at what the radars can really do, and look at the resulution that is actually there -- and run through the errors, which go one on top of another -- it is recklessly far-fetched to assume that this is an "effective defense."

Or that something like a "lasar" could solve the problem...

n Missile Defense #3059 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 06:09 pm
And sometimes, after a technology is already rather mature -- big advances become -- far fetched.

How big an airplane does it take to house a chemical lasar that might shoot an airplane down at 10 miles? How many shots/sec (or per hour) does that lasar have?..

n Missile Defense #1988 - rshowalter Apr 5, 2001 05:56 am
almarst-2001 4/4/01 8:32pm

" The milestone was the first "light test" of the Track Illuminator Laser at a facility El Segundo, Calif. The TILL, one of four critical lasers in the ABL, was the first to demonstrate that it can project powerful pulses of light on a small section of a missile and obtain data of the target's speed, elevation and probable point of impact.

Note how very early in the control logic, and also ask exactly what the errors of x, y, z axis velocity and position are using most optimistic theoretical assumptions, for this lasar, on the geometry of targets in question...

n Missile Defense #1734 - rshowalter Mar 29, 2001 07:40 pm
dirac - on the top of the wing, pressures are lower by a few percent -- it is nothing like a vacuum.

In any case, for lasar pulse times, atmospheric cooling isn't significant.

n Missile Defense #1720 - rshowalter Mar 29, 2001 06:41 pm
Don't be so sure he's "probably right."

I haven't seen the reports either, and I asked Dirac for them previously.

The energy requirements to shoot down a jet with a lasar are large, and if they've got that working, I'm most impressed -- I'm not saying it isn't done, quite -- but it is surely a most impressive feat -- quite a bargain for 60 billion dollars and twenty years.

Even so, the feat, even if it is true (and usually rumors about classified equipment are disinformation) 99 that's a long way from shooting down a missile ( for example, you have to know where the missile is -- and they don't have the resolution to do that comfortably for even ONE incoming -- much less a few, with a number of decoys )

And if that lasar is big enough to shoot down a plane --

how big is it?..

n Missile Defense #591 - rshowalter Jan 24, 2001 01:10 pm
From the "death ray" reference

It is not certain if Tesla ever used the death ray, or indeed if he even succeeded in building one. But the following is the often-related story of what happened one night in 1908 when Tesla tested the foreboding weapon.

At the time, Robert Peary was making his second attempt to reach the North Pole...

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