Missile Defense

"Among them, the fact that the "adaptive optics" of ABL can't possibly work -- because it has nothing to adapt to remotely good enough to make it function as a weapon. There is no adaptive feedback loop worthy of the name for the purpose the weapon is supposed to serve."

I posted links to several astronomical sites where adaptive optics is described and displayed in "before" and "after" the adaptive optics techniques are applied.

To say that no adaptive feedback loop exists is to ignore the evidence presented.

Active AO reads the turbulence in the atmosphere using a "guide star" that is projected from the viewing site. The distortion of this known light source is read and the optical distortion is measured and relayed to mirror for the deforming to occur which will cancel our the distortion.

Mind you this is not new...

Among them, the fact that the "adaptive optics" of ABL can't possibly work -- because it has nothing to adapt to remotely good enough to make it function as a weapon. There is no adaptive feedback loop worthy of the name for the purpose the weapon is supposed to serve...

The NASA people were right that "using a rifle to hit a moving dime two miles away" is hard -- and would be hard even with a perfect rifle, and perfect bullets, and would be hard even shooting in a vacuum.

For ABL, you need resolutions far greater -- and starting without really knowing to good resolution where the target is - - and with little information to help with that - and with little time to find out.

...

. Measuring the Moon's Distance Apollo Laser Ranging Experiments Yield Results (from LPI Bulletin, No...

So adaptive optics has been under development since 1953, it works as well as it does in astronomy, and computers are much faster than they used to be.

Angular resolution on radar is lousy, as you say, but radar can measure distance very well, too -- by measuring time.

Radar distance measurements are not as good as light wave (laser) distance measurements, but both hinge on time resolution of the systems involved...

In MD11229 rshow55 2/4/02 10:28am I asked:

" Is it common ground that there is no reference source, focused on the missile or other target, that is available for the adaptive optics of ABL to work from?..

"..."The question is "adaptive of what, with respect to what?"

Any detail you can supply would be appreciated -- without those details, I'll make estimates, and try to be clear about them..."

Your eyeballs have one organic example of adaptive optics. You can actively change the focal length of their lenses just by looking to different distances. Adaptive optics in telescope terms are mirror controls that offset atmospheric distortion in real time to get "in focus" pictures through a varying atmosphere...

There are, as Mazza's reference points out, a chain of things that have to happen together, which have to be accurate enough to make the system work.

When I walked away, after posting, I had a sinking feeling about that...

Here's a quote I really like, from -- Dashiell Hammet in The Thin Man 1933, speaking of a sexy, interesting, treacherous character named " Mimi ". He's asked by a police detective what to make of what she says:

" The chief thing," I advised him, "is not to let her wear you out...

We should not forget the stakes here:

Plan to Stop Missile Threat Could Cost $238 Billion by JAMES DAO http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/01/international/01MISS.html

" Building and operating the major missile defense programs now under development by the Bush administration could cost as much as $238 billion by 2025....

Is it becoming more and more plausible that some of the worst patterns on show at Enron apply to the missile defense programs, as well?..