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Missile Defense

Nazi engineer and Disney space advisor Wernher Von Braun helped give us rocket science. Today, the legacy of military aeronautics has many manifestations from SDI to advanced ballistic missiles. Now there is a controversial push for a new missile defense system. What will be the role of missile defense in the new geopolitical climate and in the new scientific era?

bigred152 - 09:02am Jan 26, 2001 EST (#603 of 636)

Interesting to note that USA is 'thinking' of putting up big dollars re space-y-stuff, yet, the internet is currently falling over because much of it is based close to silicon valley ... where the power supply is falling over. Tesla no doubt laughing in his grave!

Prioritisation wise .. folks are very interested in the efficient and effective functioning of the day-to-day ... and USA should note that if the power falls over the 'world' falls over .. with respect to data based communication ... which has been mighty inefficient over past days!

mhunter20 - 10:02am Jan 26, 2001 EST (#604 of 636)

Soldiers are told not to march in step when crossing a bridge. Tesla was aware of the accumulative effects of positive feedback. One day for several hours he hit the Golden Gate Bridge with a hammer. After the bridge started to sway noticeably the police told him to stop.

The bridge swayed due to the positive feedback to standing waves.

Tesla discovered that the Earth produces standing waves of electrical energy. (See his autobiography.)

dirac_10 1/25/01 11:55pm

But beam power at a distance with one antenna at 12 Mhz, and have it hit one spot to be used, I don't see how.

I don't know if the death ray ever worked. (The bit in the link about possibly being a particle accelerator seems to me to be incorrect. If Tesla was responsible for the Tunguska event, then it seems to me that the trees may have been destroyed by reverse lightning, the more powerful lightning that starts from the ground.) Think about the implications, if the death ray did work. (1) Tesla built his first magnifying transmitter prior to 1900. His budget for the device built at Shoreham, NY was $150,000. (2) The tower could easily be hidden from sattelites. (3) If global warming is real or oil and methane are not produced by the Earth's interior as Thomas Gold has written, we may actually see Tesla's World System for power distribution implemented.

Just charge up a capacitor with a diode using the electromagnetic energy in the air. And yes you can lift a weight with it, but I just don't think there is enough energy around in the air to flatten 2000 sq. km. of trees at once.

The energy is from a capacitor but includes more than just the air. Tesla's source of energy for the magnifying transmitter is a capacitor of about .25 Farads, commonly referred to as planet Earth.

Tesla

I mean this: If you pass a current into a circuit with large self-induction, and no radiation takes place, and you have a low resistance, there is no possibility of this energy getting out into space; therefore, the impressed impulses accumulate.

Positive feedback to standing waves.

mhunter20 - 10:30am Jan 26, 2001 EST (#605 of 636)

dirac_10 1/25/01 11:55pm

But beam power at a distance with one antenna at 12 Mhz, and have it hit one spot to be used, I don't see how.

Oh, you were asking about power distribution. Tesla, in what he called his World System, planned on a network of magnifying transmitters throughout the Earth. The ELF surface waves would not be beamed to one spot. The entire surface of the planet would become a source of power.

mhunter20 - 02:06pm Jan 26, 2001 EST (#606 of 636)

mhunter20 1/26/01 10:02am

Clarification: Thomas Gold believes that the Earth does create oil and methane - they're not fossil fuels. My sentence was unclear.

"... to make the little filament glow, the entire surface of the planet, two hundred million square miles, must be strongly electrified. This calls for peculiar electrical activities, hundreds of times greater than those involved in the lighting of an arc lamp through the human body [a more spectacular demonstration]. What impresses him most, however, is the knowledge that the little lamp will spring into the same brilliancy anywhere on the globe, there being no appreciable diminution of the effect with the increase of distance from the transmitter." [From New York Times, Oct. 22, 1907, "Possibilities of 'Wireless'" found in Tesla Said.]

It is not clear that Tesla was referring to effects produced by his large Colorado transmitter. More likely he was writing of what he believed could be done with an even bigger transmitter such as the one that he was trying to complete at Wardenclyffe in New York.

Wardenclyffe was located in Shoreham, NY.

bigred152 - 03:46pm Jan 26, 2001 EST (#607 of 636)

Interesting bridges: recent bridges are still not being designed properly ... suggesting that the mathematics involved isn't understood to order. If folks can't yet build bridges with a 100% success rating .. how so re complex space-y matters.

On Tesla re earth-radio ... is there a problem re quality of signal reception to be overcome?

mhunter20 - 04:27pm Jan 26, 2001 EST (#608 of 636)

bigred152 1/26/01 3:46pm

On Tesla re earth-radio ... is there a problem re quality of signal reception to be overcome?

The inverse square law which applies to the radio signals that are now transmitted (the USSC concluded that Tesla not Marconi invented the radio) do not apply to the Zenneck surface wave, which diminishes much less rapidly with distance (proportional to R^-(1/2)). Therefore, Tesla believed that a wireless ground-based system could be used to transmit more than just communication.

Tesla had plans to use the Magnifying Transmitter as a communication device and it was for this purpose that JP Morgan funded the Wardenclyffe project. When Tesla revealed to JP Morgan that Tesla envisioned that a network of such devices could be used to distribute power, Morgan withdrew his funding. Morgan had just invested a great deal of money in the technology that would be replaced by Tesla's World System, which is still used today and is based on the AC motor, a Tesla invention.

If Tesla hadn't ripped up his contract with Westinghouse, he wouldn't have had to rely on others for funding. For reasons of safety, perhaps the World was and is not ready.

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