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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?

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rshow55 - 02:20pm Jun 19, 2002 EST (#2628 of 2630)

I had a big breakfast, and a nice relaxing nap.

Feel good. I don't necessarily face problems I can solve - because I face problems I can't solve alone. But I feel I understand a few problems. They don't look all that hard.

It seems to me that some things can happen very gracefully. And ought to. There are values we share that we do not have to sacrifice. MD2596 rshow55 6/17/02 1:07pm

I'm thinking about solutions that are safe, and fair to all concerned. Solutions that can be made to happen, reasonably gracefully, by the real people involved, step-by-step.

For the structure and nuts and bolts of the solution, the steps needed don't seem particularly hard, except for a problem in the grammar of discourse.

Here are some basic, universal relationships that we need to be taken into account -- that constrain and simplify what can reasonably be done, and so make our opportunities clear. Workable solutions that take the necessary facts (including Maslow's facts) into account are now reasonably clear, except for a problem in the grammar of discourse.

. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by William G. Huitt: Essay and Image: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html

Often enough - it is the simple things, and the simple questions -- that matter most...

At the level of logic, including the constraints the our humanity and socio-technical nature dictate, we've talked a lot on this thread

MD667 rshow55 3/18/02 12:13pm ... MD1772 lchic 4/23/02 9:10pm
MD1847 rshow55 4/28/02 7:27pm ... MD2081 lchic 5/8/02 9:21am
MD2248 rshow55 5/16/02 3:41pm ... MD2257 rshow55 5/17/02 7:41am
MD2458 lchic 6/4/02 5:38am

One might argue, and perhaps the cartoon on Suday's Op-Ed page may be taken to argue, that you can talk problems to death - that this thread has some of the problems of Finnegan's Wake. This thread has gone on a long time. Though sometimes, some things come into focus from the long discourse, by statistical means subject to detailed sampling.

MD2574 rshow55 6/17/02 8:09am to MD2589 rshow55 6/17/02 8:19am

One reason this thread has gone on so long is grammatical.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense