No. Rogue nations do not have ICBMs, i.e. missile technology capable of hitting US soil proper. Of course, Iraq does have those freight ships circling the US with the chem warhead carrying drones waiting to strike.
As I walk through This wicked world Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity. I ask myself Is all hope lost? Is there only pain and hatred, and misery? And each time I feel like this inside, There's one thing I wanna know: What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? And as I walked on Through troubled times My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes So where are the strong And who are the trusted? And where is the harmony? Sweet harmony. 'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry. What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? So where are the strong? And who are the trusted? And where is the harmony? Sweet harmony. 'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry. What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
You're missing the point of my response to Hayes Street who has been downplaying the risk of terrorist planting a nuke on a cargo ship and sending it into one of our ports. He said it had never happened before so wasn't as big of a concern as a nuclear missile strike. I pointed out that a nuclear missile strike had never happened before either. Both are concerns but the question is which one is more likely and which one is more likely prevented given our current state of technology. On both counts I would say its terrorists using our shipping system to attack us.
MadMax; I agree in principle that this would be a great idea but I also agree in principle that building colonies on the Moon and Mars would be a great idea. I think we would all like to see a way of eliminating ICBM's but we can't ignore the practicalities of costs and diplomatic relations. What I'm seeing with the SDI system is we're spending a bunch of money on a system that hasn't proven to be reliable in even rigged tests while incurring the opportunity costs to deal with other threats or missile proliferation through other means and also pissing off both our antagonists and allies.
The diplomatic and otherwise engagement part of our moves with NK are going on regardless. Its not like the money spent on BMD has resulted in the layoff of state department personnel responsible for NK. It would seem to be the first thing you think of when you're attempting to deal with potential ICBM adversaries. Well ships and planes are different things, but again there are reasons to believe these are threats concerning a dirty bomb, but not a nuclear device. True, and if in charge I would find a good way to fund it. But this whole line really begs the question of whether or not BMD is a good idea. To make this argument count you'd have to show that this extra spending is unique in its 'potential harm' to our economy. If we said 'but/for' this spending, our economic policy would be sound, then you'd be right. If we removed this spending and the rest of the borrowing still gets us to the 'consequence,' then you can't very well claim the impact is the result of the programs, but rather of the thousands of programs that make up the budget. I don't think there's a big risk since that would cripple their own (PRC's) economy. As I pointed out above, you'd have to show that this money would otherwise go to the programs you name, and you can't possibly do that. Instead you then argue against deficit at the same time you claim a tradeoff! Nice. The existence of the deficit proves, at least, that we can spend over the budget for long periods of time. If you really want make a convincing argument that we can't do this because of economics then show us how this $10 billion a year is uniquley crippling our economy. First I think its important to know that they large figures encompass all the BMD programs, not just the one that was tested and was the basis for the article. Some are arguing there should be more oversight, some more emphasis on one or the other, and a few that we should cancel the program, like Sam. I agree with the first two and not the third. Although this test has shown that this system isn't working, most of the arguments that 'scientists say its improbable' are dealing with this line of BMD, and not with all of the programs. What have we got so far? That's seems like a reasonable question, Sam. We can start with: "Even though Reagan’s “Star Wars” never led to the deployment of an actual missile shield, it drew the Soviets into a costly effort to mount a response. Many analysts agree that the race drained Soviet coffers and triggered the economic difficulties that sped up the Soviet collapse in 1991." -the BMD effort has created over 300 commercial products and over 50 new companies. What do these companies look like? -These technologies range from remote sensors on satellites to biomarkers on the molecular level and cover land, air, and water resources. The private and public sectors need an abundance of environmental data, using it to determine compliance with regulations, populations of endangered species, and the level of hazardous waste for cleanup activities. Policy makers, for example, need more accurate methods for collecting atmospheric data to make decisions about global warming. Industries need more accurate particulate monitors to accurately measure amounts emitted from smokestacks. Some of the needs that technology can address include lower cost, portability, reliability, and ability to provide data in real or near-real time. -Avoidance technologies alter processes to prevent the production of environmentally hazardous substances. These so-called “green technologies” represent a shift from end-of-pipe pollution control to integration of environmental technology into the production process itself. For example, an industry may implement a pulsed power device to eliminate the growth of zebra mussels on the intake pipes from waterways beside its plant. This “electrotechnology,” or electrically based alternative, avoids the problems associated with chlorine and other chemical treatments, which adversely affect the water source. Control technologies treat hazardous substances to make them harmless before they enter the environment. For example, in industrial plants, advanced technology can decompose pollutants, including emissions such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. Remediation technologies are similar, but treat pollutants after they have left the process. For example, technologies that treat nuclear waste, after it has been generated, would fall into this category. The ATW project has the potential to deal with our nuclear waste and prevent the cross country journey (and its risks) in the future. - Here's an example: AstroPower of Newark, DE, first funded by the program in 1987, went public in February 1998 and has become a world leader in high efficiency solar cell array production. Thermacore, in Lancaster, PA, received SBIR funding for its heat pipe technology. This technology can now be found on every IBM and COMPAQ laptop computer to cool processor chips, and in BMDO for similar purposes. The Brimrose Corporation out of Baltimore, MD, started in the basement of a Savings and Loan building and built, with BMDO SBIR seed funds, a multi-million dollar business that develops sensors for manufacturing and chemical processes. -BMDO research in industrial radiography led directly to a new method of digitizing images for mammography, including computer-aided diagnostic techniques. This can aid early detection with its benefits. Early detection of precancerous or cancerous changes in human tissues is crucial to effective treatment of malignancies. Optical methods can help to eliminate or reduce the need for surgical biopsy and allow treatment to take place before a cancer is well-established or spreading. Optical biopsy could become an adjunct to mammography for breast cancer screening, helping to further distinguish suspicious or inconclusive images. -Funding from the BMDO SBIR program advanced the development of expert system software that has gained industry-wide recognition in the field of risk management. It can predict 'adverse cardiac events ' with a 92% success rate. -Software for Neonatal assessment to predict the probability of spetis development, allowing doctors to intervene before infection is too serious to combat. - Nichols Research Corporation (NRC; Wakefield, MA) used BMDO funding to develop a neural network system called MLANS, or Maximum Likelihood Adaptive Neural System. Unlike expert systems that depend on hard-and-fast rules for computational decisions, neural networks can “learn” solutions from data input and speed up problem solving that depends on a large number of variables. Originally developed for BMDO space-based applications, NRC has adapted MLANS to such areas as fingerprint identification, drug traffic detection, automotive collision avoidance systems, and medical diagnostics. -BMDO-funded R&D to develop lead-acid bipolar batteries for hybrid electric cars, vans, and trucks. -BMDO SBIR work with porous materials to good use, helping to clean up the environment by commercializing defense technology. Originally developed as insulator material for small rocket nozzles, the company’s carbon foam can be used in filters in catalytic converters. Ultramet’s filters provide better performance and longer life in high-temperature operation than other filters, making them ideal for use in internal combustion engines. -(BMDO SBIR) is developing a lead-free solder technology that could alleviate growing environmental concerns over the disposal of lead-bearing printed circuit boards (PCBs). -Roto-Lok drives were built for BMDO's Laser Communications project to align laser transmitters and receivers. Companies use a Roto-Lok gimbal to position the camera on remotely controlled (up to one-half mile away) equipment used to clean up hazardous materials. Boom-mounted cameras on back hoes and front-end loaders watch as a robot arm grabs hazardous materials. -Magnetic field sensing. Compared with the rest of the body’s low current operations, the heart is a highly electric organ. Its faint magnetic field (about 100 picoteslas) can be measured with superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), the most sensitive magnetic sensors known. When arranged in arrays, SQUIDs can provide an image of the heart ’s magnetic field and yield clues to abnormal conduction patterns that are the basis of some heart arrhythmias (abnormal rhythms). About 3 million persons are treated for arrhythmias each year in the United States. -Laserthrombosis: C u rre n t l y, there are several ways to treat a blocked coro n a ry art e ry, which can cause angina (pain) and infarction (heart attack). In balloon angioplasty, a catheter is inserted through an artery near the hip and threaded up into the major cardiac vessels. Once inserted, a balloon at the tip of the catheter is inflated, and the clot is displaced. Another treatment is enzymatic: a tissue-derived drug such as tissue plasminogen activator, (tPA), or a bacterial product called streptokinase is used to dissolve the clot. A third treatment, coronary artery bypass surgery, is performed when the previous treatments fail. All treatments have potentially significant drawbacks, and blockage frequently recurs within a year. In laser thrombolysis, researchers hypothesize that the hemoglobin of the clot absorbs the laser light much more efficiently than the arterial wall, which means that the clot can be heated and dissolved without damaging adjacent structures. The platelets in the clot are also eliminated, which reduces the chance of a new clot forming from the released debris. Avoiding damage to the arterial wall is also important to the prevention of perforations (holes), dissection (splitting), or restenosis (renarrowing) of the artery. Since the radio-opaque dye used in these pro c e d u res is also transparent to the laser beam’s wavelength, the laser method is compatible with existing catheterization protocols. Really there is too much to go over, but that's a good sampling for those who claim there's no benefits from the program, or that its a complete drain on the economy. You claimed a 100 year timeframe, based on a tunguska style meteor. I pointed out that sort of strike would not threat the planet. That is elementary. You make one argument that is at best an exaggeration, and then retreat to a smaller point and claim you were right all along. As I indicated before, those that believe we shouldn't be funding BMD are in the minority. Calls for greater accountability, less politiking with the timetables, more funding for other things like intelligence or port security are not opposed by myself, at least.
1. Please tell me how much of that is based off of technology gains from the current iteration of Theater based missile defense? I'm guessing the answer is zero which was my original question 2A. Quantify the welfare gains in GDP from those, and then tell me how or why a smaller straight transfer payment could not have accomplished the same ends? Again, this is a basic precept of economics - you seem to have a hard time accepting basic concepts of efficiency and utility maximization in a world of finite resources. 2B. Please give me an alternative scenario, and demonstrate what GDP gains would have been had Reagan not spend XXX billion on missile defense, and either simply reduced taxes by that amount, or spent it on other programs. 3. PLEASE ADDRESS THE FACT THAT THEATER BASED MISSILE DEFENSE DOES NOT WORK, AND WILL LIKELY NEVER WORK BECAUSE OF INHERENT TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS. You have posted lots of text and singularly failed in this department. On one side is a bevy of scientists who worked on the program, on the other side is some middle aged dude posting on a rockets BBS. While the Rockets connection gives you a little cache, I need more, please. 4. PLEASE GIVE ME STATISTICAL ODDS ON THE FOLLOWING THREE INCIDENCES a. an accidental missile launch aimed at the continenal US b. a cataclysmic asteroid strike, either in a populated area in the US or outside of the US but big enough to cause sufficient aftereffects in the US. c. a terrorist obtaining a working fission weapon and successfully transporting it to the contental US Hopefully we can bring this to a conclusion if you respond appropriately.
KingCheetah has a point though. Is it worth it to undertake a highly dubious and expensive project just to count on potential side benefits? While the Apollo program produced numerous benefits like smaller supercomputers, teflon, velcro and of course Tang, that wasn't the point. For that matter we did reach the Moon. SDI seems far less likely to work given that not only are we dealing with a very difficult goal to begin with unlike the Moon there are active programs working to oppose us.
I never said the spinoffs swamped the spending. I am just pointing out that those who claim 'we've spent all this money and have nothing to show for it' and 'its a complete drain on the economy' are incorrect. We wouldn't have the project just for the side benefits, but they DO cut against the cost, which is the ONLY argument why we shouldn't have BMD. I don't think there's a concensus (which you, Sam, and others have insinuated) that NO BMD is possible. This particular program, which is not the $80 billion quoted, is not looking promising. There are a slew of other approaches that are also part of that $80 billion spending that show promise. And the benefits of such a shield are enormous.
"That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature; honour and religion." - Edward Gibbon
If you look at the proposals and programs that have been put forward they all have serious flaws, immense in execution and also on paper. Costs is the major argument but that it antagonizes even some of our closests allies is another. Those put together in my mind raise a serious doubt about the wisdom of pursuing this program because even if could work it will end up being worse than a Maginot line because we already know there are many ways of attacking us non using missiles that are even more cost effective from an enemies standpoint. We'll have spent enoromous sums of money on a program while alienating allies in the process. A few more thoughts on this, ICBM warfare against us or any of the powers capable of it is already obsolete accept for the suicidal because the response is your own destruction. You made the argument that the PRC would never threaten us with calling in our loans or dumping their dollar reserves because it would destroy their economy but think what launching a nuke at us would do their economy. The threat of economic warfare with the PRC is a realistic threat vs ICBM's yet we're willing to hand the PRC more economic leverage over us by piling up debt to counter an unrealistic ICBM threat. I agree with you that costs and debt are something that goes beyond missile defense and is the responsibilty of all of government but that said we can't divorce the costs from consideration of the practicality of missile defense.
'It' also antagonizes our old enemies as well... ______________ "Mr Putin added that, while international terrorism was the main threat to Russia today, "the moment we take our attention away from the nuclear missile shield, we will be confronted with other threats". Ivan Safranchuk, the head of the Centre for Defence Information in Moscow, said the Kremlin head's statement was not about foreign policy but a sign Mr Putin had sided with those top brass members urging nuclear strategic arms development, and decided against the lobby promoting stronger conventional forces. " ______________________________ Russia develops nuclear system to evade defence Vladimir Putin announced yesterday that Russia was developing a nuclear missile system that he claimed was unrivalled in the world. The president said Russia was "testing the most up-to-date nuclear missile systems" which would be put into service "in the next few years". "What is more, they will be developments of the kind that other nuclear powers do not and will not have," Mr Putin added in televised remarks to high-ranking military officers. His brief statement was seen as both an attempt to boost military morale and a hint that Russia's nuclear deterrent would not be rendered obsolete by the US launch of a missile defence shield. more...
It's time for Operation SamFisher Scientist: Asteroid May Hit Earth in 2029 http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=113784 LOS ANGELES - There's a 1-in-300 chance that a recently discovered asteroid, believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth in 2029, a NASA scientist said Thursday, but he added that the perceived risk probably will be eliminated once astronomers get more detail about its orbit. There have been only a limited number of sightings of Asteroid 2004 MN4, which has been given an initial rating of 2 on the 10-point Torino Impact Hazard Scale used by astronomers to predict asteroid or comet impacts, said Donald Yeomans, manager of the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. No previously observed asteroid has been graded higher than 1. On Friday, April 13, 2029, "we can't yet rule out an Earth impact," Yeomans said. "But the impact probability, as we call it, is 300-to-1 against an impact." The asteroid was discovered in June and rediscovered this month. "This is not a problem for anyone and it shouldn't be a concern to anyone, but whenever we post one of these things and ... somebody gets ahold of it, it just gets crazy," he said. "In the unlikely event that it did hit, it would be quite serious. We're talking either a tsunami if it hit in the ocean, which would be likely, or significant ground damage," Yeomans said. Its estimated size has been inferred from its brightness, which assumes that its reflectivity is similar to other asteroids that have been observed. At about 1,320 feet in length, it would have about 1,600 megatons of energy, Yeomans said. Asteroid 2004 MN4 takes less than a year to go all the way around the sun and on each orbit it passes by Earth's orbit twice, Yeomans said. It is also nearly on the same plane as Earth's orbit. The asteroid will be visible for the next several months and the NEO program has alerted its network of ground-based observers to include 2004 MN4 in their searches. Yeomans said there have now been about 40 observations, first from the observatory at Kitt Peak, near Tucson, Ariz., and this month from Australia and New Zealand.
Interesting read. I found this on an asteroid site: Wolfowitz, "The reason we invest as much as we do in defense is because it makes a safer world. We are working on systems that will protect us." Protect us from asteroids. But the Bush administration, like all others, knows that if the public learns the truth, reactions may become "unmanageable." So everyone is instead told we are trying to defend ourselves against missiles from a "rogue nation." So what a deal. We're building to stop both these threats: sweet. I will conceed that this land based piece seems like a piece of crap, that the project should have a lower priority than it does. However, the program has many successes (quite a few I listed out above), and has also contributed much more than its critic want to acknowledge, including arguably ending the Cold War - when global thermonuclear war was the number one threat to our existence. Its economic benefits also cut against the 'cost' side of the argument. Sishir, the scenarios might go down in different ways than you've envisioned particularly with respect to accidental launches and miscalculation - neither of which are affected by MAD.
Its within our power and technical capability now to address those threats through diplomacy to reduce the amount of and deployment of ICBM's but due to Russia and the PRC being antagonized by our attempts at SDI we are seeing more ICBM's being developed. The way you stop accidental launches right now is to help other countries develop better fail safe mechanisms. We're having a hard time even shooting down our own missiles in highly rigged tests so to rely on that is highly suspect. As for SDI ending the Cold War I'll agree that contributed. That said the buildup of our conventional arms and placement of medium range missiles in Europe als contributed along with what we now know that the Soviet Union was already structurally weak even before Reagan came to office. Finally as far as stopping asteroids to me that's about the only major benefit I can see coming from this program. If that is really the goal though its wrong for us to go about this unilaterally since asteroids could strike from any direction we should instead work with other countries to develop a comprehensive space shield than a one just based in the US. A major asteroid hit on the other side of the World would still devestate us.
