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Subject: Re: Asteroids anyone ?
From: James Rogers <jamesr@best.com>
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Date: 24 Jul 2002 18:14:31 -0700

On Wed, 2002-07-24 at 16:46, bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote:
> >
> > Hit or miss, Groundhog Day 2019 is going to be one heck of a show. Book
> > early, avoid the rush.
> 
> Hey, meybee by then, Bush's grand plan for a missle defense system will
> actually pan out and -work- ...
> I'm not holding my breath, but i'm not going to panic for something thats
> a little under 17 years away, either.


I don't think a ballistic missile defense system will be much help
against a rock a couple thousand kilometers in diameter.  That's WAY
outside the design spec for any such system.  Particularly when
ballistic intercept designs usually don't have any type of warhead
associated with them, either being kinetic or directed energy weapons.

Contrary to popular belief, ballistic missile defense isn't a hard
problem (ignoring whether or not it is useful).  The only real challenge
is materials science, as it really pushes the envelope of materials
performance requirements to places they've never been; there has been
some technology crossover with some of the new materials and processes
they've had to come up with.  The actual discrimination algorithms,
while way more advanced than anything you'll see in the private sector
(and classified, to keep it that way), are usually run on a crusty old
MIPS R3k embedded processor or similar, with a low-to-mid range DSP to
help out. It is not computationally intensive by any means.

I used to be tangentially involved in various ballistic missile
intercept weapon programs many years ago and am pretty familiar with the
technologies that go into them.  Most of the arguments against it from a
technological standpoint are ignorant bullshit, and have lead me to
believe that hardly anyone understands the technical parameters of
ballistic missile intercept.  And the arguments that are made without
reference to the capability of the technology are neither particularly
convincing nor conclusive.

In summary:

1) Ballistic missile intercept technology is useless on a big rock.  You
are much better off using heavy-lift space technology to deliver a big
nuke (or small nuke, depending on your plan). 

2) State-of-the-art ballistic missile intercept technology is far more
competent than most people imagine it is, and has discrimination
capabilities that exceed most popular belief.  It better be -- they've
had twenty years to work on it.

3) I've never heard a really convincing argument against deploying
ballistic missile intercept technology, particularly considering most of
the R&D investment has already been made. I don't really care about it
one way or the other, but I also don't see why other people have fits
over it either.

Cheers,

-James Rogers
 jamesr@best.com


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