Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (438745)	12/6/2008 1:05:35 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575797

What "simplifications" did they make? They often change the protocols and add in little things to get the right results. Which makes for good theater, but doesn't really test things in anything like real world conditions. I guess in these controlled tests, if you don't believe the published test results, there is no way for us to know. But in the case of the SM3 shootdown of USA-193 earlier this year, that entire project went from conception to completion in about 8 weeks. The end result was the target was destroyed, with no debris piece after the shootdown bigger than a football. That's a success anyway you slice it. Does this mean we are ready to deploy a large-scale missile defense shield? Of course not. But it strongly suggestive that such a defense shield can be implemented over time. As an engineer, which I presume you are, you should have no trouble seeing that if one missile can kill one target, it is practical to conceive of many missiles killing many targets. The point is that when Reagan proposed SDI the Left, even the educated Left, howled about its infeasibility. It was bizarre to me at the time, when only 20 years earlier, the handheld calculator had been essentially nonexistent. How could a person say, in the early 80s, that technology would not permit this to occur. Sagan was on Nightline claiming the "laws of physics" wouldn't permit it. Well, he was a liberal idiot. There were no limitations imposed by the laws of physics that would stop it. Reagan knew that. Why didn't Sagan? Now, you come telling us the results are rigged. There is no doubt the military would spin the results as positively as possible. But you can't get past the basic fact that a workable system has been created that can shoot down at least SOME targets with success, and we now know that missile defense can be done. Anyone who doubts it is either ignorant or bound by ideological constraints. Still, you're here bashing the success as rigged results.