Another 'Star Wars' Failure
Via Drudge, looks like a programming or other minor technical glitch caused a launch error. We don't really spend enough on Star Wars - less than $10b per year. Contrast this with Google spending $1b to buy YouTube. $10 billion sounds exactly like the wrong amount - way too little to get enough advanced technological momentum to accomplish anything really big, and too much to ensure a lean, efficient operation to achieve effective small-scale gains.
posted by ziel | 12/08/2006 08:07:00 AM
3 Comments:
Sure. Blame the programmer.
Star Wars is the only way to make a nuke war, where the missles are fired from bases halfway across the earth, survivable.
But..........as more nations get the technology and money to build submarines fitted with nukes.....missile defense systems "in the sky" wouldn't necessarily help us against these "new" threats.
What astonishes me about the neo-cons (and the Iranian's) stupidity about Iran "getting the bomb" in the near term is the short-sightedness on both sides.
All the mullahs have to do is get into long term agreements with China that trades oil for some nukes and have China build them some Nuke-capable subs. China could use her navy to "escort" them to Tehran. The US populace would not be willing to go to war with China over Iran getting Nukes no matter how much Bill Kristol and Rupert Murdoch scream "Arma-ghedd-on!!!!". Tehran could accomplish this within ten years with the Chinese really getting on the ball. Then they'd have us by the short hairs, with the ability to really destroy our civilization just as effectively as the Russkies could (I mean, really...........1 good nuke in every major city, and a few dozen more in the best farming areas of this nation would more or less take us down. What is that, 80 warheads?). They wouldn't need 5,000 missles to do us in. Hell, 1 in each NY borough, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, LA (2-3) , Seattle, SF/Oakland, Philly, Denver, Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa, Nashville, Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minn/St.Paul, Detroit, D.C., Boston, Houston, Columbus, Cleveland, and New Jersey equal 28 nukes. If you hit the farmbelt in Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Arkansas, Western Tennesse, Kentucky, and Oklahoma with two apiece with nukes that were designed to really let the radiation spread, you could more or less starve America with only 22 more. Hey, Ive brought the "new Rome" to her knees with only 50 nukes. See what I mean? Dont forget, you could get a ton of bang for your buck by just focusing on the areas of America with truly productive citizenry. Notice how places like N'Awlins were ommitted. If I were to nuke us, I'd take special care not to hurt Berkely or the Bronx now that I think about it......
Its my opinion that militarily we will not be utterly safe from the Wahhabist in Arabia until we "get off" oil entirely. They have to be de-funded, or they can simply buy the means to do us harm. There are other ways to get nukes here than ICBM's. Subs, suitcases, our ultra-porous borders. Missile defense systems could do nothing against those.
I, however, am still in favor of pursuing Star Wars if its truly feasible to do so for less than a year's outlays of the entire budget. It would be worth that much to check-mate anyone's ICBM strategy so we could focus on countermeasures to subs, countermeasures (WALL, WALL, WALL) to suitcases, and countermeasures from terrorists being able to set up shop with short range missles in rural Cuba or Mexico or even Canada and short-lobbing them here.
I cannot emphasize enough however, how getting "off oil" would make us safer. Sandland would have to develop real economies where people worked 40 hour weeks to feed herself. People that do this have much less time on their hands to contemplate how a nation halfway around the world (or a very small nation the size of New Jersey) is the source of all her grief. Actually having to work instead of being rich spoilt brats probably would have the minds behind 9-11 to occupied to come up with such a scheme, but I digress.......
Yes, if we really, really wanted stop nuclear missiles, we'd do a manhatten project, not this piddling stuff.
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