Regarding the stupid myth that Reagan brought down the evil Soviet Empire...
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Friday, August 29, 2025 18:07
VIEWED: 7060
PAGE 3 of 10
Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
"... and he wasn't even in CHARGE toward the end!"
The person running the country may have been their astrologer.
Ever read "Stranger in a Strange Land" ? With the exception of the technology (which hasn't progressed nearly as rapidly as Heinlein imagined), and well, Martians and stuff --- all the insanity of a country gone amok was pretty accurate. Sad that a full-time cynic and misogynist like Heinlein captured the future so well.
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Silence is consent.
Maybe ONLY a full-time cynic can do it so well... Philip K. Dick was a *little bit* of a cynic himself, wasn't he?
Mike
The percentage you're paying is too high-priced
While you're living beyond all your means;
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he's made on your dreams
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:Quote:Gino, boobalah, puhleeee. You know how many billions upon billions it would take to get an actual working prototype the isn't only for good-looking demos?
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
The technology has come quite a ways
Heh
President Jed Bartlett: "I believe the words you're looking for are 'Oh, good grief'."
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like in the article I sent you, they have shot down ballistic rockets in a demo...
that is why I also brought up the KV concept
Issue Brief 87, July 17, 2003
APS Study On Space-Based Interceptors: Garbage In, Garbage Out!
By Ambassador Henry F. Cooper
“This seems to be one of the many cases in which the admitted accuracy of mathematical processes is allowed to throw a wholly inadmissible appearance of authority over the results obtained by them. Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulas will not get a definite result out of loose data.”
T. H. Huxley (In a public debate with Lord Kelvin in 1869)
Were he alive today, Huxley might have made these same comments about the recently published study by the American Physical Society Study Group, Boost-Phase Intercept Systems for National Missile Defense – especially regarding space-based interceptors. This 400+ page tome is full of calculations using the equations of orbital mechanics, the rocket equation and other well known equations of physics – but, with the wrong input assumptions, they deliver the wrong answers. Or, in the modern vernacular, “Garbage in; garbage out.”
These same equations were used by the Fletcher Study , consisting of nationally recognized physicists and engineers, formed in 1984 to provide the initial direction for President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. In particular, they identified the critically important objective to achieve lightweight, very capable hit-to-kill vehicles – and that became a driving objective of the SDI program – particularly for space-based interceptors. The heavier the kill vehicle (KV), the bigger the booster required to deliver the kill vehicle and the greater the system cost.
Working backwards using the well-known rocket equation, competent engineers can establish weight budgets for sensors, on-board computers, kill vehicle propulsion, etc., which must be met to have a cost-effective interceptor – which was determined in the 1980s, by the way, to be an order of magnitude less than the KV weight assumed by the APS study team. So their conclusion from their mindless grinding through various formulae was predetermined to be negative – and should have been well known based on well-known earlier work.
Indeed, it should have been well known to any group of informed experts that by the late 1980s, the SDI investments in technology had produced the technology base for the key components of a light weight, cost effective space-based interceptor – passing the countermeasure gauntlet posed by the APS study team. In what the Missile Defense Agency’s Historian, Dr. Don Baucomb, calls “A Season of Studies,” the Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor concept in 1989 passed the scrutiny of over a dozen internal and external reviews by well-known science and engineering experts on space-based interceptor technology .
In particular, JASON, a group of eminent physicists from academia – not known as advocates for missile defense – reported there were “no show-stoppers” for this important program, which became SDI’s first fully approved Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) in 1990. This formal status meant that the concept passed formal cost screens and passed muster with the Joint Chiefs in meeting necessary decision timelines to achieve boost-phase intercept capability.
In spite of the political headwinds against the space-based interceptor program, scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and in two contractor teams (TRW, now part of Northrop Grumman, and Martin Marietta, now part of Lockheed-Martin) made considerable progress in developing and demonstrating the essential technology for a viable space-based interceptor system. But the Clinton administration scuttled this important program in early 1993 – and, at least as imp
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"... they have shot down ballistic rockets in a demo... "
Ehhh ... I know the person who knows the person who personally programmed in the coordinates of the ballistics so they could hit the damn things.
Aside from that, the technology to avoid detection and/ or confuse it is way ahead of the game.
But, that's neither here nor there ... it's somewhat off-topic.
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Silence is consent.
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Afghanistan was too tough for the British and helped bring on their ruin.
Afghanistan was too tough for the Russians and helped bring on their ruin.
Afghanistan will be OUR Afghanistan 
...
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Oh ... did I say that out loud?
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Afghanistan was too tough for the British and helped bring on their ruin.
Afghanistan was too tough for the Russians and helped bring on their ruin.
Afghanistan will be OUR Afghanistan
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Oh ... did I say that out loud?
At least the Russians were smart enough to stay out of Vietnam
lmao
" I don't believe in hypothetical situations - it's kinda like lying to your brain "
" They don't hate America, they hate Americans " Homer Simpson
Lets party like its 1939
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Quote:Hey! All we needed back then was superiour firepower from the air!!!
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
At least the Russians were smart enough to stay out of Vietnam
lmao
The laughing Chrisisall
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Quote:Altitudinal density factors & planetary gravitational variations were not taken into account.
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Working backwards using the well-known rocket equation, competent engineers can establish weight budgets for sensors, on-board computers, kill vehicle propulsion, etc., which must be met to have a cost-effective interceptor – which was determined in the 1980s, by the way, to be an order of magnitude less than the KV weight assumed by the APS study team.
Which makes this all little better than a child shooting bottle rockets at a paper airplane.
The laughing Chrisisall
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Quote:No, but you're correct at any rate.
Originally posted by rue:
Afghanistan will be OUR Afghanistan
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Oh ... did I say that out loud?
The laughing Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:Quote:Altitudinal density factors & planetary gravitational variations were not taken into account.
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Working backwards using the well-known rocket equation, competent engineers can establish weight budgets for sensors, on-board computers, kill vehicle propulsion, etc., which must be met to have a cost-effective interceptor – which was determined in the 1980s, by the way, to be an order of magnitude less than the KV weight assumed by the APS study team.
Which makes this all little better than a child shooting bottle rockets at a paper airplane.
The laughing Chrisisall
with the new generation of micro computers, a self correcting guidance system is not far off. In addition if they manage to target the missile in its midcourse phase, while it is sub orbital it removes many of the atmospheric factors as well as give you a target with less relative motion. The KV would not have to be fast, or have the range of a land based system. Just a maneuver jet system ( similar to the one on the space shuttle ) and a large blast/fragmentation warhead that would give it a large zone kill radius.
Russia would likely defeat this by using jamming, MIRVs and spoofs making the targeting math alot harder, but my guess it would be years before say Iran or North Korea would develop that level of counter measures.
Not saying this type of project is worth the money, hell the possibility of getting nuked make make the US more reasonable in its foreign policy. Just that I think it could be done.
" I don't believe in hypothetical situations - it's kinda like lying to your brain "
" They don't hate America, they hate Americans " Homer Simpson
Lets party like its 1939
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