The future is already here, at least for the US and GPS. Other countries either already have the same capability or have it in the works. The scary part is going to be when the round can be configured to us an IR sensor to steer itself into the largest truck within 50m of the target GPS coordinates. Or concentration of people. It's all gonna end up costing a few hundred bucks, too.
Realistically, once the F-35 production cycle is done, who could touch us in a "real war"? There isn't even a country that could take the air from us if we used only F-15s and F-16s.
I agree on missile defense. In fact, I think that should be our primary focus of research. GPS and cheap processing has means within a decade or so virtually every missile that gets fired in anger is going to have multiple overlapping guidance systems. When your enemy never misses shooting down the incoming rounds is your only option, from mortars to 2.75 inch rockets to ICBMs.
But the F-22 was first envisioned during the cold war. Back then we probably really did need 500 of them. But the situation is very different, particularly since the aircraft's projected service life is likely to be cut short by drones.
Yep. I have my internet through Comcast. I also have "basic" cable, which adds... nothing to my bill. But it makes sense from their perspective - broadcasters like HSN pay Comcast per customer to air 24/7 advertisements, so why not pad the customer numbers? Besides, if my internet connection is out it's handy to have some kind of TV signal you can use for troubleshooting.
But the chemicals can do the trick, for the time being, and there is still a lot of work to do on target keeping.
The big question for me has to do less with technology and more with chain of command. I mean, to be useful this thing has to be used in the boost phase. The first minute of flight, say. It's going to take a few seconds to realize the target is there, and then they have to get the beam on it PDQ. That means the system can never work in a surprise attack - the only way you could possibly shoot down a target is if you had standing orders to fry anything that launches.
The idea is to eventually replace the vats of nasty chemicals with a solid-state system that can be powered by the engines. Solid state lasers have been getting more capable by leaps and bounds.
Yep. It works, to some degree. And if they continue development it will work better. I remember in the '80s groups of physicists were signing petitions against ABM programs because there's no way you can "hit a bullet with a bullet". Except you can, just like you can make a laser that burns missiles out of the sky.
And what do we do when the Norks have a successful test? They're bound to get it right in a few years, with help from Pakistan and Iran. At some point we're going to need to deal with North Korean ballistic missile capability, one way or another.
An F-22 is useless against ballistic missiles. You need to be able to deal with a wide range of threats, not just deal really, really well with one threat and ignore the others.
Wikipedia says gold usage breaks down this way: 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry. So 90% of it is just socked away in one fashion or another.
What you say is true. Sending minerals back to earth will never work out economically. But what if you could take your ore and work it right there on the asteroid? How much would the US or China or Russia pay for steel girders and plates delivered in LEO?
Your "research" doesn't say what you claim it says.
"I will not take military action off the table" is an entirely different sentence than "I want to bomb Iran". Try to understand what people are saying and stop projecting your own fanciful views onto the situation.
500 tons is nothing if it's only going fast enough to orbit the planet. What makes space rocks dangerous is the same thing that makes a few ounces of lead dangerous. Momentum.
Well, part of it is this is a pretty small change from the status quo. India has had nukes for a long time now. And they've had working ballistic missiles for a long time now. And they've had a domestic industrial base that can produce both. India and Pakistan did almost go at it with nukes, but that was almost twenty years ago. The cat's out of the bag and it's not going back in.
North Korea, on the other hand, isn't much of a threat right now. They've been trying to make longer range ballistic missiles by essentially stretching the SCUD design, which won't work. They've been able to make nuclear explosions, but not very efficient ones, and they're at least a decade away from being able to put a nuclear warhead on a missile. They're still not very close to a reliable weapon system in other words, so it's possible they could still be prevented from developing one. A North Korean long range nuclear tipped missile would be a huge change to the balance of power, and that's why other countries are so keen to prevent it.
I envision a service arrangement. You buy an electric car, but there's just an empty space where the battery goes. You pay some company every month to provide you with charged batteries (which they own) at their station. You don't care if the battery you're getting hasn't been stored properly or isn't manufactured to the highest quality as long as it doesn't damage your car. As the charge gets low you take it back to the station, and they swap it out with a fresh one. Then they look at the readout on the depleted battery and say. "You used x kwh, so that's a $35 debit to your account."
These companies would have to recycle old batteries after awhile, and some would keep newer stock than others, meaning you'd get more range out of some than others. But as a consumer you'd balance it all against the price and decide which company to go with.
Well, road trips and middle-of-the-night emergencies. Your kid needs to go to the hospital to get his appendix out, say, or someone needs to watch your sister's kids because her husband was in a car crash. I'm not going to be comfortable with a battery powered car unless it's still got at least a 25% charge after a day of heavy use..
Yeah, well, let me step up and bash you a good one for not getting vaccinated. The problem is no vaccine is 100% effective. The herd immunity threshold for some vaccines is as 75%, so people like you keeping it under that value are perpetuating the spread of dangerous diseases. My dad has emphysema, and pretty much the next flu is gonna kill him. He'll get it because some dipshit like you is too selfish to think about someone other than himself.
Actually, you could have skipped shingles if you'd been vaccinated. It's just that you need to get it every few decades. So if it's been more than 20 years since you got shingles, or your immune system is somehow compromised, you ought to get vaccinated so as not to get it again.
It's worse than that. SpaceX relies on all sorts of NASA launch, tracking, test facilities, and the entire regulatory environment associated. Even the SpaceX honchos admit they can't do it without NASA. The only real difference between SpacesX and Boeing is SpaceX designed and built the rocket with their own money and Boeing did it on contract.
...and we're already seeing examples of this: our computers are faster than ever and we have more bandwidth than ever, yet our machines are often slow and have trouble connecting. The more we have, the even more we use.
That's because it's not just me trying to use my machine any more. Now it's me, some guy in Shanghai trying to log my keystrokes, the software I installed to keep him out, plus all the various companies who paid my hardware vendor to put pointless "dashboards" on my machine.
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The future is already here, at least for the US and GPS. Other countries either already have the same capability or have it in the works. The scary part is going to be when the round can be configured to us an IR sensor to steer itself into the largest truck within 50m of the target GPS coordinates. Or concentration of people. It's all gonna end up costing a few hundred bucks, too.
Realistically, once the F-35 production cycle is done, who could touch us in a "real war"? There isn't even a country that could take the air from us if we used only F-15s and F-16s.
I agree on missile defense. In fact, I think that should be our primary focus of research. GPS and cheap processing has means within a decade or so virtually every missile that gets fired in anger is going to have multiple overlapping guidance systems. When your enemy never misses shooting down the incoming rounds is your only option, from mortars to 2.75 inch rockets to ICBMs.
Right. That was the point.
But the F-22 was first envisioned during the cold war. Back then we probably really did need 500 of them. But the situation is very different, particularly since the aircraft's projected service life is likely to be cut short by drones.
Sure. And we have enough of them to maintain air superiority, so having more doesn't do much for us.
Yep. I have my internet through Comcast. I also have "basic" cable, which adds... nothing to my bill. But it makes sense from their perspective - broadcasters like HSN pay Comcast per customer to air 24/7 advertisements, so why not pad the customer numbers? Besides, if my internet connection is out it's handy to have some kind of TV signal you can use for troubleshooting.
But the chemicals can do the trick, for the time being, and there is still a lot of work to do on target keeping.
The big question for me has to do less with technology and more with chain of command. I mean, to be useful this thing has to be used in the boost phase. The first minute of flight, say. It's going to take a few seconds to realize the target is there, and then they have to get the beam on it PDQ. That means the system can never work in a surprise attack - the only way you could possibly shoot down a target is if you had standing orders to fry anything that launches.
The idea is to eventually replace the vats of nasty chemicals with a solid-state system that can be powered by the engines. Solid state lasers have been getting more capable by leaps and bounds.
Yep. It works, to some degree. And if they continue development it will work better. I remember in the '80s groups of physicists were signing petitions against ABM programs because there's no way you can "hit a bullet with a bullet". Except you can, just like you can make a laser that burns missiles out of the sky.
And what do we do when the Norks have a successful test? They're bound to get it right in a few years, with help from Pakistan and Iran. At some point we're going to need to deal with North Korean ballistic missile capability, one way or another.
An F-22 is useless against ballistic missiles. You need to be able to deal with a wide range of threats, not just deal really, really well with one threat and ignore the others.
Wikipedia says gold usage breaks down this way: 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry. So 90% of it is just socked away in one fashion or another.
What you say is true. Sending minerals back to earth will never work out economically. But what if you could take your ore and work it right there on the asteroid? How much would the US or China or Russia pay for steel girders and plates delivered in LEO?
Your "research" doesn't say what you claim it says.
"I will not take military action off the table" is an entirely different sentence than "I want to bomb Iran". Try to understand what people are saying and stop projecting your own fanciful views onto the situation.
500 tons is nothing if it's only going fast enough to orbit the planet. What makes space rocks dangerous is the same thing that makes a few ounces of lead dangerous. Momentum.
Or Weyland-Yutani.
Well, part of it is this is a pretty small change from the status quo. India has had nukes for a long time now. And they've had working ballistic missiles for a long time now. And they've had a domestic industrial base that can produce both. India and Pakistan did almost go at it with nukes, but that was almost twenty years ago. The cat's out of the bag and it's not going back in.
North Korea, on the other hand, isn't much of a threat right now. They've been trying to make longer range ballistic missiles by essentially stretching the SCUD design, which won't work. They've been able to make nuclear explosions, but not very efficient ones, and they're at least a decade away from being able to put a nuclear warhead on a missile. They're still not very close to a reliable weapon system in other words, so it's possible they could still be prevented from developing one. A North Korean long range nuclear tipped missile would be a huge change to the balance of power, and that's why other countries are so keen to prevent it.
When did Obama and/or Romney say they want to bomb Iran? Looking for an actual quote here.
I envision a service arrangement. You buy an electric car, but there's just an empty space where the battery goes. You pay some company every month to provide you with charged batteries (which they own) at their station. You don't care if the battery you're getting hasn't been stored properly or isn't manufactured to the highest quality as long as it doesn't damage your car. As the charge gets low you take it back to the station, and they swap it out with a fresh one. Then they look at the readout on the depleted battery and say. "You used x kwh, so that's a $35 debit to your account."
These companies would have to recycle old batteries after awhile, and some would keep newer stock than others, meaning you'd get more range out of some than others. But as a consumer you'd balance it all against the price and decide which company to go with.
Well, road trips and middle-of-the-night emergencies. Your kid needs to go to the hospital to get his appendix out, say, or someone needs to watch your sister's kids because her husband was in a car crash. I'm not going to be comfortable with a battery powered car unless it's still got at least a 25% charge after a day of heavy use..
Yeah, well, let me step up and bash you a good one for not getting vaccinated. The problem is no vaccine is 100% effective. The herd immunity threshold for some vaccines is as 75%, so people like you keeping it under that value are perpetuating the spread of dangerous diseases. My dad has emphysema, and pretty much the next flu is gonna kill him. He'll get it because some dipshit like you is too selfish to think about someone other than himself.
Your doctor is a fool. I've had shingles, and let me tell you, you want to do everything you can do to avoid it.
Actually, you could have skipped shingles if you'd been vaccinated. It's just that you need to get it every few decades. So if it's been more than 20 years since you got shingles, or your immune system is somehow compromised, you ought to get vaccinated so as not to get it again.
It's worse than that. SpaceX relies on all sorts of NASA launch, tracking, test facilities, and the entire regulatory environment associated. Even the SpaceX honchos admit they can't do it without NASA. The only real difference between SpacesX and Boeing is SpaceX designed and built the rocket with their own money and Boeing did it on contract.
That's because it's not just me trying to use my machine any more. Now it's me, some guy in Shanghai trying to log my keystrokes, the software I installed to keep him out, plus all the various companies who paid my hardware vendor to put pointless "dashboards" on my machine.