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"Star Wars" flops again.

Well

I wish I could post a reply that said something more, but really, you've said it all. This system is a joke and should be de-funded and flushed down the toilet immediately.
 
The only reason we continue to persue the idiocy is because it makes defense contractors a lot of money and this makes the Republicans happy.

Of course the real threat these days is some one with an A Bomb in a suite case. The "star wars" system will be absolutely useless against that kind of threat even if they do manage to get the kinks worked out without bankrupting the country.
 
You really should stop dissin' the Starwars project. Look at the vast windfalls of money the republican contractors are reaping.

If they ever do get it right, a Russian spy will somehow get the specs and find all sorts of holes in the "sheild". Hopefully he'll post it on the "internets".

Charlie (bush deficit = money black hole) Monoxide
 
espritch said:
The only reason we continue to persue the idiocy is because it makes defense contractors a lot of money and this makes the Republicans happy.

Of course the real threat these days is some one with an A Bomb in a suite case. The "star wars" system will be absolutely useless against that kind of threat even if they do manage to get the kinks worked out without bankrupting the country.
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Bingo!

These are the same sort of people who cry and sing about 'Pork Barrel Spending' but do not think twice about the annual multi-billion dollar support for the aerospace industries that happen to be located in their home districts.
 
Keneke said:
Please refer to this thread for my rebuttals.
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For those too lazy to follow Keneke's too-lazy-to-post link, there's:
Keneke said:
An engineering test has failures in the course of testing. What a big surprise. We should cancel all funding, since a missile attack will never happen. Nope, never, can't even conceive of it.
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Let's start with your first premise, should we choose to dignify it with such a label. A viable engineering project would have had at least one successful attempt at this juncture, well before billions of dollars had been spent. A Wile E. Coyote engineering project, on the other hand, has no conceivable criteria that mark it for failure, because the engineer doesn't have a friggin' clue what success looks like. Therefore all failures look like degrees of success to him, I suppose.

What you are not addressing is that this stupid thing has never once had a chance in hell of working, and to all appearances never will. It is a Rube Goldberged Wile E. Coyote contraption of the most absurd sort, and as I have stated deserves to be cancelled and all persons who ever promoted it deserve to have their feet held to the fire of failure.

It's possible that there is no engineering solution for the problem in question. No law in the universe requires that one should exist. A missile attack is certainly possible. That this system would ever have a chance of protecting us from one is certainly not. Therefore, it is pure idiocy to proceed.
 
SlippyToad said:
A viable engineering project would have had at least one successful attempt at this juncture, well before billions of dollars had been spent.
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And it has. Your point?
 
Re: Re: "Star Wars" flops again.

Questioninggeller said:
Originally posted by Major Billy
In the past 20 tests of this $500 billion monument to Ronald Reagan it has failed to shoot down our own missiles 17 times!

President Clinton was right.
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500 Billion would help out social security, which according to Bush needs to be dealt with.
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In the article Major Billy linked:

"The Missile Defense Agency has attempted to conduct the test several times this month, but scrubbed each one for a variety of reasons, including various weather problems and a malfunction on a recovery vessel not directly related to the equipment being tested."

Do you see one failed mission? I see abortions, I see Murphy's Law, I see unreadiness (of which we engineers on the project readily admit), but I see no mission that launched and missed. Yes, misses have happened, but hits have happened also.

Like I said in the other thread, we abort missions because we must isolate variables. And then, the media spits acid because, apparently, "the system won't even work in the rain", which of course is not true.
 
2005 is 2 weeks away people!

We should already have:
-Flying Cars
-Transport Tubes
-Killer Robot Police Force
-Lots of silver, reflective spandex clothing
-Laser Guns and Death Rays

No wonder we have none of that! They can't even get a 20 year old missle defense system to work.
 
odorousrex said:
2005 is 2 weeks away people!

We should already have:
-Flying Cars
-Transport Tubes
-Killer Robot Police Force
-Lots of silver, reflective spandex clothing
-Laser Guns and Death Rays

No wonder we have none of that! They can't even get a 20 year old missle defense system to work.
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More importantly a solid cure for "male patterned baldness" ...

Charlie (and perhaps cancer) Monoxide
 
Major Billy said:
has failed to shoot down our own missiles[/URL] 17 times!
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You know what this means? This means we make the best damn missles in the world! :xtongue
 
From the story:

In earlier testing of tracking and targeting systems, which critics derided as highly scripted, missile interceptors went five-for-eight in hitting target missiles.
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So, let's say that the actual effectiveness is less, perhaps 30%. Is saving ~30% of ICBM targets in the US worth 500 billion? I doubt that this system will ever be able to defend against all attacks, but I also doubt the assertion that it won't hit any of it's targets.

Social Security is a joke and has been for a long time. Perhaps we should dismantle Social Security. I wonder how much Humvee armor that would buy?
 
peptoabysmal said:
So, let's say that the actual effectiveness is less, perhaps 30%.
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I wouldn't agree to that estimate. We're learning all the time. If it's slow and expensive, though, that's something else. If the entire thing becomes outdated by space based lasers, for example, we'll happily switch over.
 
Keneke said:
And it has. Your point?
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Scripted tests under monkey-simple conditions do not count. When real missiles are fired at us, they will not include transmitters to help us find them, and weather conditions are not guaranteed to be optimal. As it stands, the testing that has been done on this system is a joke, and as a taxpayer I want a refund NOW.
 
What I don’t understand (from my admittedly TV and newspaper informed opinion) is why it relies on warning stations in countries such as the UK.

Isn’t that an inherent weakness for several reason?
 
peptoabysmal said:
From the story:



So, let's say that the actual effectiveness is less, perhaps 30%. Is saving ~30% of ICBM targets in the US worth 500 billion?
Click to expand...
No. Our current crop of most dire enemies don't have ICBM's. They have box cutters and low-tech explosives. This system as currently deployed doesn't have any apparent effectiveness against its intended threat, let alone the actual threat we face. So it's a tremendous waste. The tens of billions could be used for lots of other things.
Social Security is a joke and has been for a long time. Perhaps we should dismantle Social Security. I wonder how much Humvee armor that would buy?
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Ahh. Ignorance must be bliss. Millions of people have direct experience that flatly contradicts your assertion. Why you would try to draw an analogy between these two programs is quite beyond rational comprehension.
 
SlippyToad said:
No. Our current crop of most dire enemies don't have ICBM's. They have box cutters and low-tech explosives. This system as currently deployed doesn't have any apparent effectiveness against its intended threat, let alone the actual threat we face. So it's a tremendous waste. The tens of billions could be used for lots of other things. [/B]
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With my incredible psychic powers I forecast that in ten years time North Korea will be producing trainers, sweat shirts and crappy electronics.

At that time there will be rightwingers who will say that only the threat of deploying a risible ABM system forced NK to change it's ways.

In 25 years time ragged and barely literate USAians will show NK tourists round the rusting ABM silo's before entertaining them with some rousing gospel songs:D .
 
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