On Wednesday 15 December 2004 17:17, Jed Rothwell wrote:
> Yee haw!!!
>
> - Jed
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> New York Times, December 15, 2004
>
> Important Test for Missile-Defense System Ends in Failure
>
> By DAVID STOUT
>
> WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - An important test of the United States' emerging
> missile-defense system ended in an $85 million failure early today as an
> interceptor rocket failed to launch as scheduled from the Marshall Islands,
> the Pentagon said.
>
> A target rocket carrying a mock warhead was successfully launched from
> Kodiak, Alaska. But the interceptor, which was to have gone aloft 16
> minutes later and picked off the target 100 miles over the earth,
> automatically shut down instead because of "an unknown anomaly," the
> Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said.
>
> Despite the disappointment, today's event was not a total failure, said
> Richard A. Lehner, an agency spokesman. He said "quite a bit" had been
> learned from the aborted test, which he called "a very good training
> exercise." He noted that the rocket that failed to rise can be used later.
> The target rocket landed in the ocean some 3,000 miles from Kodiak, he
> said. . . .
Hello again listers,
Again the government insistance on rocketry to do what a laser can do
much better leads to only further expensive futility. The only upside of
this is the fact that those officials only plan to defend the highest
govenment political centers with these failed antimissile systems. It is
claimed that no money exists to do more. Maybe after a war actually
happens and our incompetant and corrupt leadership is the first to be
wiped out, we can then get down to the business of really protecting us.
Lasers are the only way to go. They are efficiently re-usable. If a shot
misses, charge it up and fire it again. Firing at the speed of light, few
shots should miss when using proper radar targeting; the target will
not have time to react when the firing sequence from initial target-lock
to fire-for-effect to target-strike is in the order of microseconds.
Unless the whole project is a sham and the funds expended for it
a known scam. But that would mean the employees on the project would
all be fools or liars.......all of them. It would also mean that the
government, not wanting to be embarrased, would hide all the details that
it could under a blanket of 'information classification'; and would try to
persecute anyone who said anything about it.
We have a window of opportunity of only a few years before enough
small countries have missile technologies and nuclear warhead technologies
that it will be quite likely that we will be attacked by one of the more
insane among them. Best we put our money into technologies that have
shown a tendancy to work and work well.
We have on the one hand lasers that can shoot down artillery shells and
missiles of many sizes at many trajectories and incident velocities and do
it cheaply, just a few thousand dollars a shot.......or less with an upgraded
free electron laser! One the other hand there are the missiles that fail
more often than not and may never prove to be dependable except for
one notable feature, mainly that every shot from a missile will cost
you and me many millions of dollars.
Lasers can be quickly re-charged. Missiles take time. Lots of time!
And when they fail, they often take the launch pads with them. It can
take years to rebuild launch pads. Maybe our enemies will wait........
haw....haw....haw!
Standing Bear
