Comments on: Fire in the sky

By: David Williams

David Williams — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:02:29 +0000

@Lucas: absolutely. This is the part that a lot of space weapon advocates ignore–there’s always this belief that all we need to do is build the Next Phase of Weaponry, and after that, we’ve got an insurmountable advantage, and then peace breaks out forever. But any would-be opponent would *have* to do something about our space-based architecture in the event of conflict. The real question is how they’d go about that. If the space-based defenses are worth two shits, they’d be able to take out kinetic interceptors as well . . I suspect that directed energy and jamming/hacking are likely to be the preferred means of assault, but KE would certainly have its part to play.

By: Lucas Lee

Lucas Lee — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:46:14 +0000

My question would be, however, given that most satellites have reasonably predictable orbits (basic laws of physics), whether any opponent worth his salt would hit them with kinetic interceptors in the opening salvos of any exchange of ballistic missiles.

By: meesh

meesh — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:14:48 +0000

i can safely say that this three year old isn’t very annoying and i answer everything truthfully and he now knows some pretty big words and is smart as a whip!

sometimes knowing too much can cause fear……i

By: Joni

Joni — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:33:13 +0000

Heh, 3 years old are fun (and annoying) with so many questions that are sometimes pretty hard to answer in a way that they understand.

My take about the fear is that if you know nothing about something (to the point of it’s existence) then there is no fear. If you know that something is out there and it sounds frightening or something that can be dangerous or you are just prejudiced, then you fear it.

But I agree that if people choose the ignorance it’s their loss.

By: meesh

meesh — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:43:14 +0000

henry asked me yesterday what was on top of the news van. (henry is 3). i told him it was a tech thingie so that the news could broadcast to the world.

he asked if the signal was sent into space to a satellite…..ha.

then i started telling him about weaponization of space and we read the laser article together.

people are scared only of what they know nothing about and there are a lot of people who could care less about knowing anything. their loss i guess.

By: Joni

Joni — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:36:36 +0000

I agree that having a weapon pointed at me at the sky would make me a bit nervous. But I have to say that general public doesn’t much care about things like that. I don’t know how precise those thing are, how much atmosphere would affect the laser etc.

Those who rely on missiles for defense and/or offense are the one’s who are nervous if they can’t get their own weapons systems to space as well.