Whether you think this is a good idea or not, don't you think that, if we are going to do this, we could find some grown-ups to put in charge of the programs?

One might wonder why, (as I do), ....why, after all these years and at least a couple of hundred billion dollars for SDI, (Star Wars Missile Defense), and who knows how much more 'black' budget being spent on the same or other platforms, ...why we are still unable to get a defensive missile to even leave the silo during another test?

Pentagon officials connected to the missile defense program are on record stating that there has never been a test which tests real world conditions, let alone the fact that we are still unable to achieve much in the way of positive results even when we pre-arrange for results in the tests.

I'm not going to go as far as some others and just suggest we scrap all such research, but do we need to get someone else to take the wheel? Do we need better oversight? Should we rethink the whole program?

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> I'm not going to go as far as some others and just suggest we scrap all such
> research, but do we need to get someone else to take the wheel? Do we need
> better oversight? Should we rethink the whole program?
>
Personally I believe hat the problem is the paperwork involved in changing ANYTHING in a project that is as big as the project is. No ONE person can make a decison that is need NOW! It needs to be written, explained and generally shuffled along thru multiple channels before a new/different way of handling problems can be acted upon. "Too many chefs spoil the soup", is what I am thinking.
If the local on-the-ground guy knows he can fix the problem, he can't, he MUST tell his boss, who tells his boss, thru MULTIPLE levels until someone that has NO IDEA about the problem OR the fix, makes a decision to change it or not.

There is no, let's get this part working and then we will add in that part until we have a whole working system. It is a multiple segment system all working towards a working system but having little if any interaction between the different segments. Then when the segments are placed together, and problems come to light, and one group blames the other.

Fixing the problem would involve bringing in a master level "TEAM" that understands each segment and can get them to work together efficiently.
Currently there is no person, or group of persons, that knows each segment and how it will interact with all the other segments. SOME people know some of the segments, but with the segments still on the drawing board and changing constantly, until a new "TEAM" is brought in, the project as a whole will have a very difficult time.

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Oh, what's this? I thought that ABM research was far more ahead than that. From the way the military describes the advancements with missle defence, you'd think that they were just about ready to wrap things up.

Maybe we should start working on our psychokinesis istead.

I thought space was already weaponized. Maybe not by humans, but weaponized just the same.

lol

Why in the world put spend billions of bucks to put that stuff out in space where there's no people?
Jeez.
Every single town's got a football field- just put them there.
All that money for uniforms and band instruments could better be used for homeland security.
Football's a dumb game anyway...cc

> Why in the world put spend billions of bucks to put that stuff out in space
> where there's no people?
> Jeez.
>
Becausethe whole premise was to stop the other guys missles BEFORE they were on their way DOWN when they are soooo hard to stop.

Oh and football fields are used for LOTS of other things too, soccer, lacrosse, fun with the cheerleaders, etc.

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How many years did the government have stealth technology before admitting to the public we had it?

Do you realize the SR-71 blackbird spy plane was decommissioned before anyone knew it existed? They went as far as promoting UFO stories in order to cover up "strange" sighting by radar and/or other pilots.

The internet was born in 1969, but most folks didn't know of it's existence until the late 80's.

What makes you think the Star Wars program doesn't work? Because someone in the government told you that? It's a patriot missle in space, and although not even close to 100% effective, I DO know they work.....and personally, I'd prefer a 1% chance over no defense at all, even at one million dollars or more a pop.

I'm not 100% pro-government in every instance, as my avatar suggests, but I don't think national defense is one of the areas where the ball is being dropped. Might makes right, It's the American way.

.

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President Carter announced stealth technology when he cancelled the original B-1 which President Reagan started back up. The SR71 started life as the A-12, then changed to F-12 as a mach 3 interceptor. The original A was because of funding problems in getting the project started. When congress refused to fund the XB-70, the Airforce tried to get it funded by changing it to the SR-70 for strategic reconnaissance, also refused. Still needing a replacement for the U-2, the radar and infared detectors on the F-12 were removed, the nose chines were carried all the way forward, which improved performance, the missle bays were changed to camera bays and the designation changed to SR-71. This was not done in secret. I was reading about it as it was being done back in the late 50s and early 60s. The secret items were and are the capabilities of systems, top speed and altitude. The J-58 engines were secret, but I have lately found information about them on the internet. I have also found a lot of mis-information about the SR-71 on the internet.

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Announcing stealth technology isn't the same as saying it's been utilized for the past 10 years. Same situation with the blackbird, and as retired military, I would think you had access to information not readily available to the average civilian.....and you did admit that the important parts of the plane were kept secret, like engines, equipment, and specs.

After the U-2 was shot down, there was no point in keeping spy planes a complete secret, but letting you see it, and know about the advancements in the technology used, is another story.

And in case you haven't heard it lately, soldier, thanks for.....everything.

.

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> Football's a dumb game anyway...cc
>
I agree what's the big deal about kicking a round ball into a net anyway????

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A black and white ball 'cuz they couldnt decide on a color.

I worked as an engineer on two missile defense projects between 2000 and 2003. One project was for the navy, a prototype. We spent about $100 million and then the project was canceled.

I also worked on THAAD, for the army.

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/thaad/
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/news00/000628-Lockheed.htm

Several of my colleagues traveled to Kwajalein Island in the south pacific to participate in tests. The tests cost around $80 million each. During the time frame I was there, most tests failed. Sometimes because of simple typos/bugs in the code. This was not surprising, as the code was a spaghetti mess of Ada95.

According to the news, these test continue to fail, one just Monday:

[url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/12/national/main666433.shtml
]http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/12/national/main666433.shtml[/url]


Often discussed at the end of long frustrating design reviews, is that after 20 years and 150+ billion dollars, no one has addressed the fact that there are extremely inexpensive, and easily deployed counter measures for hit-to-kill interceptors.

When the program was initially proposed by Regan in the 1980's this was the conclusion of the scientists who studied the idea initially. In 400 pages they said after spending hundreds of billions there would be a very small chance that it would work—then, if it did, enemies could develop countermeasures at small fractions of the price. Someone took that 400 page reports, and placed an optimistic “executive summary” on the cover. Now here we are, 20 years and 150 billion dollars later-- and it is not close to working. And there is still the problem that, should it ever work as designed, there are a huge number of easily deployable countermeasures, that no proposed missile defense system has even been designed to handle.


We are scheduled to spend another $50 billion on this over the next ten years.

For $160 billion we probably could have put humans on Mars.

Of course the ultimate solution--stop shooting missile at each other.

Whether or not you agree that spending money on this project is good, one has to acknowledge that we could accomplish so much more if humanity would just grow up, as a species, as a race, as brothers, and stop fighting each other.

---

www.onlinetasklist.com

I agree what's the big deal about kicking a round ball into a net anyway?
It's a huge deal!

[b]<OT>[/b]

Soccer is the most viewed event in the world<li>Television coverage in 213 countries and over 41,100 hours of programming - a 38% increase over 1998.</li><li>A cumulative in-home audience of 28.8 billion viewers.</li><li>Live audiences were not affected by the time zone differences for viewers in Europe and Central and South America.</li><li>Proper, audited research for China introduced for the first time, which accounted for a 14% reduction in the global audience total when compared to 1998. Taking China out of the equation, the global figure is actually up 2%.</li>

[/list]

Audience records were broken<li>The novel experience of staging a FIFA World Cupâ„¢ in Asia provoked an extraordinary response from television viewers.</li><li>The host continent accounted for 40% of the total audience.</li><li>In spite of non-prime time viewing hours in Europe, North and South America, many national audience records were broken. Live audiences held up, accounting for 77% of the cumulative FIFA World Cupâ„¢ audience and an average of 314.1 million viewers per match.</li><li>Including the out-of-home viewing figures, live audiences accounted for 87% of the total viewing - an average of 352.6 million per match.</li>

Obviously people really love the Beautiful Game even more than the Olympic opening ceremony. I didn't find any data to corroborate this, but I've been told that even when adjusted accordingly, the number of World Cup viewers is greater than the number of people who watched Armstrong set foot on the Moon.

[b]</OT>[/b]

Don't forget that even when nations are at each other's throats, there's always respite by kicking a ball around.

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> A black and white ball 'cuz they couldnt decide on a color.
>
>
>
Maybe, the less frequent black parts represent the Total number of recent european technological advancements, and the white parts represent the number of times the French have waived the white flag in surrender?

I wonder if this will start anything???? hmmmm

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Well how the heck are we going to protect ourselves from alien if we don't weaponize space!? I think it's about dam time.

What we really need is a huge missle base on the moon and maybe Pluto too, that way we could get them before they get too close!!

I read that Hubble is really a giant laser cannon and the whole telescope thingy is just cover story... It really didn't take any picture.

They need to save space for the alien and just drop neutron bomb on people down here especially Canada. Canada is the source of all evil. Canada and the French. Tehy don't play football.

God Bless John Wayne.

> They need to save space for the alien and just drop neutron bomb on people
> down here especially Canada. Canada is the source of all evil. Canada and the
> French. Tehy don't play football.


They don't really play football in the US. Just this sissy-derivate of rugby with contenders packed in jiffy-bags. Football (or soccer in their strange language) is just to complicated for these nuts.
Football is the ballgame with the round ball!

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Gruesse vom Saenger

For questions about Boinc look in the BOINC-Wiki

> A black and white ball 'cuz they couldnt decide on a color.
>
Actually I believe it is multi-colored so players can see the ball spin in the air giving a clue as to its possible direction.

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> Just this sissy-derivate of rugby with contenders packed in jiffy-bags.

Lol, I liked that one... jiffy bags. ;-)

The reason we play football and not fag-ball in the USA is because soccer sucks and is not a profitable sport.....not to mention we try to prevent riots instead of holding events where one is guarenteed.

There may be lot's of folks playing soccer in other countries, but we have professional football players making more money than the combined income of half the countries playing soccer

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There is thunder in your words BrainSmashR. You speak true but...

Rugby is a different matter entirely. Rugby is for the CroMagnon only.

Soccer is to U.S Professional Football as

Professional U.S. Football is to Rugby in terms of MANLINESS. rofl

sleep deprivation makes me a nut.