ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (12/10/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Tuesday, December 9, 1986 6:50PM
Volume 7, Issue 80
Today's Topics:
Supremacy for its own sake
fetching asteroids
LOW
antihydrogen
Offensive Uses of SDI
Personalized license plate
AI and the Arms Race (from AILIST)
antimatter propulsion
KAL007
The mystery of Rejkavik
Public Opinion and Irangate
Uninspected space-based boost-phase-intercept presumed offensive
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Supremacy for its own sake
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 86 16:34:23 -0800
From: crummer@aerospace.ARPA
Calton Pu is concerned that the US will strive for supremacy for its own sake.
I think people can be convinced of about anything. I remember in the 1950's
the "horsepower race" among American auto manufacturers. Every year the
cars got more powerful and faster. Some visionary predicted at the time that
by 1980 or so the national speed limit would be 200 mph. After the
gasoline "shortage" of the early '70's it seems that the day of the
large, powerful car is over.
Maybe there is an analogy here to the arms race. It's possible that
someday people will no more care whether we're ahead of the Russians
than they care now whether or not we're ahead of the British or
French, or even the Japanese. (Maybe we SHOULD be worried about the
last!)
--Charlie
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 86 15:34:08 pst
From: weitek!mae@decwrl.DEC.COM (Mike Ekberg)
Subject: fetching asteroids
I missed Henry Spencers comments on fetching asteroids so this may be
redundant. Perhaps the easiest way to catch an asteroid is to find one
passing near the Earth's orbit. These asteroids are called Trojan
asteroids.
I recent SF book by Ben Bova descibes this technique.I believe the
book is called "Bucchaneer" although I am not sure. A small ship
is sent to the nearby asteroid and set's up a focusing mirror on one
end of the asteroid. Focused solar radiation is used to propel the
asteroid to near-Earth orbit.
An interesting twist of the plot involves a rival space power attempting to
divert the asteroid onto the Earth's surface(Kansas).
I also recommend "Footfall" by Larry Niven/Jerry Pournell for it's
interesting discusion of space-based offensive weapons, particularly the
smart crowbars.
mike
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 86 22:00:15 pst
From: king@kestrel.ARPA (Dick King)
re: LOW
To: Arms-d
From: ga.cjj@forsythe.stanford.edu
cc: Lin@xx.lcs.mit.edu
re: LOW (final comments)
This is the exact approach I adopt (see definition of a LOWC in
most recent posting). Regarding a LOWC arising unplanned from
sensors, communication links, and ready missiles; yes, that is
a LOWC, which I call a *happenstance* LOWC, as opposed to a
LOWC that is specially provided for. Conceptually, the matter
becomes very complex, because, as you say, a LOWC may have
different characteristics and degrees of implementation
depending on alert-levels, et alia. That's why Herb and I have
gone on so long! If you want a copy of my set of definitions,
send me a note - it's about five pages long.
I don't think that anything forseeable that happens in the military
should be happenstance. I think that every conceivable type of battle
should be planned for and rehearsed.
If our military does not have contingency plans for attacking Canada
or defending itself against a Canadian attack, I would be very
disturbed that they were not doing their job. If they ATTACK Canada,
I will be even more peturbed.
-dick
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 86 21:48:45 pst
From: king@kestrel.ARPA (Dick King)
Subject: antihydrogen
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1986 16:16 EST
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Antimatter rockets?
I wonder about this antimatter propulsion stuff. According to my
rough order of magnitude calculation, I estimate that ... to get
the equivalent of about 10 tons of fuel = 10^7 grams, you need
10^-5 grams of anti-protons, or about 10^22 protons. ... My
estimate of the pressure that would be on the walls is on the
order of 10^8 atmospheres for a tank of about 5 meter scale,
caused by the electrostatic repulsion of the protons.
If we make the stuff into anti-hydrogen, then we avoid the
electrostatic repulsion, but then we have no way of keeping the
anti-matter away from the walls.
Am I missing something in this?
Frozen hydrogen is repelled by a magnet. A crystal of antihydrogen
could be kept suspended by a pair of superconducting wires carrying a
persistent current.
+ -
|||||||||||||
////// \\\\\\
////// \\\\\\
<<<<<<<<<<< * >>>>>>>>>>
\\\\\\ //////
\\\\\\ //////
+ -
The + is the current going away from you, the - is the current coming
towards you. [That's the last time I try to draw something like this
in ascii!]
-dick
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 86 00:50:36 EST
From: John_Boies@ub.cc.umich.edu
Subject: Offensive Uses of SDI
Henry Spencer and many others seem to be quite deeply enamored (or at
least they are willing to argue strongly for the notion) of the idea
that it possible to develop a BMD system that is somehow inherently
limited to being strictly a defensive system. Leaving aside the
question of whether or not the U.S. would care to develop a system
that was limited in that fashion, I am quite firmly convinced that any
system that can destroy "enemy" nuclear weapons before they are able
to damage significant U.S. military, economic, or political assets
can easily (and perhaps most feasibly) be used for "offensive"
purposes.
In general, the terms "offensive weapons" and "defensive weapons" have
little meaning until it is known how they might function with other
available systems and with the systems of the enemy. A simple
example, if the U.S. had no capability of detonating nuclear devices
on the Soviet Union, it would be hard to suggest that a BMD could do
much more than protect the U.S. from some form of Soviet missile
attack. On the other hand, an obvious synergism of being able to both
intercept attacking RVs and of being able to detonate nuclear weapons
on the SU is that we could attack the Russians with relative impunity.
While this is an obvious "offensive capability", all the BMD system is
doing is defending the continental U.S. from "attack", just as the
armour on a tank protects its crew while they are firing their cannon
or the ECM systems on a B-52 protects the plane from being detected
and shot down on the way to its target.
There are two things I am trying to suggest here. One is that you can
debate endlessly about the offensive and defensive uses of BMD as long
as you do not examine whether or not your proposed BMD can be
integrated with other weapons to support an "offensive strategy".
Even then the debate cannot be ended until some determination of the
contribution BMD will make to the success of an "offensive strategy".
Any debate concerning SDI or any other BMD program (or in fact any
technology) which ignores how the finished system might work with
already existing technologies or other developing technologies is one
which will always have the potential of producing flawed conclusions.
The second point I am trying to make is that terms must be defined
before any meaningful dialogue can occur. Seemingly, advocates of SDI
say it's defensive largely because it can be made so it cannot
directly attack Russian soil, or some similar argument. Critics of
SDI, on the other hand, often suggest that SDI can be made a part of
an offensive strategy or plan--it can blunt retaliation by USSR after
a U.S. first strike, it could destroy communication and EW satellites,
or something along those lines. While it appears to me that the
advocates of SDI are trying to say that SDI is just a "shield", and
that their critics largely agree (in abstract terms), these critics of
SDI cannot be satisfied because they are addressing the larger
question of what role will SDI play in the use of our other nuclear
weapons. While there is agreement that SDI is a shield, there is no
meeting of minds on the idea that SDI a is shield behind which an
attack on the SU might be made. What I would like to see is some
agreement as the level at which the debate is to occur. Do we debate
issues of offense and defense in terms of the capabilities of the
specific system, do we debate them in terms of how the system might
function in concert with other systems, how the proposed systems might
enhance or
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 86 18:52:11 pst
From: Eugene Miya N. <eugene@ames-pioneer.arpa>
Subject: Personalized license plate
Seen on a tail of a car while driving thru Livermore more Friday evening:
DPLOYMX
From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
"You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
{hplabs,hao,nike,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!aurora!eugene
"Star Wars" is a trademark of Lucasfilm, Ltd.
------------------------------
Date: Wednesday, 3 December 1986 19:16-EST
From: sdcrdcf!burdvax!blenko at OBERON.USC.EDU (Tom Blenko)
To: AIList, arms-d
Re: AI and the Arms Race
In article <863@tekchips.UUCP> willc@tekchips.UUCP (Will Clinger) writes:
|In article <2862@burdvax.UUCP> blenko@burdvax.UUCP (Tom Blenko) writes:
|>If Weizenbaum or anyone else thinks he or she can succeeded in weighing
|>possible good and bad applications, I think he is mistaken. Wildly
|>mistaken.
|>
|>Why does Weizenbaum think technologists are, even within the bounds of
|>conventional wisdom, competent to make such judgements in the first
|>place?
|
|Is this supposed to mean that professors of moral philosophy are the only
|people who should make moral judgments? Or is it supposed to mean that
|we should trust the theologians to choose for us? Or that we should leave
|all such matters to the politicians?
Not at all. You and I apparently agree that everyone does, willingly or
not, decide what they will do (not everyone would agree with even
that). I claim that they are simply unable to decide on the basis of
knowing what the good and bad consequences of introducing a technology
will be. And I am claiming that technologists, by and large, are less
competent than they might be by virtue of their ignorance of the
criteria professors of moral philosophy, theologians, nuclear plant
designers, and politicians bring to bear on such decisions.
I propose that most technologists decide, explicitly or implicitly,
that they will ride with the status quo, believing that
1) there are processes by which errant behavior on the part of
political or military leaders is corrected;
2) they may subsequently have the option of taking a
different role in deciding how the technology will be used;
3) the status quo is what they are most knowledgeable about,
and other options are difficult to evaluate;
4) there is always a finite likelihood that a decision may,
in retrospect, prove wrong, even though it was the best
choice available to them as decision-maker.
Such a decision is not that some set of consequences is, on balance,
good or bad, but that there is a process by which one may hope to
minimize catastrophic consequences of an imperfect, forced-choice
decision-making process.
|Representative democracy imposes upon citizens a responsibility for
|judging moral choices made by the leaders they elect. It seems to me
|that anyone presumed to be capable of judging others' moral choices
|should be presumed capable of making their own.
|
|It also seems to me that responsibility for judging the likely outcome
|of one's actions is not a thing that humans can evade, and I applaud
|Weizenbaum for pointing out that scientists and engineers bear this
|responsibility as much as anyone else.
I think the exhortations attributed to Weizenbaum are shallow and
simplistic. If one persuades oneself that one is doing what Weizenbaum
proposes, one simply defers the more difficult task of modifying one's
decision-making as further information/experience becomes available
(e.g., by revising a belief set such as that above).
Tom
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1986 10:03 EST
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: antimatter propulsion
In my last msg, I talked of using eletrostatic repulsion to store
anti-protons. "Electrostatic" wasn't what I really meant -- a
time-varying electric field would of course be necessary. What I had
meant was that electric repulsion could be used.
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 9 Dec 1986 08:17:31-PST
From: jong%derep.DEC@decwrl.DEC.COM (Steve Jong/NaC Pubs)
re: KAL007
In his book "The Target is Destroyed" (1986), Pulitzer
Prize-winning writer Seymour M. Hirsh strives to explain why
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 flew serenely over the Soviet Union to
its doom on September 1, 1983. Since none of the crew survived
and the flight recorders were never recovered, any explanation is
highly conjectural, but he presents the arguments of a veteran
pilot, one who has flown that route many times. After exhaustive
studies, including his knowledge of how flight crews work with
their equipment, the pilot concluded that a combination of human
errors caused the navigational snafu. One of the errors was
postulated to be a well-known blind faith in the plane's inertial
navigation system (INS).
This triply-redundant, highly accurate system flies the plane
automatically once coordinates are entered. The crew enters
starting, ending, and "waystation" coordinates into each of the
three components. If there is an entry error, or if the plane
seems off course, an alarm sounds.
The full scenario is too complex to cover here, but the gist of it
is that a crew member fat-fingered the "you are here" coordinates.
How is it a RISK? Consider the anecdotal evidence of other
flights:
o Crews place complete faith in INS. They don't have to fly the
plane, and sometimes have been known to nap in the cockpit.
o Crews trust INS more than their radar. The pilot who
developed this scenario said if the KAL crew looked at
their radar and saw the Kamchatka Penninsula where there
should have been open ocean, they probably shut off the
radar, because the INS was functioning normally.
o The INS is so sensitive that if the plane strays down the
wrong taxiway, it sounds off. Crews will shut off the alarm.
o Entry errors are common on long flights, because crews must
enter three sets of ten coordinates (over a hundred numbers).
o Though it is strictly against airline policy to do so, at
the touch of a button the crew can "autoload" coordinates
from one INS to another.
If you accept the scenario, 269 people died at least partly
because of blind faith in computers and a tedious interface that
was too simply circumvented.
------------------------------
Subject: The mystery of Rejkavik
Date: 09 Dec 86 11:17:44 EST (Tue)
From: dm@bfly-vax.bbn.com
Why do we need SDI when both sides have eliminated missiles? I
wondered about that, too. The reason I didn't respond to Carlton Pu's
first message was I expected a dozen others to do so.
Reagan said in his ``Democratic puppies'' speeches during the Senate
elections that the need for SDI in the face of the elimination of
strategic missiles was to guard against Soviet cheating. If they kept
one or two missiles hidden in a grain silo somewhere, they could
launch them and we'd be hard-pressed to retaliate. If we ``retained''
SDI, we could defend ourselves (in this case, SDI might actually have
a prayer of being successful).
Personally, I liked what Barney Frank had to say about the results of
Rejkavik on the floor of Congress:
``President Reagan has shown us that a bird in the hand
is worth Pie in the Sky.''
------------------------------
Subject: Public Opinion and Irangate
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 86 09:59:54 -0800
From: foy@aerospace.ARPA
Richard A. Cowan presents opinion making as a major factor in public
supporty of the arms race:
"MODEL OF OPINION MAKING:
...
what to think. Rather, the media reports the interpretations of
CRITICS and proponents of the Reagan administration, and the public
selects from these. Any free-thinking individual CAN come up with his
...
"A UNIFIED FRONT:
....
What unified front did critics present after the Reykjavic summit?
The media did say the "summit collapsed," but most critics didn't say
it was Reagan's fault. The fact that the Soviets didn't really ask
....
they prefer quotes that grab, or entertain. This is partly due to the
media's interpretation of "objective reporting" to mean that reporters
can't think for themselves about the historical context of an event
they are covering; they must find critics within government (who are
always being extra careful about what they say) to do this for them.
It seems to me that there is a lot of truth in what Cowan says. Most of
us on the net spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing these
issues. Most of us probably have more background on the issues than does
the general public. Thus we can formulate our own opinions with less
effort than does the public.
In a sense this means that the media is a major factor in the arms race,
by generally being "objective" by presenting the government official side
and the careful critics within the government.
This observation generates a response to Robert Mass.
Robert Mass asks:
"Assuming we're right, how do we enlighten the public? Simulations of
non zero-sum games? Simulations of actual thermonuclear wars including
SDI? Covert brainwashing? -- Any ideas??"
All of the above are probably helpful. However I believe the most helpful
thing is to work on the media to become more objective by using non-
governmental experts to contrast with the views of the government. There
are many; ex-military who are very vocal against the arms race, many
scientists, etc who could be interviewed by the media on any particular
issue. The media responds to pressure from the religious right. Pressure
from those who believe it is time to change from the Rambo approach can
influence them.
Richard Foy, Redondo Beach, CA
The opinions I have expressed are the result of many years in the school of
hard knocks. Thus they are my own.
------------------------------
Date: 1986 December 07 13:06:34 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA>
SUBJECT:Uninspected space-based boost-phase-intercept presumed offensive
<REM> But in fact any permanent (not pop-up) space-based system flies over
<REM> the USSR and has virtually instant offensive access... Therefore SDI
<REM> as currently proposed is undesirable as a whole...
<H> From: hplabs!pyramid!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
<H> Date: Thu, 4 Dec 86 21:00:57 pst
<H> Subject: SDI as promoted has boost-phase intercept, offensive capability
<H> Why should flying over the USSR imply offensive access? If, for
<H> example, the space-based weapons cannot penetrate atmosphere,
<H> their position over the USSR is largely irrelevant. Existing
<H> large satellites fly over the USSR a great deal; surely this does
<H> not make them undesirable because they have "virtually instant
<H> offensive access". The question is not whether a defensive system
<H> is in the right position to take offensive action, because most
<H> any boost-phase system will be, but whether it is capable of using
<H> that position to take offensive action. If it's not, the position
<H> doesn't matter.
Good question. At present our satellites are known not to have
offensive capability against ground targets nor against aircraft in
flight nor spacecraft launches, simply because we haven't yet
developed the technical ability to perform remote attacks from
satellites. Our anti-sat capability is limited to short-range,
rendezvous and explode or something like that. But as soon as we
develop long-range space-based attack capabilies, all of our
newly-launched military satellites will be potential attack stations,
and the USSR will have a right to demand that we let them inspect them
to verify the exact nature of the equipment on board. If there is a
question whether we can attack airplanes in flight (perhaps above a
certain altitude) from space, the USSR would have the right to perform
tests with our satellite-based equipment to verify their capabilities
and incapabilities. In the absense of an agreement allowing such
inspections and tests, they must consider all of our military
sattelites hostile and subject to anti-sat actions.
In my opinion, before we develop any boost-phase intercept capability,
we must have a treaty allowing inspections of military satellites
(and perhaps all satellites) to verify the equipment can't attack
ground or air targets, only ICBMs. Before we can do that, both nations
must have advanced manned capability in space (the USSR almost does
presently, we do not yet and aren't even close).
Even so, I'm still opposed to boost-phase intercept, but at least the
above inspection agreement might be acceptable to me.
------------------------------
End of Arms-Discussion Digest
*****************************