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Apopuli.120 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!G:asa Tue Mar 16 13:33:44 1982 High Frontier, or, Pigs in Space, Episode Foo

So you like the video game scenario, do you, bud? Luke Sky- walker's lasers blasting Darth Vader's missiles before they reach their targets? Thanks, but I'll take my chances with Dr. Helen Caldicott, the knee-jerk nukies, and the no-win pacifists.

In an article titled "Laser Weapons" in the December 1981 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (vol. 245, no. 6, pp. 51-57), Kosta Tsipis of MIT discusses the potential of lasers as weapons, as assessed in a series of workshops organized by the Program in Science and Technology for International Security of the physics department of MIT. Tsipis states that he and his colleagues have concluded that "lasers have little or no chance of succeeding as practical, cost-effective defensive weapons" (p. 52). The article concludes:

"On balance, then, laser weapons operating in the atmosphere offer no clear advantage over existing weapons for close-range defense. In addition they can be impeded by weather, they cannot operate effectively beyond a range of a few kilometers, they are easier to neutralize by countermeasures than ordinary projectiles or supersonic missiles and they require a much better tracking system. Under these circumstances it is difficult to see how the development and deployment of such fragile, complex and expensive weapons would improve the military capability of a nation" (p. 57).

You don't have to be a no-win pacifist to object to billions of tax dollars being pissed away on unworkable Buck Rodgers weaponry such as the B-1 bomber, the MX missile system, and (now) High Frontier lasers...and that well-known knee-jerk nukie Admiral Rickover recently stated before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress (apropos of nuclear-powered ships) that he would "sink them all." Rickover's scathing indictment of private sector ripoffs and Defense Department wastefulness (not to mention his remarks on nuclear war) make interesting reading: much of the text of his prepared statement appears in the March 18, 1982, number of the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (pp. 12-14).

John Hevelin ...ucbvax!g:asa

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