Isn’t That What Testing Is For?
December 15, 2004
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
A test of one of the potential components of the ballistic missile defense system failed today.
President Bush’s drive to deploy a multibillion-dollar shield against ballistic missiles was set back on Wednesday by what critics called a stunning failure of its first full flight test in two years.
The abortive $85 million exercise raised fresh questions about the reliability of the first elements of the plan, an heir to former president Ronald Reagan vision of a space-based missile defense that critics dubbed “Star Wars.”
Looking at the Google News feed for this story it was hard not to notice the gloating of the media at this turn of events. It seems to me that the purpose of testing is to uncover these kinds of faults and fix them. If all you have are successful tests, then it would seem that something is missing from those tests.
I think the unfortunate thing is that there are a lot of people who for some misguided reason think that defending ourselves against missiles is morally wrong. There is significant overlap between these idiots and the press, so any failures tend to be trumpeted as a case for the whole system not to work. Intercepting ballistic missiles is a nontrivial operation, so it will take a while for the technology to reach maturity. I also doubt that we’ll ever come up with a foolproof system without perfecting our energy weapons capability (or at least it seems easier to me to track and hit a missle with a directed energy weapon like a laser than it would be to intercept it with a rocket, although I’m not a rocket scientist…).
With the normal stoicism of the Bush administration, I suspect they can easily weather the bleatings of these idiots, although the weaker members of Congress may vacillate when it comes time for further funding. Given that the government of North Korea is batshit crazy, has nukes and missiles, and is a perfect example of the “success” of socialism we need a missile defense system sooner than later, just in case Kim Jong-il decides to take a few running dog capitalists with him when his country finally descends into chaos.
Categories: Politics, Technology
I have noticed government agencies have become very risk adverse when it comes to science. The place I work for, in like 7 years I can find out about, has never had a failure. In fact, the pre-experiment judgment has been so good, the experiments always turn out exactly as predicted! Including when they don’t and the experimental conditions are changed during the run until it does turn out right. There doesn’t seem to be any room for scientific investigation to find out what doesn’t work, so you eventually find out what does work anymore.
Light bulb, Mr. Edison? Sure, you can have a grant if you make it work the first try so we don’t waste money on a bunch of failures.
The left’s opposition to ballistic missile defense is a part of their opposition to ANY sort of defense. It seems that collectivism is opposed to ever doing anything about aggression no matter if the aggressor is a scoolyard bully or a disfunctional nation state.
It seems most likely this is simply the result of the left’s absolute LOVE of keeping people in fear.
I think part of the problem with government science is that the politics intrude to the extent that any contrary findings might undermine policy, such that findings are massaged to match the desired policy outcome.
There’s also the problem that newsmedia like short soundbites, which makes it difficult to convey longer-term thinking above the noise of the short-term howling over the failure. When it comes to defending the country, I don’t mind if they have spectactular failures during testing as long as the finished system works. This is one of the few areas where I think the federal government has a legitimate reason to be working and I’m willing to give them some room.
Hi Aubrey!
Actually while I mentioned only the ideological side of things, I completely concur with your analysis. Nothing worth building works the first time, except maybe the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Back in the Fall of 1962 the surface excuse for cancelling the Skybolt project was that there had been test failures. Historically the real reason seems to have been that the Soviets had put pressure on the Kennedy administration to cancel the project to delay British entry into the strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems club.
Skybolt had suffered fewer failures in testing than had Polaris just a few years before.
Skybolt had been a “standoff weapon”. It was intended to allow B-52s to launch their weapons from outside enemy airspace. Keeping with the old gravity bombs meant airspace penetration had to be stayed stayed with, with all of the losses that inevitably means. The US had to wait another 20 years before SAC was given a standoff weapon with anything like the range of Skybolt.