| Learning Ideas: How Difficult Is Missile Defense? |
| Imagine trying to hit a ball that has been thrown towards you with another ball in mid air. Better yet, TRY IT! |
| What you need: |
| --Two, synthetic foam (or equivalent) soft-sided balls --At least one friend to help --Approximately $69 Billion dollars in funding since 1985 --A pliant and jingoistic Congress --No Pesky Arms Control Treaties that ban ball-tossing; if you are currently a party to such a Treaty, you must withdraw from it before you start to play, practice, or even buy the balls |
| Directions: Decide which of you will be the target missile and which will be the interceptor. --The person who is the target missile throws her or his ball into the air in an arch (as if it is a missile following the curve of the Earth) toward the other person with the interceptor ball. --The person with the interceptor ball then needs to try and hit the target ball with the interceptor ball, knocking it away before the target ball is able to hit him or her. --The person throwing the target ball may throw more than one target ball, additional objects such as confetti, or may throw objects directly at the head of the person throwing the interceptor ball to throw off his aim. --You can practice as many times as you want with other people, but you can only play the real game once, and only with a person and a ball you have never practiced with before. |
| If the interceptor ball hits the target ball right away, you have achieved a boost intercept. |
| You should have another friend stand underneath the balls; call him "Japan." If the taregt ball falls on him after being hit, you must apologize to him and pay for the environmental cleanup. |
| If the interceptor ball hits the target ball about half-way, you have achieved a midcourse intercept |
| Now you have to decide whether to retaliate by throwing one of your 3,000 target balls at the other player. Should you? You told him that playing the game made it unnecessary to practice Mutual Assured Destruction, but now you're kind of angry at him. |
| If the interceptor ball hits the target ball right before the target ball hits the person throwing the interceptor ball, you have achieved a terminal intercept. |
| Whew! That was close! But you still have to decide whether to throw back. In the meantime, try to calm your panic-stricken nation with some nice tax cuts. |
| If the interceptor ball misses the target ball, the target ball destroys its target (you). You lose. But Halliburton gets the contract to re-build downtown Seattle. Yay! |
| If your friend never throws the ball, you have spent $69 Billion Dollars for nothing. That's no fun! See if you can make him throw the ball by taunting him (call him part of the "Axis of Evil"! See if that works!) or threatening to throw one of your balls at him. |
| Warning!! Do not play this game if your friend's name is Russia. Russia has lots of balls, is very good at throwing them, and does not always play fair. Only play with friends who are small and have only one or two balls; otherwise it is very hard to win. |
| After this experiment, you will see that missile defense is very difficult to accomplish and may just plain fail. Still, it's not like we need the money for anything else. |
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| Everything here comes from the official Missile Defense Web Site, except the last two images and the text in green. Sadly, the Pentagon has taken the original down from their web site. Spoilsports! Contact them and demand it be put back: external.affairs@mda.osd.mil. Tel them the Muskrats Sent You. |
| Missed |