Will it be ground based or sea based, or will some elements be based in space (a big worry for Moscow, which fears that a space-based system could be expanded into a much vaster shield)?
He has helped a German manufacturer design folding patterns for airbags and advised astronomers on how to fold up a huge flat-screen lens for a telescope based in space.
Not since 1983, when President Reagan envisioned a defense based in space that would render nuclear weapons obsolete, has an issue of military technology seized the imagination of American policymakers and politicians and alarmed America's friends and foes.
Their anxiety is increased by the knowledge that some of the missile defense systems currently under consideration -- especially those to be based in space -- would have the inherent capability to attack satellites.
Because parts of the defensive system that Reagan advocated would be based in space, the proposed system was dubbed "Star Wars," after the space weaponry of a popular motion picture of the same name.
One is that it will be based in space; the other is that it will be able to thwart a multiple missile strike by China or Russia.In this section An American dream Rolled over Rumspeak Home, sweet home Clinton's children ReprintsIn fact, the system to be unveiled by Mr Bush's Missile Defence Agency MDAA) next year is a humbler thing, though still hugely ambitious (see diagram).
But rather than set it on an island, it's based in space.
In Moonraker, the villain Hugo Drax had an obsession with starting human civilisation over again on Earth, using specially chosen "superior human specimens" based in space.
The first issue is whether "space" means weapons that are based in space, or weapons that are aimed at stuff in space regardless of where they're fired from.
NASA poured a bit of cold water on the prospect in early 2015, reporting that data from two other observatories — one based in space, the other on Earth — failed to pick up the signal.
