this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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It's interesting reading quotes from that article like: "If you can’t verify what someone else has said at some other point, you’re just trusting to blind faith for artefacts that you can no longer read yourself." and "After you’ve been dead for 100 years, are people going to be able to get access to the things you’ve worked on?"
It reminds me of problems the US military is having with refitting/upgrading old ICBMs. From the 2021 article, "Minuteman III Missiles Are Too Old to Upgrade Anymore, STRATCOM Chief Says": "Where the drawings do exist, "they're like six generations behind the industry standard," he said, adding that there are also no technicians who fully understand them. "They're not alive anymore."
It's sounds like the danger is we'll be able to access the science (or just trust it's true) but in some cases we'll be unable to retrace our steps.
Good Lord, if the US nuclear arsenal is that antiquated, I shudder to think of where the Russians are at. Please don't short-circuit and accidentally launch…
I wonder if the fact that none have actually exploded yet means that we should be reassured that the vast majority wouldn't actually work.
Or, possibly, just have had their components and fuel stripped decades ago and they're just being "maintained" to keep up appearances for higher-ups. That one is definitely true in at least some cases.
With how good the intelligence community is at its job, I’d be surprised if all of the working ones went up. I’d bet a lot of them are compromised.
There's a difference between old technology and old things. The missiles themselves are extremely well cared for.