Space lasers work and are a great way to destroy other sattelites. His SDI program was way crazier though, X-ray lasers fueled by shaped charge nukes to shoot down ICBMs.
I wouldn’t say that nothing useful was gained. It appears to have furthered our sensor technology quite a bit. True, it was never going to work as intended, but Reagan didn’t know that. This is the same guy that was terrified by the film WarGames, so of course he wanted the SDI program. He was a shitty president for many reasons, I wouldn’t say that SDI was one of them.
True, it was never going to work as intended, but Reagan didn’t know that.
Sure he did. Do you really think he didn’t have any advisors or scientists telling him what a stupid idea it was? The point was never for it to work, just to funnel money weapons contractors.
Fun fact: Reagon spent over $250B on a space laser program during the cold war. It failed and nothing useful was gained from it.
Space lasers work and are a great way to destroy other sattelites. His SDI program was way crazier though, X-ray lasers fueled by shaped charge nukes to shoot down ICBMs.
Still more reasonable than Project Pluto. I can’t believe how far we got in that particular mistake.
ETA the x-ray lasers were only a part of it. They were throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
Have you seen the nuclear ramjet submarine? Like project Pluto but even less sane https://youtu.be/CDLOXv3yN3A?si=B9X1pUA5VYktvxNl
Ok it’s official. You had to be clinically insane, and think like a bond villain to work for the nuclear commission in the 50s
Is the CIA still messing around with psychics?
Probably… Does anyone know what the CIA is currently doing?
For anyone interested, Jacob Geller made a video about this specific topic
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
I wouldn’t say that nothing useful was gained. It appears to have furthered our sensor technology quite a bit. True, it was never going to work as intended, but Reagan didn’t know that. This is the same guy that was terrified by the film WarGames, so of course he wanted the SDI program. He was a shitty president for many reasons, I wouldn’t say that SDI was one of them.
Sure he did. Do you really think he didn’t have any advisors or scientists telling him what a stupid idea it was? The point was never for it to work, just to funnel money weapons contractors.
I don’t know how much he understood due to the Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t obvious in his first term, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was being affected.