TechStuff Tackles the StarWars Program

for you, old man. You have to get credit for this quote. You actually have to. You can't just name the original source. You have to figure out the secondary source right well, and to be fair, the secondary source paraphrases the primary source. So um, yes, we're going to talk today about Star Wars Wars. This comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail. This listener mail comes from Eric, and Eric says, weeks ago, when Ronald Reagan's on birthday came and went, it got me thinking about

his Star Wars satellite program. I know Star Wars involved satellites and it theoretically would be able to kill any bad guy. America set its sights on. However, I don't know much about how it works. Could you do a podcast on it? Thanks? Ps. Could Star Wars be able to destroy Room Hilda and the Philosophizer? First of all, Eric, it's not an assassination system, it's an anti missile system.

And second of all, nothing can stop Room Hilda and the Philosophizer, So maybe some broad first, So you want to talk a little bit about well, I guess before we even talk about the Star Wars program, what we need to do is take a little trip in the way back machine. We haven't done that for a while. Now, did uh? Did uh stuff you missed in history class? Bring it back? Uh? You know? We actually we have a secondary unit. Um. I when we when we did the renovation on the the the studio space, I made

sure that we got a second one just for tech stuff. Okay, good because they don't leave it plugged in. Right. Well, this one over here, you'll you'll notice it looks kind of like okay, so it looks like a third hand um police call box. But trust me, it'll it'll work just fine. So so let's all right, get in, all right, I'm right behind here. Alright, you just budge over just a little bit. Unfortunately, this one is not larger on

the inside than it is on the outside. Let's just set this for October four, nineteen fifty seven, and uh, push the button, Frank, I can't reach the button. All right, I'll push the button, alright, And here we are October four, nineteen fifty seven in this what was then the Soviet Union. Get out is not roomy in here. Oh sorry, all right, that's better. Hey, there's that that tune that's in tetris um. So anyway, it's nineteen fifty seven, October four, Soviet Union.

You know what's about to happen? Does it beep? It does? In fact, that's pretty much all it does. There's going to be the launch of the Sputnik satellite, the first man made satellite launched into Earth orbit deep In fact, that is a direct quote. Yes, it's pretty much. All it did was orbit the Earth and beep. But here's

here's the other important thing about sput Nick. It was not only was it the first man made satellite, but it made America, like the general public of America realized that the Russians had developed technology that would not just allow them to launch a rocket into space, but theoretically launch a rocket from the Soviet Union that could go all the way and reach the United States of America right now, keeping in mind that this is shortly after the end of a Wars, or at least much closer

than it is now, and people were still very concerned

about what was dawning as the atomic Age. With the dropping of the the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the Second World War, other countries were beginning to test those realized that they were terrible weapons, all of us in the world, everywhere, and you know, all of a sudden it became a concern that other people, especially you know, countries that were not necessarily friendly to the United States and the Soviet Union had undergone what

can only be described as political turmoil over the decades since World War One. Really, and sorry, I was dancing around that. Yeah, but it's well, we have to talk about it because the Cold War, that's what Star Wars program is all about. Yes, it was so so we had these political the strain on on the political relationship between the United States of America and the Soviet Union.

They had dia trically opposing political philosophies, right, and now these very very potent weapons which going from needing to be dropped as bombs from planes to being equipped on top of missile warheads. We're talking about longer and longer ranges. What parts of the world can you hit with a rocket of this type? And then suddenly there is a thing in space that is beeping? But what does that mean?

Does that mean that you can hit anywhere in the world if you launch the rocket from the right, you know, at the right altitude and attitude and apogee right, yeah, yeah, exactly, instead of having to send a bunch of aircraft to fly over a target space and drop bombs, you know, those aircraft could be intercepted and could be shot down. Um, you could, uh, there were things that you could do

in that case. The thought of a missile being launched across the world and then hitting your nation was much more frightening because what could you do against that. Well, that's what sort of propelled the whole idea of the Strategy Strategic Defense Initiative or star Wars program. Well, let's let's get back into the machine and get back to

modern day. Seriously, we have to cutphobic all right, well, let's look just held deeply and get in all right, shut up, we got to move this lever because okay, great and we're back all right, let me just get out of here. Okay, now somebody else can have that one. The studio seems nice and room he now, doesn't it. All right, So now that we're back in the present day, we can talk a little bit about what happened after the spot Nick launch. You essentially had a lot of

research and development poured into these these long range missile programs. Eventually, the the intercontinental Ballistic missile or i C b M became a product of this. So this began what was a philosophy that was called later mutual assured destruction. Is it a Is it any coincidence that the initials spell mad? Well, you had to be mad to follow it, right, So the idea of being that you, whoever has the most weapons, gets to scare off everyone else from attacking you because

we have more than you. Yeah, the idea being that that really the idea came down to each each side of this opposing philosophy, this this cold war so called because there weren't outright hostilities breaking out, uh that you had to have enough weapons to ensure that you could destroy your enemy, and both sides had it, and the idea being that with both sides having these weapons, there'd be it would be crazy to actually launch an attack, because you would know that you would also be attacked

and that you would suffer just as your enemy suffered. So that was the mutual assured destruction, the idea that it's so dangerous to launch an attack, no one would dare do so. Problem is that that relies on human acting in a rational way, and that of course it's not always the case. In fact, this you could argue that this was the same philosophy that existed in Europe prior to World War One, that European nations were building

up armed armies and navies. They were really pouring money into their armed forces, with the idea being that if you had a very strong armed force, no one would ever dare attack you. So therefore, just by increasing tensions, by by increasing the size of your military, you could ensure peace, even though it would be a very tense piece. Unfortunately,

as World War One proved, that did not work. So we tried it again with nuclear weapons um and and to some I think just for the sake of clarification, right now, I would say it's safe to say that that that hasn't gone away. There's still huge nuclear stockpiles in the United States and in USA, the former Soviet Union,

and and many other countries around the world now. And even though the Soviet Union itself collapsed, it looks you could you could say that the political and the political attitude in what in the former Soviet Union is once again at least at least somewhat antagonistic towards the United States government. Right there, there are political tensions between the United States and the countries that were in the former

Soviet Union. Well, you know, you can see, uh, even some of our younger listeners will probably remember the tension, uh if you follow the news at all, and I recommend that you do. Um, the tension generated from North Korea's fairly recent tests in the last two or three years where they were testing nuclear weapons and and missile technology bo um. And you know, of course this causes a lot of tension with South Korea and Japan UM, but also for for other countries around the world, even

even Europe, which you know probably you wouldn't wow. You know, they're pretty far away, you know, still it affects these things are no longer local conflicts with this technology. So, um, you know, the ideas are it hasn't gone away, certainly, right. You still have these political ideologies that are in opposition with each other. But then you also have like global corporations that span multiple countries, some of which have these

political ideologies that conflict with the corporation's home country. It's main matters much more complicated. It's not just political, it's financial. And you know, of course we're all nuclear weapons are nondiscriminatory, right, they don't. They don't target just military installations, military personnel. This is these are weapons that target enormous areas and essentially are going to wipe out massive civilian populations were they to be um uh, you know, hit by a

nuclear attack. So that's kind of what spawned this idea of the Strategic Defense initiative. And you have you actually looked at the the announcement that kind of unveiled this to the world, right, Um, yeah, I. And in doing the research for this this you can actually date the Strategic Defense Initiative back to a specific date, although really the idea goes back farther. But when people picking a a significant date in the history of the s D, I uh most pick March when President uh Ronald Reagan

addressed the country on issues of national security. Now, UM, a while back, I actually had found a series of podcasts on presidents that were being offered by UM, I believe PBS. They were free, so I downloaded and watched several of them, and I kind of, um, you know, Reagan's term two terms were during my lifetime, but I don't remember a lot about about him and what he

was like. And I, from what I understand, he you know, although I think a lot of people see him a sort of a a militarist in some respects because he did he did stress in this message you know, look we can't We've got to be tough. We want to deter our enemies. But UM, I think he was also he he kind of didn't like this stress. From what I understand, he the stress that that brings on, because

it's a stressful environment. You're always wondering if you have more weapons than the other people, if your arms cash is, if you have more more soldiers and sailors and marines. Looking at looking at uh as stressful. Yeah, you start looking at statistics like if we were hit by a first strike, how many of our weapons would remain operable

so that we could strike back. I mean, when you're looking at that scenario, you're already saying, we've been hit and we've lost a massive amount of our infrastructure, our citizens, We've taken huge losses. Can we strike back? I mean, when you when you have to ask yourself that question, that is, I mean, that's a tough question because you're already talking about defeat in a way, no one wins

in that situation, right right, right? So um he uh And in this particular speech wasn't particularly long address, um, but this was Yeah, it's not very long, and it's easy to find, but it's kind of interesting because it takes a different tack, if you will. Um basically said, look, I want to offer you a different idea, an idea

that might bring you hope. Rather than trying to destroy our enemies outright necessarily, why don't we embark on a plan to uh to intercept and destroy these weapons before they reach us? And that means we don't necessarily have we can we can focus instead on protecting ourselves rather than destroying our enemies. Um. Although to be sure, I'm sure that he wanted to rely on uh mutually to

assure destruction to some degree as a defense initiative. And I think, you know, frankly, you could argue that it does have some value. But you know, he said, look, let's instead of doing this, let's do something new and used. We've got a lot of technology available to us to make sophisticated weapons and defense systems. Let's create a network of defenses that will intercept and destroy nuclear weapons before

they could actually reach us. UM. And you know, he doesn't really get into a lot of the details in the address, so that that comes later. And although although I think it, I think it only took the next

day before someone called it the star Wars program. Yeah, it didn't, because you know, there are a lot of pieces to it, and it's a lot of it is about you know, weaponizing space espentially essentially, you know, where you're saying, let's put stuff in the sky that can shoot other stuff out of the sky and um, but

it's not just about that. There were ground defenses, there were airborne defenses, there were space born defenses, all as part of this overall network and uh it's not even that simple because it's shifted over time to mean different things during different presidents and different departments took over parts of the of the What was originally all part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, some of that broke off and became, uh specifically an Air Force initiative, so it was no

longer part of s d I. It was a different program. Um and uh so so yeah, I mean it's it's kind of you think about it. How are you going to do that? How are you going to stop missiles before they even you know, come down and hit the earth. And there were a lot of proposals, so it seems pardon the not pun but weird pun like thing, uh pie in the sky sort of thing. Yeah, um so I am thinking of a giant pie stopping missiles. But yeah, how are you going to spend money on that's going

to do this? Yeah, I've lost him so uh so, yeah, it was it was supposed to stop i c b ms from reaching the United States. Now, part of it was, hey, if you can destroy it in space before it even reenters the atmosphere, because you know, some i c b ms do they reach a low orbit and then at their at their peak, they are in a low orbit and then they re enter on a trajectory towards their target. Yes, that's why they're intercontinental UM. But yes, there are other

weapons that don't reach that that altitude UM. And it's interesting because if you look at the history and the various proposals that were all part of s d I, you start to realize that they were figuring this out as they were going along as well, like there were the Originally, a lot of the idea was that, well, we can as long as we can shoot down the missile or destroy the missile before it before it gets uh you know, before it makes contact, then that's acceptable.

Except for the fact that there was the discovery of hey, uh, these these blasts are releasing gig enormous electromagnetic pulses or e m p s, and that means that were you to detonate a nuclear weapon, even at a fairly high altitude over the United States, that e MP could end up affecting the electronics on the ground or even in the air. So you're talking about all the airplanes that maybe in the area, you're talking about all the electronics in the area of like the power grid in the area.

It could create blackouts in over a massive range because I mean a big enough EMP could put a load not just on that region's power grid, but the neighboring regions as well. So, uh, you know, we we did an entire podcast about e m p s in the past, so if you if you really want to know more about them, I recommend you check that out because it is it's interesting tactic as well as just a side effect of the nuclear war arms program in the first place.

So that kind of led to discussions about, well, what we really need our defense initiatives that would allow us to shoot down missiles as as close to when they launch as possible and um and to be perfectly clear, I mean, if you go to the Department of Defense, they have unclassified documents, lots of them, lots of them that you can read. And there's one that's uh that's a memorandum for the Secretary of Defense that is the Space component of US Military Strategy and war Fighting Requirements

for US Military Space Systems. That document makes it very clear they're talking specifically about the Soviets. The term Soviets appears multiple times through this document, which is several pages long, is written in n so you know there was there were no illusions. This was not you know, some sort of vague defense system that was meant to protect the United States from any attacker. This was something that was

that was talked about with the Soviets in mind in particular. Um, so part of that was talking about you know, we mentioned, or you mentioned, Chris, that there were going to be ground based systems as well as ones in space and in the air. Uh. This this meant that your ground based systems were essentially things like radar stations where you can detect that missile had had launched, because as missiles were going at altitudes that were high enough to be

detectable by radar. The the space element eventually came to the conclusion that there needed to be satellites that would be positioned directly over the Soviet Union in order for this to be effective, so that we could launch a counter measure from space to interfere with the I, C, B, M S. And UM, you know, there were several systems that we're going to rely on one of your favorite

technologies lasers. Actually, I would I would argue at least I don't know about you, Chris, when I was a kid in the eighties, my perception, and granted, remember I was a kid, I only I only knew about this kind of because adults talked about it, right, But as a kid, I always imagined that the Star Wars program was all about lasers. I never, I never knew as a kid during the time when this was actually happening

that that was just one of many proposals. But to talk about the lasers, the system them that was proposed, the initial one with X ray lasers was really really kind of interesting, and ultimately people like scientists and and military personnel determined that it was not feasible. But the idea was that you would launch satellites into orbit position them over the Soviet Union. These satellites would actually contain a nuclear warhead inside the satellite. The satellite would also

contain lazing material. You might want to go back and listen to our Laser's podcast to hear about lazing material. But that the nuclear explosion when you when you detonated the warhead would provide the energy that would emit an extremely powerful X ray laser using this lazing material, and that you would include lots and lots of lasers in a in a single satellite, like two dozen of them in there, so that they could shoot down multiple targets

from one detonation. I believe at the time UH the United States had estimated that the Soviet Union had lots and lots of warheads, but only I think fewer than two thousand actual missiles. So the idea was that you had to have enough satellites to shoot down the majority of those two thousand or so or fewer missiles in

order to protect the United States. So in order to shoot them down, you would have to detonate a nuclear warhead within this satellite and have it contained in such a way that the energy is then UH directed into a lasing medium shoots an X ray laser. The X ray laser hits the missile and UH and shoots it down. And to do that, of course, you also have to have a tracking system. You have to figure out how

you're gonna track it. Originally I think they were looking at um at at radar, but then there was the possibility of having of the Soviet Union launching decoys using radar reflectors so that the radar would have false readings saying, oh, here's a missile over here, and by shooting lots and lots of these up in the air all at once, it would mean you would waste a lot of your

your defense initiative shooting down dummies essentially. There was also a talk about using UH sensors that would detect heat signatures, and you would see the heat signature from a missile is going to be much larger than a decoy, So then you just aim for the big ones, right, But this is not this is a non trivial problem figuring out not just how to make the laser work, which by the way, no one really ever figured out a reliable way of doing that, but figuring out the targeting

system so that you can look reliably target and shoot down these missiles without missing them, because that energy is gonna keep on going. If you miss that missile, it's going to hit something else. Stupid physics. Yeah, and we're talking X ray lasers. I mean this, this is really X ray lasers powered by a nuclear explosion. This is a very powerful beam of light. And then you have you know, the brilliant pebbles. Alliant pebbles, yes, which were

the UH basically autonomous spacecraft. Yes, you know, just sort of coasting around it. They're looking for stuff to shoot down or collide with. Yeah, a lot of it was was kind of the idea of not necessarily even shooting something down, but just putting something in the way of the missile so that it would, uh, it would end up destroying itself or falling to the Earth, you know, something like that, where you're not you're not necessarily trying

to destroy the missile in mid air. UM. There were several missile systems that were proposed where you would actually shoot a missile from space to the I, C. B M to destroy it, and the idea being that you wouldn't need as much fuel for the individual missiles or rockets or whatever you want to call them, um in the in the satellites that would be housing these weapons systems, because they don't have to escape the Earth's gravity. They

just have to be aimed at the right direction and fired. Uh. Some of them were would have tracking ability so that they could change direction in midflight. I saw proposals for a rail gun system. Railguns, in case you were wondering, use electromagnetic energy to propel a a projectile down a pathway, so you're actually it's the same sort of thing like

UM particle accelerators. Right, with a particle accelerator, for example, the large hadron collider, you wanna accelerate a proton beam faster and faster and faster around the circle until it reaches the right speed where you make it collide with another proton being traveling at the same speed but in

the opposite direction. You do that by using magnetic force, because you know, protons are positively charged, so you use a negative charge ahead of the proton to pull it, or a positive charge behind the proton to push it, and you just you increase that frequency until it's moving at near the speed of light. Well, the railguns work on a similar idea, except you're using a physical projectile and you're using electromagnetic energy to to shoot the projectile

out of the system. The big problem there was that even though it was possible to make a railgun UM at the time it was, they could only fire infrequently, like we're talking like once a day or once every couple of weeks, because it just took so much energy to generate that and to make it work that you couldn't just reload and fire and fire and fire UM. So in order for that system to work, it would of course have to be able to fire lots of

times in a in a short time frame. You'd also have to figure out, all right, well, what kind of projectile are we using. We have to have one that if we're shooting it from space, the projectile has to be able to survive re entry into the Earth's atmosphere, and so that there were a lot of problems with that. So we were talking about missile systems, projectile systems, laser systems.

There were even systems that projects that suggested nets like either missiles that would deploy a net that would foul and I C B M and cause it to to not uh too well to detonate essentially m m um. And the more we looked into this, and we being scientists and engineers, the more it appeared that, at least based on the nineteen eighties technology and even nineteen nineties technology, this did span more than a decade um and in fact, some of the elements are still in place in the

in the United States military. Uh. It just became clear that there was no easy or feasible or cost effective way of deploying this. You know, you eventually had to come to the conclusion of does it make sense to pour billions and billions of dollars or, as Karl Sagan would put it, billions and billions of dollars into a program that you might not ever use right right, And

the it did receive some initial funding from Congress. I mean back in the nineteen eighties, people were behind the idea and and you know, jumped on the chance to to fund this project. But I mean, immediately or seemingly immediately out of the gate, there were people criticizing the ideas being too expensive, too difficult to pardon upon otherworldly It's like, how are we you know, this is foreign to us. And it earned you know, it earned the

program the nickname, you know, Star Wars. It earned Reagan the nickname Ronnie Rey gun Well. And and you know, not only did it seem like it was unlikely to happen, but there were people who are saying, if we did have this in place, it would actually potentially lead to a nuclear war, because because you would either that either the side that has the technology would say, hey, now

we have the advantage. We can launch an initial attack against our enemy, and we have the defenses in place to prevent most of their missiles coming over here, So we should just wipe them out because we can do it now. And then the other side of the argument is the the enemy. The Soviets could say, hey, they're putting this this defense initiative in place. If we don't attack now, we're going to be at a weekend position.

So we should attack before they get the defense system up. Yes, and then you you have your you actually end up causing the very event you're trying to prevent. Yes, And the Soviets were working on their own version of the system. It it escalated tensions in the Cold War because suddenly we were embarking on this new project. That UM was very scary because all of a sudden, and and Reagan was right in that it does take some of the

sting out of the mutually assured destruction. So all of a sudden, they're going, wait a minute, that's what we can shoot at them. And then once they neutralize all our weapons or most of our weapons, they can shoot back, or they can shoot at us before we can even shoot at them, and then they shoot all our stuff down for us. Yes, So that that escalated tensions just that much more. UM. But UH, and and the Soviets were working on their own system, which came to light

years later. But and there were there were scientists and engineers who argued even at the beginning that really the answer to this was not building an SDI system, but using diplomacy to try and and UH in the Cold Cold War, and as we know, that eventually did happen, although you could argue that we're in a new Cold War now UM or at least the beginning stages of one. The but the diplomacy was what several people had advocated for.

And actually that when that started to work, when the Cold War began to kind of unravel, that that was bad news for the SDI initiative, which, by the way, it underwent several name changes. I'm just going to say SDI because it's easier. I don't want to cop on going back and forth. But it meant that UM, getting funding for those programs was more and more difficult because there seemed to be less of a need for one. You started to have nuclear disarmament disarmament programs, which you

know that that decreased the need for a space warfare initiative. UH. Some of those elements though still got funding and continued to UH to be an important part in military strategy. I mean a lot of our our spy satellites came out of that program, and we've developed sensors and GPS systems that were initially in one way or another tied into sd I, and we've benefited from those. So not everything in s d I was um impossible or are are too expensive or unnecessary? Right right, And some of

it does, you know, have clear application. Now I should point out I was curious about the GPS connection, and GPS did exist in forms before sd I, so but you know, the fact of the matter is the GPS system is really very necessary to make something like sd I work, you wherever to do that. Also, it spawned a game for the Amiga called s d I, which is very much about what this would have been about if you could just make it happen, also Missile Commander.

And we should point out that some of this, some of the philosophies here have been used in in a smaller UH capacity, Like instead of it being a global system, there are theater systems. And when I say theater systems, I'm talking about the regions in which there is an active conflict. So for example, in the initial the first the First Gulf War, the first war in Iraq, uh, we saw the Patriot system and the Patriot missile system

that was designed to shoot down incoming missiles anti missile missiles. Yes, so that was that was a direct descendant from the SDI program. It's just it was a smaller, uh, you know, surface to air missile system as opposed to one launched from space. But the Patriot system that came direct directly

out of the SDI initiative. And uh, another thing that I wanted to point out is that we're at a point now where a lot of the technology that was talked about back in is completely feasible and possible now right, We've we've technologically advanced to the point where but from a hardware perspective, we could achieve many of the things that were, um, we're proposed during the initial sd I announcement.

But there's still some some other problems, not just the political problems and the ideological problems, but actual technical problems. And I read an article in Time magazine. The article

was called Computers, Star Wars, and Software. It was written in two thousand five, and in it, uh, there was a a computer scientist named David Parnass who was a part of a committee that worked on There was an advisory panel for the this initiative that in time it just refers to it as the star Wars program, and Partners said that he he resigned from the panel our frustration because he felt that the goals they had were unachievable and his his perspective was that there was in

order for this system to work, to have a a multi satellite system designed to shoot down missiles incoming missiles meant that you would have to have a software program so complex it would be the largest and most complex program ever written, and you would have to have the most advanced computer system in the world to run it, because you would have to be able to identify target and eliminate so many UH missiles in such a relatively small time frame that UH it would be it would

be incredibly difficult, and it would need to work perfectly the first time it was used, because if it didn't, you know, how do you test that. You can't really test it until it's necessary. And his point is that no software program ever works perfectly the first time you use it. You have to you know, you run a program, you see where it works, where it doesn't work. You do quality assurance, You test it, you write down all the things that don't work. You go back to the

drawing board, you start reprogramming it. You run it again, see if anything is fixed. Maybe you broke something even worse this time. And his point is that you don't get that chance with this system. And and if if the system is not guaranteed to work perfectly, if it has to be this complex, if it requires the most advanced computer system in the world, you're talking about costs for something not guaranteed to work, and that therefore it

is not a worthwhile endeavor. You know, you should not pour that huge amount of money into something that may not ever work, and it may actually escalate things to the point where there's a legitimate conflict. It's a it's it's funny now it seems much less of a big deal.

But I remember a lot of stuff going on in the news, just constant, constant talk about the Star Wars program, and people still mean it now in legislative sessions about sort of as a you know, well this didn't work, but I think it in the end, or well, I doubt you could really say this is the end even I mean some of it, some of it did survive, and some of it is pretty successful. Um, it's just not really in the way that it was originally and

not as a complete and not as a complete package. Um. But you know, if if it serves as a defensive deterrent against having other people launch attacks against you, you know, it seems like the idea behind that is is valuable. Yeah, the the concern now tends to be more toward well, first of all, theater operations, so things that are happening in the localized areas. You know, it's still worrying about those. But also, I mean, we have a whole new world

now where we're talking about worrying of things like briefcase bombs. Yes, where you're talking about you know, you've got these warheads that were laying around, some of which were never installed in missiles because like I said, they had they had more warheads than they had missiles to launch with them. And then not all of them are necessarily accounted for. And then that so there's a worry that there may be warheads out there in the world that could be

used for terrorist purposes. And uh, and you know that no sd I is going to prevent that because we're talking about you know, deploying an explosive device, a nuclear device without ever launching a missile. Yeah, and an sd I isn't going to protect soldiers from I e. D S. Improvised explosive devices, you know, things that are much smaller in scale, or people who are willing to sacrifice their lives for their cause to the point where they will walk into a building and blow it up. Um, you

know you can't. You can't defend against that with something like an sd I, and and even sd I at it's like like the best case scenario for SDI was not all about stopping every single missile. It was about stopping most of them, which would mean that no matter what I mean, realistically you have to say, no system is perfect. You would not be able to stop everything, and therefore there would be losses. It was just a question of where the loss is going to be mitigated

enough for the system to be worthwhile. It's it's heavy topic, but yeah, I mean, it's definitely an interesting uh program that was was put into place, and you can see why it was even though ultimately it may have been the wrong direction to to move in. I mean, at that point, the political pressure and the fear in the United States. I mean, I remember as a kid that the Soviets were supposed to be the bad guys, you know. I mean, even if if no one directly said that.

I mean, here, here's all I have to say, Wolverines. Of course, now people are gonna think that means North Korea because the new movie is going to have the North Koreans as the bad guy. But yeah, but originally there were the Soviets in the original version of that film. I'm sure some of you are gonna have to look up what that movie is. Yeah, Wolverines. Yeah, that's a nice hard one because it's one word, except for the

fact that's also a very famous one. So yeah. I mean, there was a very real concern both in UH, in the news and in pop culture that the Soviets were up to UH dangerous activities, and it was our duty as Americans to make sure we supported every option we had to try and head that off. And um, yeah, the whole patriotism directed towards supporting military militarism. I mean, it's it's a it's a sticky subject to talk about right. Well, anyway,

I hope you guys found that interesting. I personally think that that's a fascinating era of history and hopefully one that we will not see necessarily repeated in the future, because that's not cool. Guys, you have any other questions, like you want to know about other specific historical eras and the technology involved in them, let us know. I mean, you know, we've covered what fifteen ten and UH and the Soviet American Cold War, so there's stuff in between

that we'll talk about. Let us know. Send us an email at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or let us know on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled, there is text stuff H S W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you

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