Named after the popular science fiction move that had just come out, Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI for short, was initiated by President Ronald Reagan.
The goal of this program was to design laser-based space and group weapons that would provide defense against nuclear war heads, without the Soviets being able to disable or counteract these defense devices at any time.
Of course, if you look at our time versus their time, and see that not even we have something like that, then you can presume that of course people were very skeptical of it happening and that Reagan was just a bit over his head with this. It didn't stop him from actively supporting it, and even having other people support it after he had left.
Before the idea finally came to it's end, a total amount of 30 billion dollars and nothing even close to the believed anti-nuclear missile system came about.
This has got to be one of the top posts on the Star Wars I have rad from this blog. Not only did you provide a good background to its goal and origin of name, you also provided a comparison between the technology then and now.
ReplyDeleteSDI was way above our heads. It was a hollow threat and it just wasn't going to happen. But there are no rules in war that you can't bluff your way out of a sticky situation; and that's exactly what SDI did for us, it scared the Russians (as said in the documentary) and they just didn't want to have to compete against something like that, because their economy was going to crap.
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