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Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

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Nico Bloembergen

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Abstract

“It was so remarkable. Most scientists did not believe in Reagan’s Star Wars idea. But Reagan said: ‘We’re going to do that’.” Bloembergen in an interview [1].

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The film was so well made that there are still people who believe that NASA had approached Kubrick to ‘fabricate’ the moon landing in the studio.

  2. 2.

    The previously quoted book about Teller by Goodchild has the subtitle ‘The Real Dr. Strangelove’, thus suggesting that Teller can be identified with Strangelove. This is nonsence, because Strangelove is a Nazi, while Teller was Jewish and, in fact, fled from the Nazis in 1933. Strangelove is more like Dr. Wernher von Braun, the Nazi scientist (member of the NSDAP and SS) and designer of the ballistic missile V2, produced using slave labor. In 1945 Von Braun was secretly transferred to the United States, where he later became the spiritual father of the Apollo Moon project. The satirical singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer clearly refers to Wernher von Braun in his song from 1961, “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? “That's not my department”, says Wernher von Braun […] In German and English I know to count down and I'm learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun.” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs). Comic strips also took part in the background of the public debate. Two examples from the numerous comic books are: The Hulk, a superhero from 1962, involuntarily transformed by the physicist Dr. Bruce Banner, who caused a gamma explosion (The Incredible Hulk, No 1 (1964)). In The Avengers, in 1966, the scientist Arthur Parks produced hand-held laser weapons. It is striking that the stereotypical killing rays are combined with a ‘crazy scholar’. The latter can almost always be traced back to Johann Wilhelm Goethe’s classic work Faust. Heinrich Faust was modeled on Johann Georg Faust (circa 1480–1538) a researcher and a teacher. Faust looks back over his life and comes to the conclusion that he has failed both as a scientist and as an individual. As a scientist, he lacks deeper insight and as a human being he cannot fully enjoy life. Deeply depressed and lacking vitality, he promises his soul to the devil Mephisto, when Mephisto succeeds in releasing him from his dissatisfaction and restlessness. (de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust._Eine_Tragödie).

  3. 3.

    Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976) was a biologist and agricultural scientist from the Soviet Union. He was a fierce opponent of genetics, as it was practiced in the West, and characterized it as a reactionary and pseudoscience. He contrasted with his own “vernalization”, which assumed that hereditary qualities could be changed under the influence of the environment. The Communist Party decreed this as the official doctrine and said that deviations from it would not be tolerated. en.wikipedia.org.

  4. 4.

    The MGM-31A Pershing was the missile used in the Pershing 1 and Pershing 1a field artillery missile systems. It was a solid-fueled two-stage ballistic missile designed and built by Martin Marietta. en.wikipedia.org.

Abbreviations

APS:

American Physical Society

DEW:

Direct Energy Weapons

KEW:

Kinetic Energy Weapons

SDI:

Strategic Defense Initiative

SDIO:

Strategic Defense Initiative Organization

UCS:

Union of Concerned Scientists

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  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Rob Herber

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Herber, R. (2019). Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). In: Nico Bloembergen. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25737-8_15

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