Comments on: 'Star Wars' Turns 25

'Star Wars' Turns 25

homunculus — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:10:13 -0800

25 years ago, Ronald Reagan announced the birth of the missile defense system. A quarter-century and $120 billion later, was it worth it?

By: joe lisboa

joe lisboa — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:12:30 -0800

Uh, no? "That's no moon..."

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:16:29 -0800

It was worth it all, just for the Bloom County cartoons.

By: Rangeboy

Rangeboy — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:16:55 -0800

Of course it was. I mean, we haven't been hit by any missiles since then, have we? Right?

By: Fiasco da Gama

Fiasco da Gama — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:19:43 -0800

As a fountain of inspiration for film and literature, you can't beat missile defence. $120bn to give Tom Clancy plotting ideas sounds like a good deal to me.

By: Shakeer

Shakeer — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:20:18 -0800

I mean it wasn't meant to defend us against missiles as much as outspend the Soviet Union into the ground.

By: lumensimus

lumensimus — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:20:34 -0800

Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:21:22 -0800

Neutral beams!

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:26:51 -0800

We'll see some results if we just pump some more money into it.

By: amyms

amyms — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:35:28 -0800

Perhaps the missile defense program just needs a "surge" and it will be a success.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:47:41 -0800

No.

By: Avenger

Avenger — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:49:08 -0800

SDI is terribly misnamed. It should be SOI -- strategic offense initiative. It sorta stands to reason that any nation hiding behind a "missile shield" will be free to launch missiles at whomever it wishes with only minor consequences for themselves. The world looks at us trying to build a nuclear Maginot Line and thinks "Americans + Nukes - consequences = BAD". Thats really what SDI is all about. We want the ability to nuke anybody we want without fear of (serious) retaliation. For Freedom, of course.

By: Bora Horza Gobuchul

Bora Horza Gobuchul — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:01:34 -0800

SDI was always idiotic, even when the threat was the Russians. Want to decapitate the US? There's 20 million ISO shipping containers in the world, making 100 million trips annually. Rarely scanned for radioactivity. And your major cities: New York, Washington, Los Angeles - are on waterways. Put a nuclear device in several containers, add a GPS locator and a timer, and wait. Have more patience? Lose them overboard before you get to port - 10,000 are abandoned so each year. Let them sink to the bottom of the bay. Wait for years, if need be. Need a more conventional military attack? Park a quiet sub off the Atlantic coast: SDI was designed for ICBMs, not cruise missiles. SDI was always military industrial make-work in the face of Armageddon: even if 90% effective against multiple-warhead ICBMs (highly unlikely) you'd still lose millions to a first strike in 30 minutes or less.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:03:00 -0800

It'd totally work against ICBMs as long as they were allowed to use nuclear warheads and irradiate Canada.

By: Tube

Tube — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:05:44 -0800

Want to decapitate the US? There's 20 million ISO shipping containers in the world, making 100 million trips annually. Rarely scanned for radioactivity. Evidently there is some radioactivity monitoring going on...

By: Auden

Auden — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:14:55 -0800

"I mean it wasn't meant to defend us against missiles as much as outspend the Soviet Union into the ground." I can't find it online (if anyone has better luck than me, please post it), but back in the 1980s there was a Tom Toles political cartoon on just this theme, featuring "Ronald Raygun." Toles claimed that SDI was really a money race to the bottom aimed at bankrupting the USSR. Sure, Toles said, the USSR was broke - but so was the US. Still, once you're down $1 Trillion, who's counting? $1 Trillion in debt... ah, the good old days.

By: william_boot

william_boot — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:38:28 -0800

was it worth it? Certainly to the defense contractors it was. Just as W's Iraq war has been an astounding success to these same people and their firms. Sometimes I'm so disgusted by it all it feels as if my head will pop.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:05:14 -0800

I love the "Star Wars was never meant to work, the point was to outspend the Soviet Union" defense. It does two wonderful things -- it behaves as though one of the most wasteful and reckless spending programs in American history was, in fact, an extremely crafty subterfuge designed to bring down the Soviet Union, and then it gives Reagan credit for the collapse of said Soviet Union. I can't wait to see the spin a later generation of Republicans puts on Iraq to have made it all a brilliant example of long-term planning. Perhaps they will claim the intention was to make the Middle East so angry at us that it would force us to end out dependence of foreign oil. Or that it was a clever scheme to jump start our economy by flooding America with refugees who will certainly start delicious Iraqi restaurants.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:11:04 -0800

I imagine Iraqi is a dish best served cold.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:13:47 -0800

I can't wait to see the spin a later generation of Republicans puts on Iraq to have made it all a brilliant example of long-term planning. I don't think there will be a later generation of Republicans. This country seems too fucked to live past another couple Presidential terms without collapsing.

By: tachikaze

tachikaze — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:31:48 -0800

^ B.P., I was going to say that we'd muddle through like we did in the previous century, but then I realized that a) it is very likely that this next decade will require the polity to lose the free-lunch mentalilty and actually start paying for our wondrously efficient $3T/yr federal gov't, and b) I ain't planning on exactly being here to see how all this plays out when the s finally and unmistakeably hits the f. . . knowing "Oh Canada" is good for 5 pts on their immigration test, right?

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:32:16 -0800

This country seems too fucked to live past another couple Presidential terms without collapsing. Didn't we just do this?

By: rdone

rdone — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:36:15 -0800

I always thought that the "SDI" concept was a quintessential Reagan cowboy serial fantasy: instead of shooting the black hat bad guy who's trying to kill him, the white hat hero shoots the gun out of the black hat's hand, thereby humiliating him into going straight and enabling the white hat to get the girl. To translate this concept into practice in a situation where the bad guy is not waving a Colt Single Action .45 but rather has launched an actual fucking nuclear-tipped IBM at the white hat, the girl and the entire U.S., however, requires a leap of faith no U.S. President or general would ever even remotely take a chance on. One only needs to look at that massive overkill U.S. forces routinely apply in Iraq--B2 strikes against residential areas *suspected* of housing "bad guys"--and Afghanistan--"surgical" Predator strikes into houses full of women and children--to know that the, ahem, excitement of an actual ICBM attack would cause an immediate and catastrophic counterstrike with everything in the arsenal. Whatever fantasies Reagan may have had of an invulnerable "missile shield" that would make nuclear weapons obsolete (see "Way Out There In The Blue" by Frances Fitzgerald for the details) it is beyond obvious that the Bush Cabal sees missile defence as the only thing it can be: first strike enhancement intended to ensure the survival of counterstrike forces.

By: rdr

rdr — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:21:11 -0800

The point of SDI is that it's something that people desparately want to believe in. Whether or not missle defense actually works is not the point. At some level we all understand that the people in power are insane. Perhaps they're even crazy enough to start a war that would wipe out humanity. After all in the last century the world exploded into wars that spanned the continents of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean. Then we invented weapons that can destroy entire cities. If someone promises you a tool that could protect you from nuclear weapons and the people who control them, wouldn't you want to believe them?

By: rhymer

rhymer — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:10:30 -0800

I find the whole republican revisionist thing that SDI was part of a grand and highly strategic plan by the man they consider the greatest president ever (WTF?) to spend the Soviet Union into the ground pretty risible. And all the more so as a good proportion of the US electorate seem to believe it to be the gospel truth. As someone funnier than me once quipped: 'Reagan is credited with ending the Cold War by people who don't understand that he more or less showed up while it was already ending and shouted, "Everybody into the hot tub!"'

By: Coventry

Coventry — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:18:12 -0800

It's not saying much, I guess, but the notion of missile defense looks strategically brilliant next to the War On Terror. Only $120B? That's, what, a year in Iraq?

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:15:52 -0800

Did we get a new frying pan out of it?

By: loiseau

loiseau — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:18:17 -0800

If fear was the goal then it was successful in that I, having been born in 1975, grew up having nightmares about nuclear obliteration -- and still have them on a blue moon. I can still picture mushroom clouds, flesh being instantly melted from bodies, radioactive fallout... much better than I would like. I remember the neighbourhood's air-raid siren being tested, and that wail still sends a chill through me to recall.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:28:35 -0800

What's worse is that a) they're still wasting money on this boondogle, and b) there are still devoted Republicans out there who will tell you that SDI is not only the greatest thing ever but the only thing that will save America from [insert enemy here]. When I run into people who say that, I tell them they've got a pre-9/11 mentality just to watch the fireworks...

By: any major dude

any major dude — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:48:23 -0800

Success? Absolutely an overwhelming success. Think about how much public money has been funneled from the Treasury into the coffers of defense contractors who in return would tithe their 10% back into the campaign coffers of Republican politicians who in turn would vote for the continuation of SDI. Democrats would rail against this corrupt practice if they weren't doing it as well.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:19:19 -0800

Tsk, all you nay-sayers... we've already seen just how effective the Patriot Missle System was against Scuds. I expect SDI to be exactly the same.

By: fluffycreature

fluffycreature — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:32:25 -0800

Tsk, no it was not worth it. The money should have been spent on 120 B-2 bombers. Stealth is the new black.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:30:16 -0800

Thank God we didn't spend that money on the Superconducting Supercollider.

By: disgruntled

disgruntled — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:09:47 -0800

No, because it's unfeasible; the Soviets knew that. Utopian weapons systems have one purpose only: to keep military contractors in business.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:51:22 -0800

24 years ago Tom Clancy published his first novel The Hunt for Red October and Reagan announced at a Whitehouse press conference that it was "un-putdownable" - the genre of the "techno thriller" was born - today 100s of authors ply their trade in techno war porn, it's influence on Reagan and a generation of military planners hard to know but certainly real - that combined with the collapse of the USSR and there was a certain amount of hubris that the US military could do anything, they believed their own fiction (BS). It's probably no accident that Clancy has largely dried up as an author since the Iraq debacle.

By: eye of newt

eye of newt — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:17:04 -0800

It is a small thing, but the Keck Observatory telescope's ability to optically correct for atmospheric aberrations looks a lot like it was derived from Star Wars technology. Of course billions in to get millions out would not be considered a good investment, but you take what you can get.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:17:59 -0800

Eh? I'd say the Techno thriller goes back at least as far as the victorian era (where, FWIW it did usually involved submarines).

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:20:25 -0800

Oh, and the F-117 stealth fighter is being decommisioned already, WTF? How much?

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:32:44 -0800

Depends what worth means. What else could we have gotten for that kind of money? Universal healthcare? Hovercars? On-call doctors in hovercars?

By: anthill

anthill — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:44:15 -0800

This program to me epitomizes the military-industrial complex.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:44:30 -0800

Oh, and the F-117 stealth fighter is being decommisioned already Dude, it's been in service for 25 years.

By: longdaysjourney

longdaysjourney — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:52:56 -0800

They can't even keep the missile pits dry, so I think the challenge of hitting a missile with another missile is probably a bit beyond them.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:57:19 -0800

ROU_Xenophobe - yeah, buit compared with those 70s era fighters that are still going strong? the damn things not even done anything, except for the odd embarassing crash.

By: Chinese Jet Pilot

Chinese Jet Pilot — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:01:24 -0800

Another view, from behind the scenes of Reagan's announcement: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2008/Q1/view510.html#starwars

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:02:09 -0800

So, youre complaining that you havent seen a stealth fighter do anything?

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:03:25 -0800

Minor successes of a program that expensive are not generally kept all that secret.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:13:07 -0800

Actually it looks like it did a lot of th bombing in the first gulf war, back when Iraq actually had an air defence, so that's fair enough I guess.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:06:08 -0800

In other news, the Mars Rover and Odyssey programs are facing budgets cuts. Given the recent sighting of a Tusken Raider on Mars, reducing our intelligence gathering there seems very short sighted to me.

By: Aquaman

Aquaman — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:50:24 -0800

It was worth it to everyone who made billions off of that obscene fraud, at least.

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:43:12 -0800

I remember the neighbourhood's air-raid siren being tested, and that wail still sends a chill through me to recall. I grew up with those. Felt strange when they got rid of them, which is, frankly, appalling.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:53:14 -0800

Shipping Snafu Sends ICBM Parts to Taiwan

By: falcon

falcon — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:42:40 -0800

Wow. $120bn could have funded an alternative fuel program to replace hydrocarbon. Since the Russki's still have hydrocarbon and the U.S. doesn't, and the U.S. can't function in the absence of hydrocarbon - it looks like they won the cold war after all. Maybe you can tip the fuel out and run power stations on it for a couple of weeks.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:09:32 -0800

NATO to back US missile defense

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:26:57 -0800

Talking of things that are crazy expensive, a B1 Bomber just crashed (that's the not-stealth one).

By: homunculus

homunculus — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:38:20 -0800

U.S. Can't Stop Chinese Missile; No Tests 'Til 2014

By: homunculus

homunculus — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:11:09 -0800

Shooting Down Missile Defense: Congress Takes Another Look at Reagan's $150-Billion 'Star Wars' System