Strategic Defense Initiative: The Politics and Science of Weapons in Space

On 23 March 1983, President Reagan announced on national television that he was “launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history”—a scientific research program to determine whether a defense against ballistic missiles could be feasible. The President characterized the program, now known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, as a “formidable technical task” that might not be attainable before the end of this century. “Would it not be better to save lives than to avenge them?” he asked that night. “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reach our soil or that of our allies?” At the end of his talk, he called on the scientific community that invented nuclear weapons “to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means” to devise ways of “rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”