Strategic Defense Initiative

U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the Strategic Defense Initiative, intended to shield the United States from nuclear attack. 

In 1985, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization performed a simple experiment (and thereby rose to the occasion). The crew of the space shuttle was to position the shuttle so that a mirror mounted on its side could reflect a laser beamed from the top of a mountain 10,023 feet above sea level. But the computer program controlling the shuttle s movements interpreted the information it received on the laser s location as indicating the elevation in nautical miles instead of feet. As a result the program positioned the shuttle to receive a beam from a nonexistent mountain 10,023 nautical miles above sea level. 

This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the Office of Naval Technology and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, Innovative Science and Technology Program. 

Underdown BJ, Schiff JM. Immunoglobulin A strategic defense initiative at the mucosal surface. Anna Rev Immunol 1986 4 389 H7. 

NASP was to be used as an experimental vehicle to test high-risk technologies for Reagan s Strategic Defense Initiative, but also to ferry men and equipment to future space stations more economically than could be done with the Space Shuttle. It would take off like a conventional airplane. Hydrogen-fueled, air-breathing scramjet (supersonic combustion ram jet) engines would push it at speeds of up to Mach 25 to the almost-vac-uum of near space, where rocket power would provide the final push needed to reach a space station. 

Hey, Nigel. The Star Wars Enigma Behind the Scenes of the Cold War Race for Missile Defense. Dulles, Va. Potomac Books, 2006. An interesting story of who pushed for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and other ABM systems. 

Department of Defense. 1992. Software engineering tools experiment-Final report. VoJ. 1, Experiment Summary, Table 1, p. 9. Strategic Defense Initiative, Washington, DC. 

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