SDI - The Technical Challenge

[@longreach207]

Phil is THE man! Thanks Phil for posting quality television.

[@kernplace37]

What a fantastic look at the complete system. Thank you for the upload.

[@fwh79FOXR6]

Very interesting! I never knew much about the whole "star wars" program.

[@caitgems1]

You have a great collection of old videos 👍

[@fdegeorge2000]

Remember the information presented in this video was declassified well over thirty years ago. I retired in 2008 most of the information presented here was declassified during my advanced studies.

[@lgflanang]

And to think the system use less computer power than what is in a modern smartphone today. It is mind boggling to think what is covering the USA today.

[@blip1]

Man, why can't we get videos like this in 2021? Somebody spend my tax payer dollars on stuff like this, dammit.

[@rusk1992]

Public interest is lacking unfortunately. I find these videos both nostalgic and very informative!

[@arvont1]

17:49 wow, whatever laser they were testing melted through that thick metal plate like it was butter... and to think this was in the 80s... imagine what they have now

[@teksal13]

can you get the NOVA doc. 'visions of star wars'?

[@generalkruger7071]

34:50...Damm that missile is hauling ass,you can tell that thing is made to chase down something, Jesus Christ.

[@stevekoozer69]

Shit is probably already deployed in orbit and has been for a while this stuff was figured out before Regan talked about it and got the money for it back in the 80's

[@bobk2966]

Wasn't this all shut down? Fall of USSR, cost, political change?

[@citizenblue]

18:33 so what you're getting at is that a laser powerful enough to destroy an ICBM would not be powerful enough to destroy a mirror? What would prevent an enemy from designing an ICBM, aircraft, Etc with a highly reflective polished surface (like StarShip?) to completely negate the effect of any directed-energy weapon

[@erickieffer8440]

@Chris Odom. I understand that ICBM’s are fragile structures, but your idea is intriguing and seems plausible.

[@i-..--..--..-i6985]

They tried mirror polishing and rapidly spinning the missile as countermeasures. Neither worked nor any of the other "simple" stuff theoretical countermeasures. The mirrors used in the optics train of the laser system are many orders of magnitude more polished and clean than you could ever get a missile fuselage. The missile is going to get dirty when you launch it as well. The laser optic train mirror materials are optimized to be as close totally reflective at the specific wavelength of laser light used as physically possible. That means using whatever materials are required to do this and the weapon is built to accommodate this. You can't do that with a missile fuselage because you MUST use certain alloys and materials to meet the performance and strength requirements of the missile system. ICBMs are incredibly vulnerable structures. There is not a single ounce of material that is not absolutely necessary included in the structure. They are the Top Fuel Dragsters of the rocket world. Their job is to get the payload to the target as fast as possible one time. The early liquid fuel US designs like Atlas and Titan were designed in such a way that the fuel tanks were integral support structures for the missile. The tanks had to be kept pressurized at all times or the missile would literally crumple and collapse under its own weight. The metal thickness of the tank/fuselage is almost as thin as an aluminum soft drink can in places. A Titan II missile was lost at Damascus, Arkansas in the early 1980s when a missile tech dropped a socket and it fell deeper into the silo and punctured the side of the missile.

[@citizenblue]

@@i-..--..--..-i6985 this was a valid question to me at the time of posting. Everything you bring up here makes perfect sense to me, and I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to reply. I've heard about the incident you referenced, and was surprised to learn that it happened so close to where I live in NE Louisiana!

[@non-human3072]

SDI . . . I think there's a pill for that now.

[@non-human3072]

Valium. . . Lol sorry I couldn't help myself

[@non-human3072]

Hey Bill. . . .. . .... .

[@rasherbilbo452]

Thanks for the interesting upload!

[@NeoExtentialist]

You're Welcome 🙂

[@TheWizardGamez]

I now truly understand how this bankrupted the Soviets

[@brandonbarr2784]

Taken from tesla when he passed away in 1945 and Roswell in 1947

[@alfredogonzalez6136]

I want a job

[@Loveyou-gh7bs]

Super weapons !

[@caitgems1]

I❤U

[@generalkruger7071]

Good God The United States dont play.

[@vincentpoulaert7827]

Hi! America, solidarity with Europe and Russia!we are all white humans!

[@SteveRichfield]

Back then, I lectured at various California colleges why SDI could never ever be made to work against cleverly camouflaged warheads. Physics students could easily understand the arguments against SDI, but Soviet leaders apparently lacked the necessary skills to understand just how fundamental those technical challenges were. Even without those fundamental technical challenges, "success" would mean spraying the highly radioactive fine dust from thousands of destroyed plutonium-based warheads onto our cities, which would eventually kill more people from lung cancer than the live warheads would have killed. The goal of SDI was to bankrupt any country that took it seriously - and in this it was highly successful. Some leaders are now waiting for the Islamabomb to reignite SDI - witness the flawed Iranian nuclear deal. Don't fall for this. The only way SDI can save you is if our enemies again take it seriously.

[@erickieffer8440]

@Steve Richfield I’m not a person who could’ve ever passed a physics course, but if I’m to more seriously understand/consider your argument maybe you could explain why all the participants in this program, who presumably have passed many and advanced physics courses, would participate in such a program with no hope of the intangible reward which so often out weighs quantifiable renumeration when deciding to participate in projects such as these? Your arguments are still intriguing though, and it seems camouflaged/reflective missiles might be immune to laser energy and disabling a warhead already in the atmosphere could spray radio active dust over our country, I’m just not sure these are the most probable outcomes.

[@tombrunila2695]

Steve, you have an astoundingly low opinion of Soviet physicists and their level of knowledge! Soviet leaders consulted with their own physicists before making up their minds about what to think or what to believe. And the opposition to SDI in the West and the USA was mostly by far left leaning people. Especially the leftist media that took its marching orders directly from Moscow was the most fanatic in its opposition.

[@SteveRichfield]

@@tombrunila2695 It would sure be nice if someone from the Russian side could enter this conversation. I have been on the technical side of impossibilities that I was unable to convince leaders were impossible. SDI like other things I have seen L@@KS like if you just threw enough money at it, that it should be workable. I'd bet, if only there was someone around to decide the bet, that the conversation you describe took place, that the Russian physicists saw that SDI was a paper tiger, but they were unable to communicate that to the leaders who lacked various scientific knowledge that fundamentally limited the doable. It is SO easy for people who don't understand the physics to think that money can overcome things like angular resolution, below which multiple targets look EXACTLY like a single target. Hence, if you send two warheads with a small space between them, an SDI system will just shoot holes in the space between them, no matter HOW much money and expertise you throw at the SDI system. Anyone with a BS in physics can easily see this, but just try and explain it to someone who has never been exposed to the fundamental limits of resolution.

[@SteveRichfield]

@@erickieffer8440 The dirty little secret in technology is that ~80% of what people design and build ends up on the scrap heap without ever doing anything potentially useful. Further, in at least half, say ~40%, people on these projects realize their efforts will be for naught. People continue so they can get paid, and move on to better projects. I was on one hopeless project named WEYCOS where ~3 months in I wrote up 12 reasons why it could never work, and circulated my list around to half of the development team with instructions to put an X by any of the reasons they don't agree with - and only two were so marked. I then turned my list of 10 surviving reasons into the VP level project management and asked to be reassigned to seeing what could be salvaged from the effort. They tossed me, and the project continued on without success for 10 long years until other technologies over-ran the project's goals, and the project was FINALLY cancelled. The people who had read my list and realized that the project was theoretically impossible remained on it for YEARS until they could find ways of being reassigned. There were some VERY talented people on that project, including the original inventor of the first database system.

[@tombrunila2695]

@@SteveRichfield, the fact that Soviet leaders took it seriously is proof that they had consulted their scientists and heard that it was possible! And proof is also that leftists in the whole Western world attacked it with ferocity! It it had been considered impossible they would have laughed and not demanded it be stopped! When you see your enemy doing something stupid you DO NOT try to stop him! The problems were mostly technical in nature and such problems can be solved. In a ballistic missile the warheads don't separate before the boost phase is over. Warhead separation is only after the missile has reached its apogee. And SDI was supposed to shoot down the missile in the boost phase before warhead separation.

[@vincentpoulaert7827]

***general i have been plunged in the food in belgium(other family than my genitors) that's why i ask you question about the food and the thinnest .Undestood?Understand?Begreep? COMPRIS? VERSTAND? COMPrendo new mexico **general vince sanders anderson

[@vincentpoulaert7827]

I m in Belgium

[@vincentpoulaert7827]

Or the son of the colonel sanders who is now a general by his work

[@vincentpoulaert7827]

How are you making to stay so fit so long ?Get you ulceries by our jogging? How to loose weight mug anderson the parratrooper

[@vincentpoulaert7827]

attention there is the mad dog missile and the mad dog operator and the mad dog government would it not be better to request the worldwide unweaponing?Is it efficient the friction by laser?in the widget **general mug anderson sanders i have not enough for my intensity stream of internet often awaeke