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SYSK Selects: Did Reagan's Star Wars program win the Cold War? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
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Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen did Reagan Star Wars
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Speaker 1: program Win the Cold War, which we originally released back
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Speaker 1: in August of two thousand and twelve. It's a pretty
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Speaker 1: good look at the time Ronald Reagan bled the Soviet
0:16
Speaker 1: Union dry so badly that it actually brought an end
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Speaker 1: to communism basically all over the world. It's a pretty
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Speaker 1: good episode and I hope you enjoy it. Let's listen now.
0:33
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:36
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:46
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant sitting across from me. Hi. Yeah,
0:52
Speaker 1: have you ever seen Hunty Darko? Oh dude, that's one
0:55
Speaker 1: of my favorites. You know when he takes that mescaline
0:58
Speaker 1: and like that thing comes out of his chest and
1:01
Speaker 1: he starts following it. Yeah, he doesn't take mescalin. But yeah,
1:04
Speaker 1: sometimes I feel when we're sitting across from or another,
1:06
Speaker 1: we're connected by one of us, like a warm hole
1:11
Speaker 1: of fellowship. Yeah, like from the Abyss that's what it
1:14
Speaker 1: sort of looked like. Yeah, it did look a lot
1:16
Speaker 1: like that. I love that movie. Yeah, when um, when
1:20
Speaker 1: Ed Harris takes all that mescaline that movie and sees
1:23
Speaker 1: the sees that thing come up out of the water,
1:26
Speaker 1: it was just like that. No mescaline, no movies. How's
1:30
Speaker 1: it coming in which people take mescalin? Ah, there's plenty
1:33
Speaker 1: of those. Sure, this is what people have been complaining
1:39
Speaker 1: about lately. Who's been complaining? Tell me their names, the
1:44
Speaker 1: various people people have been complained. Oh, you bring something up.
1:47
Speaker 1: I feel like we should address something. We haven't done
1:49
Speaker 1: this in a really long time. It appears to me
1:52
Speaker 1: that we have a lot of newcomers. Yeah, welcome, Yes, welcome, um,
1:57
Speaker 1: And I think anyone who's been following the whole time
2:00
Speaker 1: it kind of gets the stuff you should know jam right. Yeah,
2:04
Speaker 1: But it seems like there's a lot of people who
2:06
Speaker 1: don't quite understand what we're doing and think that we
2:08
Speaker 1: purport to be infallible experts on everything and that we
2:12
Speaker 1: don't just get things wrong from time to time. We're
2:16
Speaker 1: just a couple of guys who are pretty decent at researching.
2:19
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean like we invented the topic that we're
2:23
Speaker 1: talking about, or that we didn't just walk right past.
2:26
Speaker 1: Um a fact or something that we missed in our research.
2:29
Speaker 1: It comes up. It happens from time time, So I
2:32
Speaker 1: guess if you're just joining us, that's probably something good
2:35
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. We don't claim to be experts,
2:37
Speaker 1: so don't hold us to that standard because we're not
2:39
Speaker 1: trying to reach that standard. We're just trying to impart
2:42
Speaker 1: some really great information as factually as possible. Um and uh,
2:48
Speaker 1: we love science and wonder great. Are you good? Ah? Yeah? Alright,
2:55
Speaker 1: how are you doing? I'm awesome. Do you have anything
2:57
Speaker 1: to get off of your chest? No, just welcome the
3:00
Speaker 1: pamina cheese. Many sandwiches are in the corner. Help yourself,
3:06
Speaker 1: so chuck. Yes. Do you remember a while back we talked, well,
3:09
Speaker 1: we've talked about this stuff a lot, Mutual assured destruction.
3:13
Speaker 1: We did a podcast on that, specifically, didn't we we did? Um?
3:16
Speaker 1: We did one on who who won the Cold War?
3:20
Speaker 1: Did one on how to steal a nuclear bomb? Yeah,
3:22
Speaker 1: like we've done. It's just a fascinating period of world history,
3:28
Speaker 1: the Cold War, agreed, incredibly tense, incredibly scary, and this
3:32
Speaker 1: is our history. It is in part because you're half Russian. No,
3:38
Speaker 1: but Um, I was alive and well and young war kids,
3:43
Speaker 1: weren't we. Yeah, yeah, we've talked about this before, Ruskies,
3:47
Speaker 1: little risk. Um. So uh, the central I guess, the
3:53
Speaker 1: fulcrum of the Cold War, the fact that the reason
3:56
Speaker 1: we're all still here is that was the doctrine of
3:58
Speaker 1: mutual is sure destruction, Yes, which is basically like, we
4:01
Speaker 1: had enough nukes to wipe out the entire world. The
4:04
Speaker 1: Soviet Union had enough nukes to wipe out the entire world.
4:07
Speaker 1: So we were just there in a tense, fragile they taunt,
4:12
Speaker 1: how about a nice game of chess? Exactly, That's why
4:15
Speaker 1: we're still here. So um, this was I guess this
4:19
Speaker 1: accepted reality for every president and every premiere um from well,
4:25
Speaker 1: I guess who for us from ke On, this mutual
4:29
Speaker 1: assured destruction doctrine was just kind of a part of
4:33
Speaker 1: daily life. Um. But when Ronald Reagan came into office,
4:37
Speaker 1: he came up with a different plan. He did in need,
4:41
Speaker 1: so instead of a tense standoff, he found that untoward.
4:46
Speaker 1: I guess I think he found it. From my understanding
4:49
Speaker 1: of Reagan, he would have found it untoward because it
4:52
Speaker 1: didn't give America a clear advantage. Well, the article says
4:56
Speaker 1: he found it morally and politically distasteful. I agree with
5:00
Speaker 1: in that Reagan didn't like mutual or shore destruction for
5:03
Speaker 1: one reason or another. So we came up with something
5:06
Speaker 1: a game changer, you would call it today. If you
5:09
Speaker 1: read books that of an airplane is also reading at
5:13
Speaker 1: the same time, that's right, what is it, Josh? He
5:17
Speaker 1: came up with the Strategic Defense Initiative, which the press
5:22
Speaker 1: like to call start the star Wars program. And I
5:25
Speaker 1: remember this very very well because it was largely derided
5:29
Speaker 1: in the press for a bunch of reasons. Uh, we're
5:32
Speaker 1: going to talk about Yeah, I remember very well too.
5:36
Speaker 1: It was all over Mad magazine. Um, it was all
5:39
Speaker 1: over time. There were awesome illustrations of like satellites with
5:44
Speaker 1: laser shooting out of them that like you could see
5:46
Speaker 1: in the mainstream media a lot. Sure, Um, But yeah,
5:49
Speaker 1: I also remember it kind of just basically being generally
5:53
Speaker 1: disliked by the public. Yeah, as well. Pretty much it was.
5:59
Speaker 1: It was to be laughed at in many circles, although
6:03
Speaker 1: it was a very serious thing. It was, and it
6:05
Speaker 1: was laughed at for a lot of reasons. But that
6:08
Speaker 1: we're gonna go over. So Reagan On March twe he
6:12
Speaker 1: held an address to the nation, little televised speech, and
6:17
Speaker 1: in it he challenged the um scientific community UM, who
6:23
Speaker 1: he said had created nuclear weapons, to make those very
6:28
Speaker 1: same weapons quote UM, impotent and obsolete. And that kind
6:32
Speaker 1: of became the rallying cry, like, let's make nukes impotent
6:36
Speaker 1: and obsolete. And the way you do that is to
6:38
Speaker 1: make it so that we have a missile defense system
6:41
Speaker 1: that can shoot down every single nuclear warhead that Russia
6:46
Speaker 1: has in its arsenal, all at once, if need be. Yeah,
6:49
Speaker 1: after launch. Um, that is so like if they launched
6:54
Speaker 1: their missiles, we can shoot them down in space and UM.
6:58
Speaker 1: In Reagan's view, which you know, I can see his
7:00
Speaker 1: point at the time, UM, there would not be any
7:04
Speaker 1: more need for He thought, it would like neuter the
7:07
Speaker 1: Cold War in its tracks. Soviet Union thought that's not
7:11
Speaker 1: too cool. They thought, yet, and yet, and yet, because
7:16
Speaker 1: well a lot of a lot of people felt like
7:18
Speaker 1: it was going to escalate the arms race, the Soviets thought,
7:21
Speaker 1: this just means you have a clear advantage over us.
7:24
Speaker 1: This doesn't neuter like it neuters us, It doesn't neuter you. Right,
7:27
Speaker 1: And Reagan said as many times as the Soviets could
7:31
Speaker 1: stand to hear it that, Um, this was strictly a
7:35
Speaker 1: missile defense system, a net or a shield if you will, Um,
7:40
Speaker 1: that that would only be used in the event that
7:42
Speaker 1: a Soviet nuclear launch was detected. Right, But the Soviets
7:48
Speaker 1: were saying, or you could just shoot all of our
7:50
Speaker 1: missiles down and then launch a strike, a first strike
7:54
Speaker 1: where we would have no way to retaliate. So, yeah,
7:57
Speaker 1: this is totally unacceptable. And yeah, the Russian rallied against it,
8:01
Speaker 1: but not just them the here at home, there are
8:04
Speaker 1: a lot of people who didn't really care for it,
8:07
Speaker 1: including the public who thought it was a pipe dream,
8:11
Speaker 1: or who thought it would escalate a new arms racist Soviets,
8:14
Speaker 1: or who just thought it was going to be a
8:16
Speaker 1: huge like money pit. Yeah, and it was a lot
8:20
Speaker 1: of those things. Um. And when we say, Soviets, let's
8:22
Speaker 1: go ahead and call out the premiere that I didn't
8:26
Speaker 1: remember Yuri and drop off. I didn't remember him. I
8:31
Speaker 1: don't remember him either, and I looked him up. He
8:33
Speaker 1: was only I mean that it seems like there was
8:35
Speaker 1: a lot of premiers there for a while that like
8:37
Speaker 1: died thereafter. I think he was in like like less
8:41
Speaker 1: than a year and a half. H he was like
8:44
Speaker 1: the KGB had something to do with it in vodka
8:47
Speaker 1: o um. So he was the premier at the time.
8:51
Speaker 1: He wasn't a fan. They launched a big propaganda campaign,
8:55
Speaker 1: it says sevent Their propaganda went toward UH poopoo ing
9:00
Speaker 1: the Star Wars defense program, even though they didn't think
9:02
Speaker 1: it was gonna work. Our Congress apparently right Apparently the
9:08
Speaker 1: Soviets were like, this is not a feasible program. Well,
9:10
Speaker 1: and they said it violates a couple of important treatise
9:13
Speaker 1: UM the a b M, the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty
9:16
Speaker 1: of seventy two, which the Soviet Union in in UH
9:20
Speaker 1: the United States were both a part of, said that
9:23
Speaker 1: at the time that was two ground based missile defense
9:26
Speaker 1: systems you were allowed. Later on it was one, and
9:28
Speaker 1: I guess this would have been more than two. Not
9:30
Speaker 1: only that ground based is a an operative term in
9:33
Speaker 1: this case, because this was going to be this the
9:36
Speaker 1: strategic defense initiative was going to be space based, and
9:39
Speaker 1: that violates another treaty. N seven Outer Space treaty says
9:44
Speaker 1: that you cannot use weapons of mass destruction in space,
9:48
Speaker 1: and that's pretty much what was going on or that
9:50
Speaker 1: was what was planned, right? So UM, all right, so
9:54
Speaker 1: that's that's why they don't like it, right why And
9:58
Speaker 1: Congress didn't like it. Congress didn't like either. Most people
10:01
Speaker 1: in Congress they they apparently the UM, the Missile Defense
10:05
Speaker 1: Agency attributes UM coining the term star wars to describe
10:11
Speaker 1: the strategic convinced the nation initiative to mock it, really
10:14
Speaker 1: UM to Ted Kennedy and an interview in the Washington Post,
10:18
Speaker 1: like almost right after Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative,
10:23
Speaker 1: and Reagan spent the rest of the time he was
10:25
Speaker 1: in office trying to simultaneously get this push through and
10:29
Speaker 1: to get everyone to stop calling it star wars, because
10:33
Speaker 1: luck had had it caught the American public's imagination like, oh, yeah,
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Speaker 1: star wars, let's just go ahead and blow up Russia
10:42
Speaker 1: with star wars, he would have been like, yeah, let's
10:44
Speaker 1: call it star wars. It's awesome. But it was like
10:47
Speaker 1: Reagan star wars, that crazy old kok he's got all time,
10:50
Speaker 1: and he wants to put weapons in space and just
10:53
Speaker 1: shoot lasers around and all that. So he spent a
10:55
Speaker 1: lot of time lobbying against people calling it star wars.
10:57
Speaker 1: But it didn't work. Uh No, he tried to go
11:01
Speaker 1: by the name Strategic Defense in Initiative. And you know
11:04
Speaker 1: how the press is. I think he is to get
11:06
Speaker 1: ahold of something. It's all over. He was probably even
11:09
Speaker 1: willing to to um allow it to be called the
11:12
Speaker 1: sd I. I'll bet he was even like sd I.
11:36
Speaker 1: So Europe wasn't all in favor the Allies. They had
11:40
Speaker 1: some concerns about the balance of power and how this
11:43
Speaker 1: would affect it. Obviously, and like you said, Congress, Um,
11:48
Speaker 1: not everyone was against it, but they had some major issues,
11:51
Speaker 1: largely a the cost and be is it even possible?
11:56
Speaker 1: Like are we just pipe dreaming here on these lasers?
12:00
Speaker 1: And they were kind of right well at the time,
12:02
Speaker 1: they were so in in Reagan's defense, he said from
12:06
Speaker 1: the outset like this can take years, decades. This is
12:10
Speaker 1: not going to be an overnight thing. And he also said,
12:13
Speaker 1: we're going to test a lot of different stuff. Right
12:15
Speaker 1: that he was like he was well aware of the
12:17
Speaker 1: technology didn't exist, or if it did exist, it was
12:20
Speaker 1: like a glimmer in some national laboratory scientists eyes and
12:25
Speaker 1: it was just in the nascent stages. So um, from
12:28
Speaker 1: the outside he commissioned some reports, and the one that
12:30
Speaker 1: kind of got picked up was the Fletcher Report. And
12:32
Speaker 1: the Fletcher Report basically said, here are eight things you
12:35
Speaker 1: need to build the Strategic Defense Initiative, everything from sensors
12:40
Speaker 1: that can detect when uh intercontinental ballistic missile launch is
12:46
Speaker 1: launched because they don't phone you up and say we've
12:48
Speaker 1: launched exactly right, and you need to make sure that
12:51
Speaker 1: they're accurate. And it's not going to be like a
12:53
Speaker 1: wargames thing where it's like whatever. Um, you also need
12:57
Speaker 1: to come up with some incredible guided miss systems. Um.
13:01
Speaker 1: Just this, Like I think there were like eight different
13:04
Speaker 1: different aspects that basically either needed to be created or
13:08
Speaker 1: needed to be refined to the point where they might
13:09
Speaker 1: as well be created from scratch. And Reagan said do this. Yeah,
13:14
Speaker 1: he said, press on. And I think a lot of
13:16
Speaker 1: people at the time in Congress at least we're saying,
13:19
Speaker 1: good idea, let's use this as a bargaining tool in
13:22
Speaker 1: the arms race, like we don't really have to do
13:24
Speaker 1: it right there, like everyone thinks you're serious exactly, And
13:27
Speaker 1: he said this could work as a bargaining chip and
13:29
Speaker 1: he was like, no, I really want the Star wars. Uh,
13:32
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, sd Ift. So apparently um Gorbach got Reagan
13:38
Speaker 1: to meet him for UM Arms Limitations talks in Iceland
13:43
Speaker 1: in October, and Reagan went and they had this great
13:48
Speaker 1: talk and like basically Gorbach was like, let's end mutual
13:52
Speaker 1: sure destruction. Let's basically get rid of our arsenals. And
13:56
Speaker 1: the Soviets were just throwing like bone after bone out
13:59
Speaker 1: the table, and Reagan just can't believe his luck. And
14:03
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, gorbacho at the end is like, okay,
14:05
Speaker 1: so we'll go ahead and sign off on this, but
14:08
Speaker 1: all of this is contingent that you give up Star Wars, right,
14:10
Speaker 1: And Reagan stood up in the left. Really he left, yeah,
14:14
Speaker 1: which is kind of like that's a little crazy maybe,
14:17
Speaker 1: but that's the level of commitment. He apparently had two
14:20
Speaker 1: Star Wars. Well yeah, not too long after, the Soviet says, well,
14:24
Speaker 1: you know what, we got to do something. We can't
14:26
Speaker 1: build a Star Wars. And it's actually a pretty good
14:29
Speaker 1: idea they said we can, well, at least they thought
14:32
Speaker 1: they could. UM undertake what they called the Polus Skiff,
14:36
Speaker 1: which was will invent a network of weapons to destroy
14:41
Speaker 1: your Star Wars machine UM, which was Hey, that's pretty
14:46
Speaker 1: good thinking. But they didn't have the funding, and uh,
14:48
Speaker 1: it was not very successful either. No, they didn't. And
14:51
Speaker 1: that leads us to um a point if I may
14:55
Speaker 1: skip around a little chuckture, but um, history is kind
15:00
Speaker 1: have vindicated Reagan in one way, Like his Star Wars
15:04
Speaker 1: program didn't go anywhere, but it wasn't given very much time.
15:08
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because the fall of the
15:10
Speaker 1: Soviet Union happened within less than a decade after he
15:15
Speaker 1: announced the star Wars initiative. The program, Uh, the Soviet
15:19
Speaker 1: Union fell collapsed entirely. Uh. And some people attribute that
15:24
Speaker 1: to the defense spending that he immediately caused them to
15:29
Speaker 1: to start expending because of the Star Wars program. True,
15:34
Speaker 1: so he did kind of ratchet up this arms race,
15:37
Speaker 1: but the Soviets couldn't keep up. This came on the
15:39
Speaker 1: heels of US bleeding them dry in Afghanistan secretly funding
15:44
Speaker 1: the muja Hadeen which became the Taliban by the way,
15:46
Speaker 1: but we I don't know how much Reagan knew, but
15:49
Speaker 1: the the Soviets were hurting financially, and then all of
15:53
Speaker 1: a sudden he introduced Star Wars and they couldn't keep up. Yea,
15:56
Speaker 1: and the follow Soviet union. With that came obviously the
16:00
Speaker 1: at least huge threat of all out nuclear war because
16:04
Speaker 1: they were the major players. Um you didn't have to
16:08
Speaker 1: worry about the smaller countries, you know, as far as
16:11
Speaker 1: M A. D goes, right, but you had to worry
16:13
Speaker 1: about rogue states and all that, right, making sure that
16:16
Speaker 1: the Russians could hang onto their arsenal, which they didn't
16:18
Speaker 1: do very well necessarily. But yes, the mutual sure destruction
16:21
Speaker 1: just went the way the dinosaur. When the Soviets fell. Um,
16:25
Speaker 1: H W. Bush comes along, people get annoyed by the way,
16:28
Speaker 1: and when we don't say President so and so, who
16:30
Speaker 1: does here? Are you see as this on Facebook? Now,
16:34
Speaker 1: I've seen people right in before, and I've heard other
16:36
Speaker 1: people say you should always address them as President so
16:38
Speaker 1: and so. But I hear all the time people say Obama, Clinton, Reagan.
16:43
Speaker 1: So no no disrespect intended, folks. H W. Bush comes along,
16:49
Speaker 1: Soviet union has fallen, So he's like, you know what,
16:51
Speaker 1: we need to really cut back on this scope of
16:54
Speaker 1: this sd I. He probably would have just scrapped it
16:57
Speaker 1: all together. But he was pretty loyal to Reagan, of course,
17:01
Speaker 1: and um so he refocuses a program, cuts it back.
17:05
Speaker 1: Clinton comes along President Clinton and refines it even more
17:11
Speaker 1: and cuts it back even more. And by the time
17:13
Speaker 1: that happened, it wasn't anything like Reagan's initial Star Wars program. No,
17:18
Speaker 1: not at all. No, but it would become handy, which
17:21
Speaker 1: we'll get too. So let's talk about what Star Wars was.
17:24
Speaker 1: We've kind of given like a little bit of a
17:26
Speaker 1: broad overview. But um, until I started researching this, I
17:30
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about it. But intercontinental ballistic missiles once
17:33
Speaker 1: capable of saying, traveling from Moscow to New York, I
17:39
Speaker 1: have to leave Earth's atmosphere and enter orbit. And so
17:44
Speaker 1: the idea was we would have something up there that
17:48
Speaker 1: could shoot it down when it entered orbit, That's right,
17:52
Speaker 1: Which meant that we had to place. We had to
17:53
Speaker 1: weaponize space. Yeah, and I wonder if they ever gave
17:56
Speaker 1: any thought to what nuclear bomb is going off in
18:00
Speaker 1: space would mean. I mean, surely there's repercussions there. I
18:04
Speaker 1: know it's space, But you can't just go willie nilly
18:07
Speaker 1: setting off nuclear bombs in space? Right did in Nevada? Well,
18:11
Speaker 1: that's that's true, but Kin Toll, Yeah, and look what
18:15
Speaker 1: happened there? What happened there? Well, I'm just saying it.
18:19
Speaker 1: It's it's got to cause some kind of harm to
18:21
Speaker 1: space even though it's space, right, or does it just
18:24
Speaker 1: suck into it? Like, I have no idea. This is
18:26
Speaker 1: something I could not find. I mean a research that
18:29
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything. Yeah. No, I understand what you're saying.
18:32
Speaker 1: In space is a vacuum, so it should have some
18:35
Speaker 1: effect or no effect whatsoever, but it's got to and
18:40
Speaker 1: got to do something. There's someone out there really smart
18:42
Speaker 1: that hopefully is going to email me. I guess though.
18:44
Speaker 1: The the idea behind this was fairly utilitarian, where it
18:48
Speaker 1: was like, okay, this possible consequence in space or saving
18:52
Speaker 1: millions of lives here on Earth, and they just said whatever,
18:55
Speaker 1: that's fine, of course. Um, But so you have something
19:01
Speaker 1: up in space that's capable of shooting down an intercontinental
19:04
Speaker 1: ballistic missile, like an X ray laser. That's this is
19:08
Speaker 1: like where we kind of come to some of them,
19:10
Speaker 1: Like there were a lot of proposals that were kind
19:13
Speaker 1: of out there, but they went ahead and spent a
19:16
Speaker 1: lot of money testing these things like the X ray laser,
19:19
Speaker 1: And that was a physicist Edward Teller. Um it was
19:23
Speaker 1: created the hydrogen bomb. Yeah, I saw that. It was
19:26
Speaker 1: his proposal, so they obviously listened to him, and um,
19:31
Speaker 1: it was gonna use power generated by a nuclear blast.
19:34
Speaker 1: And it never performed well, and it really became the
19:38
Speaker 1: focus point for the press and for David Letterman and
19:43
Speaker 1: for Johnny Carson to make fun of because it was
19:47
Speaker 1: an X ray laser and this is coming off the
19:48
Speaker 1: heels of the Star Wars movies themselves with their X
19:52
Speaker 1: ray blasters. Actually they were star blowing up yeah, or
19:56
Speaker 1: the dust star blowing up that planet Aldern. I think
19:59
Speaker 1: they focused the laser and boom, Um, you just saved
20:03
Speaker 1: me from a lot of ire because I was gonna say, tattooing,
20:07
Speaker 1: I might have got it wrong. I think it was
20:08
Speaker 1: all the wrong. Man. I hope you got it. If
20:10
Speaker 1: there's one thing that I ever hope you got right,
20:12
Speaker 1: it was that one. So so many Star Trek fans
20:15
Speaker 1: would be writing in so that there's the X ray
20:20
Speaker 1: laser and it doesn't go over very well, which was
20:22
Speaker 1: very much the focus of the media, and they were
20:25
Speaker 1: being chided for the fact that they you know, sounded
20:27
Speaker 1: really far out right, but they they tested it it
20:31
Speaker 1: just wouldn't work. The idea behind it was that they
20:34
Speaker 1: were going to have a small controlled nuclear explosion that
20:37
Speaker 1: would power this laser right to create a massive amount
20:41
Speaker 1: of X rays, a concentrated amount of X rays UM
20:45
Speaker 1: that would be focused on a missile and the go kaboom.
20:49
Speaker 1: It was called Project X Caliber, so it had a
20:51
Speaker 1: cool name to but apparently Teller or the people behind
20:55
Speaker 1: it were accused of falsifying the initial UH test the result. Yeah,
21:02
Speaker 1: so it kind of went down and scandal and mockery
21:05
Speaker 1: and everything. So in the little boxes said worked or
21:08
Speaker 1: didn't work, they just checked worked and like we shuffled
21:10
Speaker 1: away with cartoons to it like coming off. And therefore,
21:44
Speaker 1: so some of the other ideas that they tried UM
21:47
Speaker 1: and spent billions of dollars trying um kinetic warheads, apparently
21:52
Speaker 1: they would collide in the orbit. It's like shooting a
21:55
Speaker 1: shooting a missile at another missile UM And that one
21:58
Speaker 1: actually was like the big dog on the block for
22:01
Speaker 1: a while at first in the early stages of Star Wars,
22:04
Speaker 1: because they figured out that you could have this thing
22:07
Speaker 1: like basically a satellite based garage with like ten missiles
22:12
Speaker 1: in it, and you just have it floating up there
22:15
Speaker 1: and then shoot at a missile. You know. When one
22:17
Speaker 1: came up and it was a good idea, they're like,
22:19
Speaker 1: we can actually do that, Like, I think we can
22:21
Speaker 1: do this. The problem is that somebody pointed out that
22:24
Speaker 1: all the Russians had to do is shoot a missile
22:26
Speaker 1: at your garage, and for their one missile, they took
22:29
Speaker 1: out ten. So people said, okay, let's get back to it,
22:32
Speaker 1: and they started exploring other one. It's like bringing a
22:35
Speaker 1: knife to a gunfight. It's like bringing a missile to
22:38
Speaker 1: a multi missile fight. No that I don't think that
22:43
Speaker 1: analogy works at all. I know. I think it's like
22:46
Speaker 1: a sitting duck. Okay. Uh. The other thing they wanted
22:49
Speaker 1: to try, Josh, was US rail guns mounted on satellites.
22:53
Speaker 1: Did you see the popular mechanics drawing of it. I did,
22:56
Speaker 1: and it's pretty wicked. Yeah. I gotta admit. It looks
22:58
Speaker 1: like an I beam coming out of this out of like,
23:00
Speaker 1: but it's shooting like a three ounce slug at two
23:03
Speaker 1: hundred miles a second. It's pretty wicked. Yeah. Um, that
23:06
Speaker 1: one didn't go very far because of the um energy requirements. Yeah,
23:10
Speaker 1: it was just way too expensive in an energy sense. Uh.
23:14
Speaker 1: And then the m I R A C L miracle laser. Um.
23:20
Speaker 1: It was another laser, but it was ground based using mirrors. Right.
23:23
Speaker 1: It was a chemical laser. It wasn't like an uh,
23:27
Speaker 1: nuclear X ray laser. It's like they just started to
23:30
Speaker 1: try to throw cool sci fi terms of the time together,
23:34
Speaker 1: like let's make laser, but let's make it a nuclear
23:39
Speaker 1: X ray laser, and we'll shoot missiles out of this
23:41
Speaker 1: guy with tron laser Tron, let's ad that. Um. So
23:46
Speaker 1: then this article doesn't really go into it. But after
23:50
Speaker 1: after some of these were kind of asked and answered. Um.
23:54
Speaker 1: Up until and even beyond the fall of the Soviet Union,
23:57
Speaker 1: the Shining Star and all this became the these things
24:00
Speaker 1: called bright pebbles. Does that ring a bell? It did
24:03
Speaker 1: for me when I ran across it, I was like, Ahi,
24:05
Speaker 1: those two words sound very familiar. So bright Pebbles was
24:09
Speaker 1: the little garage with ten missiles. These were very small ones,
24:13
Speaker 1: like say, um, twenty to fifty pound mini garages that
24:19
Speaker 1: would shoot slugs or would ram themselves. But I think
24:22
Speaker 1: they would shoot slugs. And rather than having one garage
24:25
Speaker 1: with ten missiles, you would have thousands of these little
24:28
Speaker 1: things all over the country, all over the all over space.
24:31
Speaker 1: They're in space. Yeah, so they were hoping for a
24:34
Speaker 1: constellation of up to like four thousand of these things
24:36
Speaker 1: just floating around in space. The cool thing about him
24:39
Speaker 1: was if you took one out, there were still three
24:42
Speaker 1: thousand nine left right. They were autonomous, so they could
24:49
Speaker 1: attack on their own if they if they wanted to.
24:52
Speaker 1: They could also coordinate and communicate with one another to
24:55
Speaker 1: launch coordinated attacks against missiles. It would be very tough
24:58
Speaker 1: to overwhelm these things, um and they would have been
25:02
Speaker 1: designed to protect US space based assets like satellites, and
25:07
Speaker 1: if the Soviets ever launched anything like it, these things
25:09
Speaker 1: were trained to just go right after them and blow
25:12
Speaker 1: them out of the sky too. So basically they were
25:14
Speaker 1: like little sentinels in space and they were going to
25:17
Speaker 1: be cost effected to It was gonna cost about eleven
25:20
Speaker 1: billion in UM in nineteen eighty four dollars I think,
25:24
Speaker 1: which is about twenty billion a day. It was considering
25:28
Speaker 1: that they were looking at like twenty billion, which is
25:31
Speaker 1: about forty three billion in UH today's dollars, just to
25:34
Speaker 1: get some of the other ones off the ground. So
25:37
Speaker 1: to get a thousand off the ground that you could
25:39
Speaker 1: mass produce just eleven billion dollars at the time was
25:42
Speaker 1: quite a bargain and had the fall of the Soviet
25:45
Speaker 1: Union not coming gone, we probably would have bright pebbles
25:48
Speaker 1: up in space right now. And as a matter of fact,
25:50
Speaker 1: they were proven. They were tested. Um the Clementine probe
25:54
Speaker 1: which mapped the Moon in that was a bright pebble
25:58
Speaker 1: that they basically redesigned instead of uh well as a weapon.
26:02
Speaker 1: They used it to map the Moon and it did
26:05
Speaker 1: so successfully, so they would have worked. And lastly, yes,
26:11
Speaker 1: a computer model of bright pebbles found that had they
26:15
Speaker 1: been in operation during the first GO four um, they
26:19
Speaker 1: would have shot down Saddam scuds scud missiles with accuracy.
26:25
Speaker 1: Pretty crazy, but well cheap. I was gonna say expensive, No,
26:30
Speaker 1: they're cheap. They just didn't have time to come along. Well,
26:32
Speaker 1: the problem with the rest of the plans is I
26:35
Speaker 1: saw one quote that said that at the time they
26:39
Speaker 1: were just sort of taking these ideas almost from science fiction,
26:41
Speaker 1: and they felt like they were or some scientists felt
26:45
Speaker 1: like they were a decade away from even like they're saying,
26:48
Speaker 1: we can't even start this for ten years. We need
26:51
Speaker 1: to research for ten years to see if any of
26:54
Speaker 1: this is even feasible. But I think instead of sort
26:56
Speaker 1: of like trying these things out, Reagan was encourageding that though.
27:00
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure he was like, hurry up. But
27:02
Speaker 1: at the same time, and I think he got the
27:03
Speaker 1: impression he was saying, like sky's limit, guys like us,
27:06
Speaker 1: your imagination, do whatever you can come up with. Definitely,
27:09
Speaker 1: the sky's the limit beyonda So did any of these
27:14
Speaker 1: ever work at all? So apparently a couple did. Like
27:16
Speaker 1: they shot down three, they shot down a stationary object
27:23
Speaker 1: on Earth, they shot down, um, a mock warhead in
27:27
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere, and they shot down another mock warhead
27:30
Speaker 1: in space. And one of those things was going twenty
27:32
Speaker 1: one an. So so some of these technologies, because they
27:37
Speaker 1: had a bunch of different groups testing all these different things,
27:40
Speaker 1: and some of them were successful for the most part now,
27:43
Speaker 1: but it eventually led to a different sort of defense
27:46
Speaker 1: system that we still had today, right or is it
27:49
Speaker 1: that what some people say, yeah, like the ballistic missile
27:53
Speaker 1: defense system, um is it's the out growth of star Wars.
27:59
Speaker 1: Like the idea that we have a missile defense system
28:01
Speaker 1: comes from Star Wars. So even though we're not using
28:05
Speaker 1: X ray lasers, a lot of people say it had
28:07
Speaker 1: some benefit in the end after all. Yeah, because we're
28:10
Speaker 1: using sensors, those same sensors like a lot of the
28:12
Speaker 1: research that was not like X ray lasers, but that
28:17
Speaker 1: still had practical applications. We're still doing the day and
28:21
Speaker 1: apparently in Pearl Harbor last month, a missile shot down
28:25
Speaker 1: another missile over the Pacific successfully as a test. Yeah.
28:30
Speaker 1: I was like, somebody's attacking Pearl Harbor again. You don't
28:33
Speaker 1: really want They figured the American public doesn't wunt here.
28:36
Speaker 1: But yeah, the Chinese shot a missile at us and
28:38
Speaker 1: we shot it down. So everything's cool. Was close. So
28:41
Speaker 1: I guess that's about it. Huh yeah, Um, that's all
28:45
Speaker 1: I got. Okay, So if you want to learn more
28:50
Speaker 1: about Star Wars, I think it bring up a bunch
28:53
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff. If you type star Wars in the
28:56
Speaker 1: search bar, how stuff works, Like the one Man Star Wars. Uh,
29:01
Speaker 1: Star Wars one Man show. Yeah, that's pretty good. Uh,
29:04
Speaker 1: Landau Dr Pepper calories Ian remember that one? I do. Yeah,
29:09
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff. Just type star Wars in
29:11
Speaker 1: the search part how stuff works. Dot com and I
29:12
Speaker 1: said that, which means it's time for a listener mail.
29:19
Speaker 1: Josh and Louid listener mail. We're gonna do a little
29:21
Speaker 1: Facebook question to stuff that we like to do from
29:25
Speaker 1: time to time. And this is happening live, which is
29:28
Speaker 1: pretty exciting. That is scary because I didn't have a
29:32
Speaker 1: listener mail ready and this was a good thing to do.
29:34
Speaker 1: So let's just look through some of these and you
29:39
Speaker 1: let me know what you want to read. Uh. Our
29:43
Speaker 1: friend Kubi don Kuby says, uh, is there a particular
29:47
Speaker 1: side of the recording booth that you each always sit on?
29:50
Speaker 1: The answer to that is yes. Um, I guess if
29:54
Speaker 1: you were facing from here, Josh, it's on the right.
29:57
Speaker 1: I sit on the left, But you really come in
30:00
Speaker 1: from the other side, So Josh sits on the far
30:03
Speaker 1: side and I sit on the near side. It's the
30:06
Speaker 1: best way to say it. That's very well put. Yeah,
30:08
Speaker 1: and I think all the podcasters probably no one ever
30:10
Speaker 1: sits in a different seat. That'd be really weird. Yeah,
30:13
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody sits in there same seat. Like if
30:16
Speaker 1: I said over there, they'd be disconcerting. It'd be you'd
30:18
Speaker 1: have to be a like bona fide nihilist to do that,
30:22
Speaker 1: that would just be odd. Um. I've got one from
30:27
Speaker 1: Jerome Hanson. I would say Jerome right. Uh, who is
30:32
Speaker 1: your favorite Marvel superhero? Uh? I guess I would say Punisher,
30:39
Speaker 1: And I know he's not a superhero. He's just a
30:41
Speaker 1: straight up hero because he doesn't have any superpowers. But
30:45
Speaker 1: he's definitely the comic I was into the most as
30:48
Speaker 1: a youngster. I'm gonna go spider Man really yeah, yeah,
30:53
Speaker 1: I identified with Peter Parker, not spider Man. Um favorite
30:58
Speaker 1: band of all time. I feel like we they through
31:00
Speaker 1: that many times. Okay, I'm going with Pavement Still, Pixie's
31:04
Speaker 1: still okay. Um. I would like to know your opinion
31:08
Speaker 1: of and Margaret. That's from Brian Throckmorton. I think and
31:12
Speaker 1: Margaret in her day was one of the most smoking
31:16
Speaker 1: hot women on the planet. So my only familiarity with
31:20
Speaker 1: and Margaret was from The flat Stones when they had
31:23
Speaker 1: that character and Mark Rock and she always seemed like
31:26
Speaker 1: she was on lithium. So I don't have a great
31:28
Speaker 1: opinion of and Margaret. Gotcha, Oh this is good. William Bear,
31:33
Speaker 1: if you were speed Limit, what would you be and why?
31:37
Speaker 1: You know what I would be, Well, I would be
31:39
Speaker 1: one of those special speed limits in state parks. It's
31:42
Speaker 1: like five miles an hour. Do you know that there's
31:44
Speaker 1: the parking garage here is four and a half? Is
31:47
Speaker 1: it really? Yeah? Yeah, that's what I would be. Then
31:49
Speaker 1: four and a half miles an hour. It's like they're
31:50
Speaker 1: showing off because just take your foot off and let
31:52
Speaker 1: the idol take you. Man, that's where. That's where I'm at.
31:55
Speaker 1: What would you be? This is arguably the strangest question
32:00
Speaker 1: and I've ever been asked. I would say, Okay, that's good. Okay,
32:07
Speaker 1: it's fast, but it's not super dangerous. I'm not even
32:09
Speaker 1: to read into it. I just that's what comes to mind. Okay, gotcha,
32:14
Speaker 1: you got one. Uh, let's see. Lisa to Shaa asks us,
32:21
Speaker 1: what's our least favorite food? Lisa's a big regular too.
32:25
Speaker 1: If I read that, I recognize the name here you there?
32:28
Speaker 1: What are you going with? Least favorite food would have
32:33
Speaker 1: to be Oh, I was just talking to hear me
32:36
Speaker 1: about this the other day. It's like one thing I
32:39
Speaker 1: really don't like and I can't remember it because I
32:42
Speaker 1: generally like everything. What's yours? Let me think about it.
32:45
Speaker 1: Probably mushrooms on anything. I'm just not a fan. Yeah,
32:49
Speaker 1: I know they say they don't have taste, but then
32:51
Speaker 1: I'm always like cold. Then why are you putting it
32:52
Speaker 1: in something they can virtually ruin? Um? The pizza? Yeah? Yeah,
32:57
Speaker 1: Oh I've got it. Cream cheese cream cheese with stuffed
33:01
Speaker 1: in it. Like she's spread a cream cheese ball, cream
33:05
Speaker 1: cheese on just about anything. Like if you have a
33:09
Speaker 1: plain bagel hot with cream cheese, that's fine, that's just
33:12
Speaker 1: a regular and your man. Once you put like a
33:16
Speaker 1: garden style cream cheese with something else, yeah, I don't
33:20
Speaker 1: like that stuff either, Okay, Matt sailor boxers or briefs.
33:24
Speaker 1: We've been asked that before. I'm a boxer guy. Katie
33:27
Speaker 1: Hart favorite punch line to a joke. Uh, those aren't pillows.
33:35
Speaker 1: I don't. I can't say anyone's I know. Uh, you
33:38
Speaker 1: got any more on here? Why don't we do like
33:40
Speaker 1: two more? Let's see Charlotte Jean asks, how do we
33:45
Speaker 1: take our coffee? I take mine black at two? So
33:48
Speaker 1: there you go, that's kind of boring. I got a
33:50
Speaker 1: lot of hair on the old chest from it, and
33:52
Speaker 1: you know, Jason Domini from our friends at Uh, back
33:56
Speaker 1: Doorphin Bronson, the amazing coffee makers. Yeah, and roasters, which
34:01
Speaker 1: you should not coffee makers roasters, you should support them
34:03
Speaker 1: by the way. Um. He says. He gave me a
34:06
Speaker 1: personal tour of the thing and a coffee one on
34:08
Speaker 1: one and he says, if you drink good coffee and
34:12
Speaker 1: it's roasted properly, you don't want sugar. Oh yeah, I
34:17
Speaker 1: definitely don't want milk, but you definitely don't want sugar.
34:19
Speaker 1: Because he's like, it's really sweet. He's like, coffee beans
34:22
Speaker 1: are exceptionally sweet and when you roast it right, um,
34:25
Speaker 1: and he called it char bucks, which I thought was
34:27
Speaker 1: kind of funny. He said their stuff is just like
34:30
Speaker 1: bitter because they char it too much because they get
34:35
Speaker 1: beans from all over the place and when they do that,
34:37
Speaker 1: they want to make them all taste the same, and
34:39
Speaker 1: the way to do that is to over roast. This
34:42
Speaker 1: is our friend Rob Pointer who's telling us that, like
34:45
Speaker 1: there's he goes to a coffee place in l A
34:49
Speaker 1: where like they don't even have creamer sugar. I really like,
34:52
Speaker 1: they don't even offer it if you want it, like
34:54
Speaker 1: they tell you to leave. Awesome. When he made his
34:57
Speaker 1: coffee Daday it was great. Yeah. Um, all right, so
35:00
Speaker 1: I think that that's good enough for now. We'll hit
35:02
Speaker 1: this up on the next one, are we will? Yeah, okay,
35:04
Speaker 1: we'll be back people in the meantime. You can contact
35:07
Speaker 1: us at s Y s K Podcast on Twitter. You
35:11
Speaker 1: can hit us up on Facebook dot com whether we
35:14
Speaker 1: have a question out or otherwise at Facebook dot com
35:16
Speaker 1: slash stuff you should know, and you can send us
35:19
Speaker 1: an email to