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

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