re: #507 Obdicut

Even then, we knew that Star Wars would never work. The basic problems with it existed from the start: Countermeasure technology would always be ahead of it, and the system could never really be tested.

The only possible used of anti-ICBM technology is if one errant missile gets launched. We might then have a slim chance of intercepting it. In any real attack: never, ever would we have a chance of intercepting a significant number.

It was always a fools errand. That doesn’t mean it can’t produce great science and research. You can get a long way trying to solve the impossible in science. But that doesn’t mean that the goal isn’t impossible, or that you couldn’t have gotten somewhere else realistic with the same expenditure.

But the Soviet Union ended up thinking we might well be able to pull it off (Putin still does think that) and the resultant fear helped drive Gorbachev to the negotiation table.