RESTOS DA GUERRA DAS ESTRELAS

Destaque para a coluna do físico Robert Park:

SON OF STAR WARS: THE LOBBIESTS WIN ONE MORE FOR THE GIPPER.

In a 1984 in speech to the nation President Reagan called on the scientific community to render nuclear missiles "impotent and obsolete" with a futuristic missile-defense system, dubbed "Star Wars" by the media, that would use powerful space-based lasers to zap enemy missiles out of the sky. Reagan had been sold this bucket of bovine excrement by Edward Teller, a physicist well known for wild exaggeration in support of his right-wing beliefs. In 1987, the American Physical Society, released its largest and most important study, "The Science and Technology of Directed Energy Weapons." It zapped no no the Strategic Defense Initiative. It concluded that a global shield such as "Star Wars" was impossible for the foreseeable future. Nine years and $30 billion after President Reagan's 1984 speech, the Strategic Defense Initiative, having accomplished nothing, was terminated. All that's left of space-based missile defenses are artist renderings, and the YAL-1A, a gigantic chemical laser, crammed into a lumbering Boeing 747. If you ask what it's for, they reply "testing." If we learned anything from 9/11 it is that, against this enemy, sophisticated weapons are not a defense. Secretary of Defense Gates wanted the YAL-1A taken out of the budget; for the lobbyists, however, it's a pipeline into the treasury. On Monday the Obama administration will submit its budget request for fiscal 2012. I'm betting the YAL–1A will be in it. I suppose it could incapacitate an enemy with laughter.

Robert Park