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