Zenith Star: the Space Laser That Won the Cold War

Steve Weintz

Security,

Just because it never left the ground doesn't mean it didn't work.

From the moment he announced it on national television in March 1983, President Ronald Reagan's signature vision of a space-based ballistic-missile shield provoked excitement and incredulity. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) spent nearly a decade pursuing cosmic lightsabers before the end of the Cold War seemingly ended its purpose.

Costs, technical challenges and treaty compliance concerns prevented a test of President Reagan's vision during his term. The closest he ever got to Star Wars was an elaborate stage set, a bit of theater just plausible enough to engage his imagination and the Soviets' fears.

Columnist Jack Anderson claimed that President-elect Reagan discussed his missile-defense ideas with Republican senators shortly after the 1980 election. At that time, the most promising directed-energy weapon looked like the high-power chemical laser. A chemical laser creates coherent (laser) light from intense chemical reactions, rather than by stimulating crystals or gases.

Shortly after its founding in 1984, SDI took over DARPA's directed-energy work. SDI's development plan led to a 1990 decision whether to proceed with a 1994 space test.

Chemical lasers lost their appeal in the face of potentially more powerful nuclear X-ray lasers, free-electron lasers and particle beams. But by 1986 it was clear that these exotic technologies were at least a decade away, and the White House wasn't willing to wait that long. The President cherished the hope of personally seeing his vision through.

There was also another reason: SDI chief Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, a veteran of the Pentagon's early manned space program, believed the reality of a U.S. space-based laser—even just a testbed—would deter the Soviets from deploying countermeasures. Indeed, he hoped that the U.S. intention to test a Death Star would be sufficiently daunting to obviate the need to deploy the weapon at all!