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The only long-term result of the incredibly expensive Star Wars programs championed by Edward Teller was that other countries developed systems that would defea

The only long-term result of the incredibly expensive Star Wars programs championed by Edward Teller was that other countries developed systems that would defeat it - and some military-industrial contractors got wealthy.

the_third_wave 3y ago
Apart from bringing the USSR to its financial knees you mean, thereby hastening its demise and with that ending (that phase of...?) the cold war?
- 48864w6ui 3y ago
  If the SU was a gas station with an army, King Fahd probably did far more on the financial knees front.
  - the_third_wave 3y ago
    If that were true, maybe. Since the Soviet Union was far more than that it doesn't quite match.
myself248 3y ago
The book Eccentric Orbits makes the point that the Iridium satellite constellation relies heavily on the basic technologies which were devloped, in some fledgling form, for SDI. Specifically, communications satellites before that were as dumb as possible, the 'bent pipe' model -- whatever goes up on one frequency, comes down on another. The satellite neither knew nor cared about the payload. The majority of electronics were actually analog. But with SDI, satellites had to communicate with each other. They had significant processing on-board. They made their own in-space mesh network, though that term wouldn't be used until later. They had to cope with possible loss of a satellite and keep the data flowing between the others. That's exactly the fundamental concept behind Iridium and several more constellations since, Starlink perhaps most familiar to the most HN readers. Motorola did a lot of the dev work for SDI, and after the project was scrapped, Motorola went on to build Iridium. Brooks argues in the book that the fundamental R&D for Iridium wouldn't have been practical without the groundwork laid, and paid for, by SDI.
- kortilla 3y ago
  >That's exactly the fundamental concept behind Iridium and several more constellations since, Starlink perhaps most familiar to the most HN readers. This isn’t at all a fundamental concept special to space. This happens all over the ground (smart networks tolerant to faults). Routing protocols, packet switching, multiplexing, link layer authentication, etc were all before SDI. Any special sauce for iridium or Starlink has nothing to do with the nodes being active routers.
- adastra22 3y ago
  That's how all communication satellites since the 60's have worked.

the_third_wave 3y ago

Apart from bringing the USSR to its financial knees you mean, thereby hastening its demise and with that ending (that phase of...?) the cold war?

48864w6ui 3y ago
If the SU was a gas station with an army, King Fahd probably did far more on the financial knees front.
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  If that were true, maybe. Since the Soviet Union was far more than that it doesn't quite match.

myself248 3y ago

The book Eccentric Orbits makes the point that the Iridium satellite constellation relies heavily on the basic technologies which were devloped, in some fledgling form, for SDI. Specifically, communications satellites before that were as dumb as possible, the 'bent pipe' model -- whatever goes up on one frequency, comes down on another. The satellite neither knew nor cared about the payload. The majority of electronics were actually analog. But with SDI, satellites had to communicate with each other. They had significant processing on-board. They made their own in-space mesh network, though that term wouldn't be used until later. They had to cope with possible loss of a satellite and keep the data flowing between the others. That's exactly the fundamental concept behind Iridium and several more constellations since, Starlink perhaps most familiar to the most HN readers. Motorola did a lot of the dev work for SDI, and after the project was scrapped, Motorola went on to build Iridium. Brooks argues in the book that the fundamental R&D for Iridium wouldn't have been practical without the groundwork laid, and paid for, by SDI.

kortilla 3y ago
>That's exactly the fundamental concept behind Iridium and several more constellations since, Starlink perhaps most familiar to the most HN readers. This isn’t at all a fundamental concept special to space. This happens all over the ground (smart networks tolerant to faults). Routing protocols, packet switching, multiplexing, link layer authentication, etc were all before SDI. Any special sauce for iridium or Starlink has nothing to do with the nodes being active routers.
adastra22 3y ago
That's how all communication satellites since the 60's have worked.