Star Wars: Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Star Wars: Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Reagan's way to Presidency

• After graduating college in 1932, he found work as a radio sports announcer in Iowa.
• Over the next 3 decades, he appeared in more than 50 movies.
• Ronald Reagan was elected November 4, 1980.

SDI Backround

American Reaction Then

• Reagan Stated: Think of it. You’re sitting at that desk. The word comes that they [the missiles] are on their way. And you sit here knowing that there is no way, at present, of stopping them. So they’re going to blow up how much of this country we can only guess at, and your response can be to push the button before they get here so that even though you’re all going to die, they’re going to die too…. There’s something so immoral about it.

By: Matt Phillips

Ronald Reagan

• Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911.
• Reagan graduated from Dixon high school in 1928.
• Reagan Attended Eureka College in Illinois, where he played football

Works Cited

• http://www.pinterest.com/pin/358951032771257146/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Official_Portrait_of_President_Reagan_1981.jpg
• http://reagan.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004005

Fall of SDI

American Reaction Then

• The SDI fell due to domestic and international pressure.
• The fear of Soviet retaliation scared the United States leaders due to Soviet nuclear weapons.
• The Soviets want to terminate hostiles, favorable of the U.S. with their intermediate range nuclear forces in Europe.

• For moral and political reasons, the United States does not target the Soviet civilian population as such.
• Millions of civilians and families were building bomb shelters.
• A basic fallout shelter consists of shields that reduce gamma ray exposure by a factor of 1000.

• SDI was Initiated March 23, 1983
• Ronald Reagan was the president of the time.
• Space-and ground-based nuclear x-ray lasers
• SDI could avoid unstable superpower nuclear deterrence
• SDI was on its way to becoming one of the

the largest military research program the US had ever undertaken.

American Reaction Today

• In the U.S. there is 122 fallout shelters.
• Even though fallout shelters prove unworthy of nuclear bombs, they will protect people outside of the blast zone of the detonation.

Ballistic Missile Test

Fall of SDI

The Brilliant Pebbles project was supposed to be the new SDI consisting of Small air based lock-on targeting missile systems that hover in the air waiting for a nuclear warhead to pass on by. As this happens, the pebbles will lock on to the nearest missile. This system required 4.5 billion dollars a year for 10 years.

Fall of SDI

• In 1988 many in Washington predicted that the Strategic Defense Initiative would not survive the Reagan administration.
• The second Reagan administration was spending 3-4 billion dollars a year.