ASK DR. SCHUND (C)1988 Alan M. Schwartz Dr. Schund, what is the Strategic Defense Initiative? SDI is such an incredible intellectual and physical effort that any country attempting to bankrupt themselves before we do to beat us to the punch, will bankrupt themselves before we do and lose. SDI is a bargaining chip, much in the manner of Premier Gorbachev's fedora, or the issue of attack pelicans and the B-1 strategic bomber. SDI assures full employment for slightly spacey physicists and engineers, and lots of government accountants and kickback investigators. Goodness, there are more fancy playthings than a Toys 'R' Us warehouse! Now remember, about 5000 warheads on intercontinental missiles, cruise missiles, bombers, and other stuff plus about an equal number of otherwise identical but harmless decoys will be coming in by Russian Express. About 10 warheads will wipe out LA from Long Beach to the Rose Bowl to Simi Valley. Liftoff to touchdown is about 30 minutes by space. No problem! First, we have to detect launching, communicate it to the SDI people and hardware, and have them stand tall as Americans! This currently takes about 45 minutes in the absence of cloud cover. Extrapolating curves of detection and communication time from World War I shows that a reaction time of less then ten milliseconds is expected by 2150 AD. In the meantime we have strongly cautioned the Soviet Union that a sneak attack will be viewed with great official displeasure, jeopardizing their Most Favored Nation trade status. Then there is that most incredible SDI weaponry, which has been simulated to the point where it mostly works, sometimes, except under conditions of excessive wind, cloud cover, darkness, or frost: The RAILGUN! Remember how you used to break paper clips in half and zing them from a rubber band? Now consider a million ampere current blasting through a narrow plasma channel, hurling a paper clip at an oncoming warhead at a speed of many miles per second! Existing railguns can fire many times per day, limited only by the hour or so it takes to charge up their capacitor banks without blacking out the entire country's electric power grid. Thousands of railguns will be boosted into tight orbit, leaving only 9000 or so warheads and decoys for the next super weapon to destroy. The INFRARED LASER! Imagine thousand gallon tanks of superpressured hydrogen and fluorine. Now increase the price a thousandfold by substituting deuterium for ordinary hydrogen. Viola! -- a billion watt chemical laser that can destroy many warheads a minute if they are not too reflective or are not insulated. Thousands of infrared lasers will be boosted into tight orbit, leaving only about 8000 warheads and decoys for the next superweapon to destroy. The SMART ROCK! Rock quarries across the entire nation have been subjected to intensive standardized testing. The most hopeful candidates, from pebbles to boulders, have been put into Project HeadStart disguised as underprivileged children from Pacoima. Thousands of smart rocks will be followed though college and trained as rocket pilots to ram headfirst into enemy warheads and decoys, leaving only about 7000 warheads and decoys for the next superweapon to destroy. The MINIMISSILE! Thousands of miniature superboosting rockets, each about the size of a rutabaga, will be tipped with micro nuclear warheads to meet the incoming enemy weapons head on! Current projections have most of this taking place over Canada. The limited range of the minimissiles, about ten miles, does lead to some interesting questions regarding where they are based and where they will explode. The X-RAY LASER! Powered by massive nuclear blasts, thousands of x-ray lasers will be boosted into tight earth orbit. If those dirty commies try anything sneaky, we will ignite the x-ray lasers, removing the atmosphere from half the planet, making it impossible for their bombers to fly to the US of A! Intensive analysis shows that of 5000 hostile warheads launched, fewer than 1000 will make it to our noble nation, and many of those will have mechanical or electronic malfunctions. On the average, fewer than 9.8 nuclear warheads are expected to make it to the LA area, statistically defeating Soviet plans for total annihilation of the Los Angeles Basin. However, when the totality of SDI hardware is boosted into tight orbit, everything will be touching everywhere, giving absolute, 100% protection from Soviet aggressive acts. The utter importance of inventing, perfecting, producing and orbiting everything SDI asks for is therefore obvious, and not subject to political whims or rational analysis. This, then, is the Strategic Defense Initiative.