Our missile shield, more science fiction than science, has become a metaphor for our passive, defensive, retro crouch.
Ronald Reagan, not a bibliophile, was stimulated to support the Star Wars missile system by science fiction and the comics.
To ensure the strongest team to address the program's deficiencies, the Senate needs to overcome conservative opposition and confirm Philip Coyle, a leading advocate of reforming missile defense, as a White House science adviser.
The idea that the earth could be showered with missiles from space, common enough in 1950s science fiction, seems to have receded.
While interstellar missiles and X-Wing dogfights are still science fiction, in recent months Israel has signalled its intention to leave the door open to weaponizing space.
Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Harvard University professor and Cuban Missile Crisis expert Graham Allison said the invasion would have almost certainly led to the outbreak World War III, and the potential loss of hundreds of millions of lives.
Missile defense, of course, is not just rocket science, as Graham, a tenacious military and foreign affairs reporter for The Washington Post, recounts with resolute evenhandedness; it has far-reaching military, diplomatic and economic ripples as well.
President Vest is conflicted because he sits on the White House council of science advisers and "knows that the missile defense system won't work and that his own organization has lied about its capabilities," Dr. Postol added.
But defense officials acknowledge that the planning documents are constantly updated with the latest science and intelligence estimates of ballistic missiles.
You saw that, I think, on the three issues during the Bush Administration that were seen as having high science and technology content: One was ballistic missile defense, one was stem cells, and one was climate change.
