[deccan]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Re: The Teller interview in the Economist. What exactly is inherantly immoral about spending money on technology that does not currently exsist? That's what research and development is all about. At the start of the Manhattan project noone knew for sure the bomb would work. The same with the airplane, tanks, guns, any piece of weapons technology. And any civilian technology also for that matter.

The Stratregic Defense Initiative was a massive program to advance the technology needed to achieve a missle shield. Debate the morality of having a missle shield if you want, but once the decision is made to develop one, saying it's imorral to spend the money to research it is a bit odd.

Shrug. The author of that letter was implying (whether or not he is justified in that I wouldn't know) that Teller knew all along that it wouldn't work and yet advised Reagan to go for it just the same.

And presumably the American taxpayers wanted more than just advance technology in return for their tax dollars, such as say a practical and working missile defense system, preferably while it could be useful.