I wouldn't say that nothing useful was gained. It appears to have furthered our sensor technology quite a bit. True, it was never going to work as intended, but Reagan didn't know that. This is the same guy that was terrified by the film WarGames, so of course he wanted the SDI program. He was a shitty president for many reasons, I wouldn't say that SDI was one of them.

[–] RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

True, it was never going to work as intended, but Reagan didn’t know that.

Sure he did. Do you really think he didn't have any advisors or scientists telling him what a stupid idea it was? The point was never for it to work, just to funnel money weapons contractors.

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know how much he understood due to the Alzheimer's. It wasn't obvious in his first term, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was being affected.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Given that he called it the Star Wars program, I'm pretty sure what happened was that he just saw Return of the Jedi at the cinema and thought it'd be great if you had his own death star.

I wouldn't be surprised if his crazy dementia filled ass, tried telling people the Darth Vader was going to come down from the planet Vulcan and fry his brain even further if he didn't get his damn Death Star.