Apr 23 1985
From The Space Library
"Space and Society-Progress and Promise" was the theme of the twenty-second Space Congress, a nonprofit technical symposium sponsored by the Canaveral Council of Technical Societies, April 23-26 in Cocoa Beach, Florida, Spaceport News reported. Speakers discussed new space initiatives, including operation and robotics in space, advanced missions and transportation, Space Station plans and development, and private sector investment and participation in space activities. Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, director of the Strategic Defense Office, would speak about the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
The traditional "Meet the Astronauts" session would be open to the public, as would be a one-man play entitled Leviathan 99 by Ray Bradbury, a noted science fiction writer. (Spaceport News, Apr 12/86, 8)
Anthony Battista, the U.S. House Armed Services R&D subcommittee senior staff adviser, said on April 3 that a "reasonable" funding effort for the Reagan Administration's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program would be between $2.2 and $3 billion for FY 86, Defense Daily reported. Battista noted that the reductions in SDI should be taken from surveillance, acquisition, and targeting, which represented about $1.5 billion of the $3.7 billion requested by the administration and that "the one troublesome part about SDI, from a command and control point of view right now, is that there is not enough emphasis on the hardening of detectors to live in the thermo-nuclear environment. I'm worried about the ability of missiles to live in that environment." However, in testimony before the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee, Under Secretary of Defense Fred lkle said on April 23 that a reduction in the FY 86 SDI budget would be extremely harmful to the program and a poor policy decision. SDI "is not some optional experiment, to be continued or curtailed depending on short-term budgetary or arms control considerations," he said. "It is a vital long-term effort to strengthen our ability to prevent nuclear war.
". .. If we slow down the SDI in this early phase, we would not have the answers in the next decade that we need to chart our long-term strategy and arms control policy." The Administration planned to spend $4.9 billion in FY 87 and $16 billion in FY 88-89 on the program. (DID, Apr 3/85, 185, 24/85, 305)
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