Good stuff. Very promising. Reagan had a start on it with the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but the subsequent administrations put it in the freezer because it would upset the Mutual Assured Destruction paradigm. The SDI was based on a layered defense, which derived from the High Frontier study (and also from carrier battle group defense architecture). The big enabler, known in the 80s but not mentioned here, is the huge decrease in launch costs attained by SpaceX. That had been a financial backbreaker, but not now.
Good stuff. Very promising. Reagan had a start on it with the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but the subsequent administrations put it in the freezer because it would upset the Mutual Assured Destruction paradigm. The SDI was based on a layered defense, which derived from the High Frontier study (and also from carrier battle group defense architecture). The big enabler, known in the 80s but not mentioned here, is the huge decrease in launch costs attained by SpaceX. That had been a financial backbreaker, but not now.