It was 1983, it was the time of the Cold War and Caspar Weinberger proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (IDE) to Ronald Reagan, this project consisted of building a system that would detect missiles sent by the then Soviet Union and from space intercept them. That is, it was about building a galactic shield which would give the United States an overwhelming advantage over the USSR and could represent the overcoming of the Doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.
That idea that at that time could seem unreal, could never be crystallized. The technological advances were still in a rudimentary state and they could not make it concrete, in addition, the economic expenditure that the United States had to make was extremely burdensome. That is why the project presented by Caspar Weinberger was popularly known as star Wars, resembling it with the saga started by George Lucas in 1977.
Today is very different. Just take a look at the progress made in hypersonic weapons Russia and China have been developing and they are leaving the United States of America in the rear.
The hypersonic weapons They are so called because they break several times the speed of sound, that is, they can travel at more than 1,235.5 km / h. China has tested weapons that travel at nearly 6 times the speed of sound:
The Chinese government announced this week that it had successfully tested the Starry Sky-2 for the first time, a device that flew, according to Beijing authorities, at 7,344 kilometers per hour.
For its part, Russia has Avangar missiles, which can reach distances of 24,140 km / h, that is, almost 20 times the speed of sound!
The Russian Defense Ministry also assured that it would soon have the Avangard ready, a missile system that could cover intercontinental distances at a hypersonic speed of 24,140 kilometers per hour.
It seems that we are facing the prolegomena of a new arms race, which, if not stopped, would once again put humanity at risk, just as the one carried out between the United States and the former Soviet Union in the Cold War did. , a stage in which, the only sure thing was the mutual destruction between those two super powers and most likely the end of humanity itself.
Recently several newspapers reported that Russia had destroyed an old satellite that had been in orbit since 1982, this in a series of military exercises in that country, leaving a trail of approximately 1,500 debris of space debris, which put the space station at serious risk. international. This military exercise was classified as “reckless” by the United States.
For their part, the Russians have argued that other powers such as the United States and China have carried out the same military exercises. “The Russian maneuver created the largest new field of space debris since 2007, when China launched a missile at one of its old weather satellites unleashing a cloud of some 2,300 pieces of space debris.”
The 21st century has brought great technological advancements unimaginable in the time of Caspar Weinberger. If in those times the star Wars Due to the high costs that this represented and because much of the technology that our species has now was non-existent at that time, we could ask ourselves a simple question: Will the super powers advance towards an arms race in space that will take humanity towards a real space war? The new generations may not have known the fear that a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union could imply or the anguish that the missile crisis represented.Will future generations experience the fear of a non-fictional star wars that put in risk its existence?
It is truly pathetic how a species that has had a unique and extraordinary encephalization process is creating more and more sophisticated weapons to self-extinguish.
mgm
