Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Brilliant Pebbles wasn't about hitting targets on the ground. Its aim was to destroy mid-course ICBMs simply by hitting them with a fast-moving massive projectile (given the speeds involved, it wouldn't need to be that massive). The projectile would be 'brilliant' in the sense that it would have all the target sensing, propulsion and guidance systems onboard, rather than being controlled remotely.
During the late 80's I was working in the US on another SDI project (on the sensing side) and that was when the use of massive projectiles took over from the proposal to melt ICBMs using space-based X-ray lasers powered by nuclear bombs. That was an idea which makes extreme audiophoolia look entirely reasonable, and compared with it Brilliant Pebbles looked very straightforward indeed.
Cheers,
GJ
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