Class #5: From the Moon to Mars: LaRouche, Reagan, and the SDI

Featured speakers: Benjamin Deniston and Paul Gallagher. On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan made a decision—against strong resistance from many of his advisers—to make Lyndon LaRouche’s policy of beam weapon defense, the “Strategic Defense Initiative,” official U.S. policy. Had the SDI been implemented as Reagan and LaRouche envisioned, nuclear weapons would have been rendered “impotent and obsolete,” and the possibility of nuclear war a relic humanity’s past. The SDI was part of an overall vision for economic transformation, subsumed under a Moon-Mars mission orientation, which was the central feature of LaRouche’s presidential campaigns in the 1980s. Today, President Trump’s commitment to a Moon-to-Mars mission, and the great potential for international cooperation in the development and exploration of space, once again offers humanity an opportunity to embark on a new era of potentially limitless progress.