President Ronald Reagan developed a large military capability yet rarely debauched its content in war. Though Star Wars research created new military technology it also produced applications for civilian use proving up the feasibility of advanced concepts. One of those was the mass driver and kinetic weapons technology.
Real conservatives are conservative on war spending too. What Americans really didn’t like about the G.W. Bush administration was the incredibly profligate use of military spending to change a regime in a second world country in which America dropped more bombs than the entire Second World War. The cost to the United States has been estimated to be about 3 trillion dollars including the cost of lifetime V.A. care for injured and traumatized vets, and that was just crazy. The G.W. Bush estimate of the cost of rebuilding Iraq was just 16 billion dollars. After winning reelection President Bush II said he had a lot of political capital to spend-and he meant it with a spending spree approach to transferring wealth to Halliburton and other defense contractors.
Of course conservative Presidents use military force when or where necessary-yet unless they are Genghis Khan emulating war aggressors, they will apply Occam’s razor to conserve military field deployment. Seeking non-military remedies for ongoing and emerging political concerns should be prioritized by conservatives even in an era where liberals have joined with corporatists to prosper from military contracting or networking through Wall Street.
President Obama has generally spent far less on war than the Bush Presidents. Like Ronald Reagan he seems recalcitrant about making military investment convertible, disposable outcome. Not to say that the Obama administration's Middle East policy is top drawer or effective-far from it, and neither has he seen that dividing Europe and Russia won't advance European security against Muslim terrorism. Russia is the strong player able to defend the S.E. flank of Europe from terror ingression rather than the Dutch-who provided the Pakistanis with the technology to construct nuclear weapons, or the British just looking for a few hard targets for head shots and trade advantages. Russia is the strong defense player with a 1200 year commitment to the Ukraine with a real interest in keeping that region free of Muslim expansionism. The United States has proven itself unwilling to effectively defend even its own southern border against illegal immigration and allowed ISIS to take a smorgasbord approach to land grabbing in Iraq and Syria.
However the Obama administration policy of fiscal conservatism on war investment in a better economy would free up public money for space defense research. As it is a tough time financially with clouds on the horizon it may be useful to remix Reagan era Star Wars space research to develop a weapon against the natural threat of incoming asteroids that ought to be deflected lest they destroy life on Earth. Apparently that is a real possibility that human society ought to be prepared to defend against before the need arises. It may be that the electromagnetic mass driver technology could be field tested on the lunar surface and advanced to a state of readiness for rapid deployment on an incoming asteroid.
Actually three mass drivers powered by a small nuclear reactor and using the mass of the asteroid quarried into bite sized chunks for launching could direct the asteroids course away from the Earth with more force than an ion engine. The mass of the asteroid would also be reduced by the continuous removal of rock accelerated through the three mass drivers in the right direction to deflect the asteroid from impact on the Earth. Advances in robotics and programming could make it possible to package asteroid deflection tool kits on the moon ready to journey to incoming asteroids, launching with a mass driver from the moon and accelerated with ion and chemical rocket engines to intercept the threat at a distance.
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