Star Warriors: A Penetrating Look into the Lives of the Young Scientists Behind Our Space Age Weaponry

by William J. Broad

These are the young scientists of Livermore Laboratory—physics and math geniuses conducting the most far-reaching nuclear experiments since the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Their work on the development of third generation weapons with powerful beams meant to flash through the heavens at the speed of light destroying enemy missiles inspired President Reagan's Star Wars proposal. The author takes us into their world as they labor to bring this vision to fruition. Theirs is an eerie skunk works where all-night bouts of research are conducted with the most sophisticated instruments on earth.

Genres: Nonfiction

245 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1985

About the author

William J. Broad is a best-selling author and a senior writer at The New York Times. In more than thirty years as a science journalist, he has written hundreds of front-page articles and won every major journalistic award in print and film. His reporting shows unusual depth and breadth—everything from exploding stars and the secret life of marine mammals to the spread of nuclear arms and why the Titanic sank so fast. The Best American Science Writing, a yearly anthology, has twice featured his work.

He joined The Times in 1983 and before that worked in Washington for Science, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Broad has won two Pulitzer Prizes with Times colleagues, as well as an Emmy and a DuPont. He won the Pulitzers for coverage of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the feasibility of antimissile arms. In 2002, he won the Emmy (PBS Nova) for a documentary that detailed the threat of germ terrorism. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005 for articles written with Times colleague David E. Sanger on nuclear proliferation. In 2007, he shared a DuPont Award (The Discovery Channel) from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the television documentary, Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?

Broad is the author or co-author of eight books, most recently The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards (Simon & Schuster, 2012), a New York Times bestseller. His books have been translated into dozens of languages. His other titles include Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (Simon & Schuster, 2001), a number-one New York Times bestseller; The Universe Below: Discovering the Secrets of the Deep Sea (Simon & Schuster, 1997); Teller's War: The Top-Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception (Simon & Schuster, 1992); and Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (Simon & Schuster, 1982).

Broad's reporting has taken him to Paris and Vienna, Brazil and Ecuador, Kiev and Kazakhstan. In December 1991, he was among the last Westerners to see the Soviet hammer and sickle flying over the Kremlin.

Broad's media appearances include Larry King Live, The Charlie Rose Show, The Discovery Channel, Nova, The History Channel, and National Public Radio. His speaking engagements have ranged from the U.S. Navy in Washington, to the Knickerbocker Club in New York, to the Monterey Aquarium in California. He has also given talks at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.

Broad earned a master's degree in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has three adult children and lives with his wife in the New York metropolitan area.

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Star Warriors is a detailed look at a very strange group of people in a very strange place. O Group was a small team of about twenty to forty scientists, most in their mid-20s, mostly white, mostly with Caltech and MIT pedigrees, and all male, at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in 1985. Under the direction of Lowell Wood, O Group worked on applications for third generation nuclear weapons, primarily the "Star Wars" missile defense project based around bomb pumped X-ray lasers. The team also dabbled in supercomputer programming, fusion research, and starship design. Broad uses a week of interviews with O Group to provide flesh to what's often an abstract debate about nuclear strategy and technology policy.

The picture that emerges is of an elite scientific team, sharply competitive with each other and hand-picked by Lowell Wood through his control of the Hertz Fellowship (Wood was in line to succeed Edward Teller as director of LLL before a classification scandal broke his career momentum). What drives these people is the desire to be the best, to prove it mathematically, as when the soul of the group, Peter Hagelstein, made the key calculations that proved X-ray lasers were possible. These are no political naifs, but hardened Cold Warriors who see the Soviet Union as fundamentally evil, and their work as a way to gain a strategic edge. Unlike Reagan, who imagined a perfect shield, they know the limits of any system, and believe that the possibility of merely blunting a nuclear strike might prevent escalation to nuclear war, and that forcing the Soviets to compete on defense would further drain their resources. But above all else, it seems to be the coolness of the physics, of the way that the basic laws of reality break down at a thermonuclear shock front, and how that energy can be harnessed to make dreams real.

Over 30 years on, Star Warriors is a historical curiosity. It still stands as a fascinating look at some very interesting scientists, right next to The Soul of a New Machine.

[Leongin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man šis kūrinys labiau panašus į 256 puslapių mokslinį+politinį straipnį, o ne į romaną. Nors straipsniui ar mokslinei literatūrai per daug beletristikos... Bet matyt, nieko kito ir negalima tikėtis iš NYT mokslinio apžvalgininko. Plečiantis akiratį - vienareikšmiškai; įtraukiantis ar intriguojantis - nemanau; ar skaityčiau šio autoriaus straipsnius - taip; ar skaityčiau jo literatūros darbus - ačiū, bet ne.

[Christophe Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

History of USA's project to build a defense system, made of nuclear power and lasers...
About young scientists, who got Hertz fellowship, working hard.
Mentions my colleague Larry West a lot.

[Taylor Grubbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author spends a week interviewing the quirky but brilliant scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I like how the chapters are split by each day of the week. Very informative on some of the details and obstacles that were faced during the now defunct Star Wars program of the Reagan era. The author provides an objective view of the scientists and the lab without demonizing them or overly praising them which I appreciated.