The Pentagon, Star Wars, and Stan Meyer's water fuel cell

"The Pentagon flew a lieutenant colonel in last week to look at Meyer's invention. There's talk of possibly using it in the Star Wars defense program and to run Army tanks." That's WTVN Channel 6 in Columbus, Ohio, c. 1985. Star Wars was the Strategic Defense Initiative, which President Reagan announced on 23 March 1983: lasers and particle beams in orbit to stop nuclear missiles. At Deer Creek in 1985 Stan Meyer pitched his water fuel cell for it: "the water fuel cell releasing the atomic energy is phenomenal… because the fuel cell is non-radioactive." The problem he was pointing at was real. Weapons in orbit need enormous electrical power, and there is nowhere to refuel. The Pentagon's answer was SP-100, a space nuclear reactor program started in 1983 by the Defense Department, the Energy Department and NASA, with SDI as its main customer. The GAO found SDI's power requirements were much greater than SP-100 had demonstrated it could produce; it never reached flight hardware and was terminated in 1994. What powers a weapon in space is still an open question. Stan's answer was water.

About the voices. The narrator is NeuralStan, an AI voice the archive uses for its made films. Where you hear Stan Meyer, it is Stan: every word of his is cut from an original recording, and nothing he says was synthesised.

Sources

• WTVN Channel 6, Columbus, Ohio · c. 1985
• Stan Meyer · Deer Creek, Ohio · 1985
• President Reagan's SDI address, 23 March 1983 · U.S. government · public domain
• Space laser defense concept · U.S. Air Force · public domain
• WTVN Channel 6 news report, Columbus, Ohio, c. 1985 (YouTube VC3NefiL-64), at 1:10
• Stan Meyer, lecture, Deer Creek, Ohio, 1985, at 1:10:23 — stanslegacy.com
• GAO, Challenges Facing Space Reactor Power Systems Development (T-NSIAD-92-15)
• SP-100 (DOD/DOE/NASA, 1983–1994) — Wikipedia; Primack, Science & Global Security vol. 1
• Photos: Reagan SDI address, 23 March 1983 (U.S. federal government, public domain); Space Laser Satellite Defense System concept (U.S. Air Force, public domain)