Word: rayed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...problem, charges Roy Woodruff, the former director of weapons research at Livermore, is that Teller oversold the X-ray laser, a proposed Star Wars device under development at the lab, to President Reagan. Not only were some of Teller's statements "technically incorrect," claims Woodruff, but "the optimistic schedules proposed by Dr. Teller for deployment of an X-ray laser weapon are impossible." Woodruff's accusations have split the lab into bitter factions; they have also cast doubt on the scientific integrity of Livermore, a facility founded with Teller's support in 1952, and cast a shadow over Reagan...
Tensions over the development of the X-ray laser might have remained behind closed doors if Woodruff had not been demoted by Livermore Director Roger Batzel in what Woodruff claims was retaliation for trying to put a lid on Teller. Prior to his transfer, Woodruff was responsible for proposed SDI weapons like the X-ray laser, a device that was supposed to channel the intense X rays from a nuclear bomb into a beam of radiation. In theory, the X rays would be capable of destroying enemy ICBMs in mid-flight. But tests showed that although such devices work...
...saying the laser was ready for "engineering phase" -- implying that only a few details remained to be worked out before the weapon could be built. And as late as 1987, Lowell Wood, a manager of weapons development at Livermore and Teller's protege, told a House subcommittee how "X-ray lasers can be used to destroy any type of platforms in space, including defensive platforms, so the counterdefensive role is being explored extensively, and it is this role in which X-ray lasers might be expected to first come into play...
Teller and Wood, for their part, refuse to comment directly on Woodruff's charges. Even so, Teller told TIME last week, "I'm most unhappy to see a great scientific discovery, the X-ray laser, is reported not for its merits or its possible use for defense, but as an object of controversy." Contends Livermore Physicist Hugh DeWitt: "Woodruff did a damn good job of blowing the whistle on the extravagant claims of those two men." And while Woodruff's employment status has been resolved, the issues have not. The conclusions of the GAO investigation are expected by June...
Editorial Director: Ray Cave...