GOOD READING

How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete by Dartmouth professor and space scientist Robert Jastrow (Little, Brown & Co, hdbd., 175 pp., $15.95), displaces all other references this month. It is not 15.95 times better than the original $1 booklet by that title (34 pp., still available from High Frontier, 1010 Vermont Ave NW/#1000, Wash., DC 20005), but then, the marginal (additional unit) cost of some things increases drastically, for example, the cost of attacking the defense described in the book, even if it is imperfect. Anyone who does not read this book deserves to be taken in by the alternative strategies of surrendering to the Soviets or of killing 30 million Russians in revenge for 100 million dead Americans.

Students of energy will meet some old acquaintances who oppose the idea of defending freedom as adamantly as they oppose clean and cheap energy. Foremost among them, of course, is the Union of "Concerned" "Scientists." The chart below, taken from the June 85 High Frontier newsletter (address above), shows the number of satellites needed for defense. The accepted result (accepted by Rand, Los Alamos, General Research, and Livermore Lab.) is not more than 90, and possibly only 45; the points are estimated by the UCS, who had to revise their figures when they were proven grossly in error at public hearings, but who fall back on them anyway when brainwashing the uninformed.