Orphans in Space: Forgotten Films from the Final Frontier
special edition for Roger That! 2021
Zenith Star: Experiments in Space (Martin Marietta, 1987) 
8 min., color, sound, video.
Source: U.S. Department of Defense
In January 1987, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization launched a classified research program code-named Zenith Star. Its never-realized mission was to develop an unmanned, space-based laser system capable of destroying in-flight ballistic missiles. One of many SDI projects, Zenith Star best represented the futuristic, if not science fictional, concept that both proponents and critics characterized as President Reagan’s “Star Wars” weaponry: lasers in outer space destroying multiple enemy (Soviet) missiles, each armed with a nuclear warhead aimed at Earth (America).
On November 24, Reagan visited the Martin Marietta Astronautics facility in Littleton, Colorado. Standing before a mockup of a vessel that supposedly would be built to carry a laser generator into orbit, Reagan asserted that a missile shield was “a moral as well as a scientific endeavor.” In addressing company employees, he was laying the groundwork for a White House summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev two weeks later.
Sound bites from Reagan’s speech bookend this corporate video, which bears no production credits, only the corporate name Martin Marietta. We can only speculate about its actual viewership or circulation, but the video was clearly an in-house production meant to explain and to win support for this controversial and costly project. Stylistically conventional, the piece uses a dry, fact-laced narration delivered by a deep male voice, scored by canned music. Zenith Star‘s reliance on computer animations showing how the technology would work, in theory, makes it short on persuasion. Scientists, in fact, were of divided opinion about whether or not the project could ever work.
Reagan’s background as a spokesman for sponsored media, particularly for General Electric, has often been cited as part of his cold warrior identity and his voice for the American military-industrial complex. Yet little is understood about the role that videos advocating government policy continued to play into the late twentieth century. At the time of Zenith Star, for example, the National Security Council screened a 20-minute film for the president as part of his briefing on Gorbachev policies. Also, on the day of Reagan’s visit to the Martin Marietta plant, the Washington Post reported he had previously screened the half-hour film SDI: A Prospect for Peace (1987). The American Defense Preparedness Association, created to connect government personnel with defense contractors, produced this polished piece with $500,000 from companies involved in SDI R&D, including Martin Marietta, Lockheed Missiles, and TRW. In reply, the White House videotaped a message to the association, with Reagan telling them the movie was “worth four stars.” This pro-Star Wars advocacy film subsequently received international distribution via the U.S. Information Agency, alongside SDI: The Technical Challenge (1986). Both are now housed at the National Archives.
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Scott Lowther, aerospace engineer and historian at Aerospace Projects Review (www.up-ship.com) provided a technical report on Zenith Star for this note by Dan Streible.
Preservation note by Jonah Volk
Zenith Star exists as a BetaSP videotape from a Department of Defense collection.