Scientists’ ‘Star Wars’ Protests Not Likely to Cripple Program

The recent pledge by more than 6,500 scientists not to accept funds for research on the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” project is unlikely to cripple the effort to build the space-based missile defense system, supporters and opponents of the program say.

But critics expressed hope in interviews Wednesday that the opposition to the program would slow congressional funding for research on the Strategic Defense Initiative, as the project is formally known.

One year after beginning a drive to win commitments by scientists that they would not accept federal grants for research on the project, organizers of the effort announced last week that the 6,500 scientists had signed a “pledge of non-participation.”

Cites Percentage of Physicists

John Kogut, a physics professor at the University of Illinois-Urbana, said last week that pledge was signed by 57% of the faculty members at the nation’s top 20 physics departments, as ranked by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Among them were 3,700 university faculty members and 2,800 graduate students, says Lisbeth Gronlund, a Cornell University physics graduate student. But, although the pledge “certainly . . . will have an effect,” she conceded that “there are lots of people still willing to work on it.”

Says Signers Not Germane

James Ionson, chief scientist at the Pentagon’s Strategic Defense Initiative Office, which oversees the program, said that the pledge “will not have any impact on the program whatsoever.” He said that “the vast majority of the people who signed that petition are working in disciplines that are not germane to the Strategic Defense Initiative.”

Col. Leon T. DeLorme, spokesman for the SDI office, said the division of the project working with universities had received 3,000 unsolicited proposals for basic research in the first months of 1986 and had sufficient money to fund only 10% of them.