pointing out a serious flaw in Excalibur; he noted that it worked by blowing itself up, so in the event a Soviet anti-satellite weapon approached, it could either blow itself up to attack the ASAT, or allow itself to be blown up by the ASAT. In either case, the Excalibur would be destroyed. Teller soon returned with a solution. In this concept, the Excalibur weapons would be placed on missiles on submarines and launched when needed. Seeing himself increasingly sidelined, Graham left the group in December 1981 to form High Frontier Inc. In March 1982, they published a glossy book on the topic. It claimed that the system could be "fully deployed within five or six years at a minimum cost of some $10–$15 billion." A pre-publication copy was sent to the Air Force, who dismissed it, saying that it "had no technical merit and should be rejected." Early failures, APS report On 23 March 1983, Reagan gave his famous "Star Wars" speech that called on the scientists of the United States to build defenses that would render nuclear weapons obsolete. Over the next year this was formalized as the Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO), and soon, many of the United States weapons laboratories and major defense contractors were exploring a variety of systems to meet this goal. Along with Excalibur and the space-based laser, new proposals included ground-based lasers, various particle-beam weapons and nuclear shaped charges. Through the early phases of SDI, the Smart Rocks concept was ignored by the SDIO. A study by research scientist Ashton Carter (to become Secretary of Defense much later) concluded that the system had "extremely limited capability for boost phase intercept of present Soviet ICBMs and no capability against future MX-like Soviet boosters, even with no Soviet effort to overcome the defense." Graham's connections in Washington's political circles meant the concept was well known in spite of any official indifference. This led to a constant stream of questions by politicians to the SDIO about the system and why they were not working on it. In 1985, Sam Nunn asked James A. Abrahamson, director of the SDIO, about it once again. Abrahamson stated that "he would not recommend that the United States proceed to deploy it." By 1986, many of the systems being studied had run into difficulties. Among these was Teller's Excalibur, which failed several critical tests in 1986. A similar test carried