Reagan’s search for space-based options to enhance America’s military had context prompted the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy to convene at [Larry] Niven’s house. [Jerry] Pournelle chaired the meeting, and the result of a three-day weekend was an ominously titled document: “Space: The Crucial Frontier.”
Pournelle’s preamble for the policy, published in 1981, calls space “our most valuable natural resource” and a place that opens up “significant and possibly decisive military and economic advantages.”
“We worked all weekend and produced a paper for the transition team, then at the president’s request we started in on a plan for after inauguration at another meeting,” Pournelle wrote on his blog. “The president read the full reports, which strongly recommended Strategic Defense. In 1983 he made his Star Wars speech. It included several phrases from the Council reports.”
Yep. He even requested recommendations from SciFi authors of the time who were part of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy.