> "Most all of what NASA does or has ever done has directly benefited the Department of Defense." People often overstate this. For instance, when pointing out

> "Most all of what NASA does or has ever done has directly benefited the Department of Defense." People often overstate this. For instance, when pointing out that the Mercury and Gemini programs used ICBM boosters, people sometimes insinuate that NASA was in fact developing those rockets for the military and all the manned spaceflight stuff was just a nice cover story to make the rockets seem benign. In fact, the rockets were already in military use by the time NASA got their hands on them. Those IBCMs were not created using NASA as a PR cover-story. They were weapons from day one which were later repurposed for civilian use. Another big example is the Saturn V. Unlike it's predecessors, it was never an ICBM. NASA designed that one from the ground up for lifting people. Of course there are more military applications for rockets than implementing ICBMs. Satellites have obvious military applications, so any sort of space launch technology will have military applications and anybody who advances the state of the art for launching satellites will be, in that sense, contributing to the advance of military technology.