6 ms·

it seems even more odd if you view the space race as mostly being a fig leaf for ICBM development. I find this argument mostly convincing, but if the main goal

it seems even more odd if you view the space race as mostly being a fig leaf for ICBM development. I find this argument mostly convincing, but if the main goal is to build effective warhead delivery systems, why spend so much on manned flight specifically? there's not much of a practical case for building stuff that can take humans all the way to the moon and back. ICBMs don't need nearly as much delta-v nor do they need to keep humans onboard alive, and by far the most useful things to put in space are LEO or GEO satellites.

arethuza 6y ago
President Johnson made a fascinating comment about the space program: I wouldn't want to be quoted on this.... We've spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Yes but the manned space program was very different than the spysat spacelaunch program. If the goal was only unmanned satellites, the space program would have cost a tenth of what it did. just look to the ICBM/SLBM programs, which diverged from the manned rocket programs after only a couple years. The tech looks similar but is actually very different in practice.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    A spy satellite program isn't worth much if your adversary can send astronauts up to mess with them and you can't.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Unless sending people up to mess with a sat costs more than launching its replacement, which would be true of everything short of massive weapons stations. And from day one everyone realized that sending men up to intercept wasnt practical, especially if the target didnt want to be intercepted.
  - avmich 6y ago
    At the beginning of the space race automatic solutions were very limited, and manned spacecrafts were planned to be used for some routine operations, like reconnaissance.
seniorThrowaway 6y ago
Didn't the ICBM development come first? The Mercury and Gemini programs used barely modified ICBM boosters and the engineers at first didn't want to put controls in at all, they were already confident of their ability to maneuver and navigate in orbit. At some point I think the simplest explanation is the correct one - it was a giant contest of wills between the superpowers.
outworlder 6y ago
If countries were companies, the Apollo Program would have got a large portion of its funding from the "Marketing" department. Because that's what it was. It was still money well spent. Far greater returns than all the billions that are sunk in the military each day. In this particular case, I think it started as a means to show off ICBMs (the Sputnik in particular) and I guess spy satellites. But then the race started and it got out of hand. If the adversary has already managed to put a satellite up, you don't go and put yours as it would just get you to parity (at a later date even, so you are actually behind!). What you do is you one-up them. What can you put up there that's better than a satellite? People. But they did that too. What do you do then? Let's put people on the freaking Moon, let's see you top that! Had the USSR managed to land people on the Moon too and this kept escalating, we would have orbital habitats on Europa by now.
nradov 6y ago
By the time of the Apollo program there was very little technology shared from military ICBM programs. ICBMs had moved on to solid fuel for quick response time whereas the civilian manned programs focused on liquid fuel for safety and payload capacity. Those were almost completely different technologies.

arethuza 6y ago

President Johnson made a fascinating comment about the space program: I wouldn't want to be quoted on this.... We've spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap

sandworm101 6y ago
Yes but the manned space program was very different than the spysat spacelaunch program. If the goal was only unmanned satellites, the space program would have cost a tenth of what it did. just look to the ICBM/SLBM programs, which diverged from the manned rocket programs after only a couple years. The tech looks similar but is actually very different in practice.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jrumbut 6y ago
  A spy satellite program isn't worth much if your adversary can send astronauts up to mess with them and you can't.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Unless sending people up to mess with a sat costs more than launching its replacement, which would be true of everything short of massive weapons stations. And from day one everyone realized that sending men up to intercept wasnt practical, especially if the target didnt want to be intercepted.
- avmich 6y ago
  At the beginning of the space race automatic solutions were very limited, and manned spacecrafts were planned to be used for some routine operations, like reconnaissance.

seniorThrowaway 6y ago

Didn't the ICBM development come first? The Mercury and Gemini programs used barely modified ICBM boosters and the engineers at first didn't want to put controls in at all, they were already confident of their ability to maneuver and navigate in orbit. At some point I think the simplest explanation is the correct one - it was a giant contest of wills between the superpowers.

outworlder 6y ago

If countries were companies, the Apollo Program would have got a large portion of its funding from the "Marketing" department. Because that's what it was. It was still money well spent. Far greater returns than all the billions that are sunk in the military each day. In this particular case, I think it started as a means to show off ICBMs (the Sputnik in particular) and I guess spy satellites. But then the race started and it got out of hand. If the adversary has already managed to put a satellite up, you don't go and put yours as it would just get you to parity (at a later date even, so you are actually behind!). What you do is you one-up them. What can you put up there that's better than a satellite? People. But they did that too. What do you do then? Let's put people on the freaking Moon, let's see you top that! Had the USSR managed to land people on the Moon too and this kept escalating, we would have orbital habitats on Europa by now.

nradov 6y ago

By the time of the Apollo program there was very little technology shared from military ICBM programs. ICBMs had moved on to solid fuel for quick response time whereas the civilian manned programs focused on liquid fuel for safety and payload capacity. Those were almost completely different technologies.