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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 prog
by 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 agoYes 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 agoA spy satellite program isn't worth much if your adversary can send astronauts up to mess with them and you can't.
- sandworm101 6y agoUnless 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 agoAt 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.