> doing it all in about 2 decades is quite impressive for a small country Not that small. France was about 48M people in 1965, the US 195M; a factor 4. And the

> doing it all in about 2 decades is quite impressive for a small country Not that small. France was about 48M people in 1965, the US 195M; a factor 4. And the US satellite effort was a rushed, uncoordinated affair split between competing projects by Army and Navy, so the effective factor was more like 2.