Stuf4 wrote:
Sending people to orbit the Earth or go to the Moon requires big
reliable powerful rockets, precisely the same technology you need to
carry a nuclear warhead half way around the planet to destroy your
enemy's largest cities.

Really? I thought that one of the reasons the US was initially
"behind" in the space race was it didn't have particularly large
rockets and it didn't have partiularly large rockets because its
nuclear weapons were small enough to be carried to their target(s) by
not particularly large rockets.

The US didn't need the Saturn V (nor even the 1B I suspect) to get a
nuclear weapon to Russia, and the Soviet Union didn't need an N1 to
get their weapons to the United States.

I'll certainly agree that the space race was a front of the cold war,
but one of "Our system can do things better than the other guy's
system" not "So we can lob nuclear weapons." Certainly the moon race
battle of the space race.

rick jones
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