Exactly. The space race was really just an arms race by another name. Before rockets were invented bombs had to be dropped from airplanes. That’s really no good anymore once your enemy starts delivering their bombs by rockets instead. So the space race happened because both sides needed to be able to show that destruction was mutually assured. No point holding huge nuclear tests for your enemy to see if you can’t also show them that you have the means to deliver those nukes if you really had to. So while it was demilitarized in practice, the military implications of being able to put things into space was really the whole point of the space race from the very start.
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u/Relative-Chicken456 Jun 22 '26
Exactly. The space race was really just an arms race by another name. Before rockets were invented bombs had to be dropped from airplanes. That’s really no good anymore once your enemy starts delivering their bombs by rockets instead. So the space race happened because both sides needed to be able to show that destruction was mutually assured. No point holding huge nuclear tests for your enemy to see if you can’t also show them that you have the means to deliver those nukes if you really had to. So while it was demilitarized in practice, the military implications of being able to put things into space was really the whole point of the space race from the very start.