this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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He wasn't wrong, except that the point of the space race was demonstrating the country's ability to put a missile anywhere on Earth, not to explore space. Once you can send people to the moon and bring them back, you've proven that you can hit anywhere in the world with a missile. Staying longer, going further - those don't change the proof.
Some (many?) people involved were really interested in the scientific value of these efforts, but didnโt realize that the funding was largely for the reasons you mentioned or at least hoped that once they showed results they might excite people enough to keep the funding going.
Yeah, and von Braun was famously hyperfocused on space travel, surely with some blindness about politics.