See Spiderman in the new Captain America: Civil War trailer

Brace yourself for the response coming.

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You use funding/resources you can get, not those you would want.

Would delay rocketry development quite significantly.

…though we could then have got some other fun toys, like those nuclear ramjet cruise missiles and heavy bombers powered with reactors…

I don’t think that’d be the case. Sabotages on vehicles to be deployed merely lowered their reliability. The sabotages would have to be done in the R&D stage.

In peacetime he’d hardly get much resources.

So you’re saying the use of slave labor is justifiable if the ends are “useful” enough in your opinion?

Don’t beat around it if that’s your opinion. Just say it. You’ve said it before for Nazi medical experimentation after all.

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As long as white dudes get to go to space who cares about the rest of the world… /s

Also, always relevant:

And, BTW, I think we can have both social justice and a space program. It would help if we stopped spending so much cash on bombing brown bodies around the world.

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Who cares if white or not? At this moment I am rooting for Chinese as they seem to have quite some potential. Do they count as white?

If you already have said slave labor around, it is not if it is used but where it is used. Refuse the offer, and the resource goes to somebody else.

…also, shame Russkies dropped the ball with the N-1. Loss of Korolyov was not a good thing.

A nice tidbit. Use of liquid metal as a hydraulic fluid:
Sodium–potassium alloy - Wikipedia
Was to be employed here:
Supersonic Low Altitude Missile - Wikipedia

…also, the Redhead’s delta aircraft could be powered not by a tesseract but by a reactor. Possibly doable with 60’s tech.

We wimpified since.

A note to my future self. The Red Skull is covered by Godwins law.

I don’t think I care enough to carry on here, Or I care too much. It’s one or the other.

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Red Skull’s Corollary: If the Red Skull and WWII hydra is mentioned as a comparison, Godwin’s Law has been invoked.

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We’re not talking about now, we’re talking about the roots of the space race. Which until relatively recently in the US, was pretty white and male. The Russians did slightly better on gender, with Valentine Tereshkova in 1963. Examinig and understanding the structures that helped to build the space race matter, as it will help us to not repeat them in the future. Heron’s critique was more than valid and should be incorporated into how we fund programs like NASA going forward. I don’t believe it’s an either/or.

As for now, lots of first and second world countries are developing space programs and yes, that includes places like China, Japan, and India. But by this time, the program was already well-established, and built in part on systems of oppression.

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We both know this thread direction is doomed. I’ll leave it to you.

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Weapons research. Well duh.

But look around yourself. Pretty much everything has its roots in military research.

No. It doesn’t. Nor does the sometimes help stuff that comes from the military sector justify or excuse war crimes.

Sometimes? Pretty much all the foundations of modern solid-state electronics. Microwave tech. Foundations of everything aerospace. Lots of metallurgy and materials engineering. Logistics. Food packaging. And more, more and way WAY more.

And lots of chemistry. Namely nitrogen chemistry; the Haber-Bosch process was of utmost military importance when it was being developed; now it is a workhorse of fertilizers production.

…also, fun book.

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Yes, because those are literally the only things made ever. And again recognizing the contributions doesn’t mean we ignore the violence or war crimes.

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That was a real triumph of American socialism over Soviet competitive markets.

No, really. The Russians had competing design bureaus - not too much different than American government defendant military contractors - making their space hardware, competing for contracts and political patronage. The people running the bigger companies (Korolyov, Glushko, Chelomei) hated each other. There was little cooperation, a lot of duplication of effort, and more than a bit of sabotaging each other’s efforts.

The American government on the other had dictated How It Would Be Done, assigned everyone a role, and put James Webb in charge. With the Saturn V, one company built the first stage, another built the first stage engines, another built the second stage, another built the second stage engines, another built the interstage ring that held flight computers and batteries, etc. The LEM was built by Grumman, the Command/Service Module by North American Aviation, etc. It was one big communal effort.

And this was all was Lyndon Johnson’s big socialist way of dragging the American south into the 20th century. Rocket design in Alabama, rocket manufacturing in New Orleans, solid rocket booster manufacturing in Utah, the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, mission control in Houston, a rocket testing facility in Mississippi, launches in Florida, and other space labs, centers, and manufacturing facilities all over the south.

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Medical tech. Medical procedures including triage. All nuclear energetics. Standardized technology with replaceable parts. Name it and there’s some link to pew pew.

But these in turn won’t make the tech any less useful nor less cool.

Isn’t a bomber merely a kind of just-in-time door-to-door cargo delivery?

No. It’s often mass murder. You may not care, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a real ethical problem that needs to be understood.

Yes.

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

The engines, airframes, aerodynamics, guidance systems (“Battle of the Beams” as one little episode worth mentioning), all the wide palette of fun payload types both conventional and the even better kinds, much more fun. Life is too short.

Okay, whatever. You’re smarter than me and mass murder doesn’t matter.

Have a good day.

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Those weren’t built on slave labor.

Don’t conflate, for example, DARPA research with Nazi war crimes and slave labor as if they were the same thing.

Is that a bigger or a smaller problem than throwing the results on other people’s heads?