From: "John Beamish" 

I think you're misreading my point.

As I said, once you've gone to orbit and then returned then there's little
else that a military would want.  So why continue with a civilian program? 
Because it brings propaganda benefits.  The mil benefits as you pointed out
(and I took for granted so didn't bother mentioning them) come
 from sputnik-like operations (carried out by the mil) and clearly
mil-focused operations (carried out, as you say, at Vandenberg and many
other locations).

As for the heavy-lift vehicles ... so?  There's not a single mil use of a
Saturn V that I can recall in recent years so Saturn-style heavy-lift is
nice but is covered by a wide variety of other launch vehicles.

The fascination of Brazil, Ukraine and others with civie space efforts is
interesting but unimportant.  About 75,000 containers go through US ports
daily.  A GPS, a nuke and a container are much better.  Total deniablilty
too since there's no missle track to give yourself away.

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 05:17:26 -0500, Adam field.near the bridge">
 wrote:


>
> Riiiight....
>
> & Sputnik was an interesting civilian effort on the part of the SU to
> explore science...
>
>
> Large lift vehicles lead to better surveillance satellites etc.etc.
>
> Edwards is...(A) A Nasa facility or (B) an Airforce facility ?
>
> Vandenberg is....?
>
> Right across a creek from Kennedy is.....Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
>
> France has supported Ariane because of a deep love of....... (a) science
> (b) it's nuclear deterrent
>
> Brazil.......Ukraine.....odd how nuke capable countries develop such a
> deep love of civie space efforts at a national level.
>
> etc.

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