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And the Saturn V only had enough lifting capacity because the Air Force had issued a requirement to Rocketdyne back in 1955 for an engine powerful enough to deliver the huge H-bombs in use at the time. Within a few years, nuclear weapons researchers had figured out how to build lighter weapons so the huge F-1 engine was no longer needed for ICBMs, but fortunately it was ready for use in the Apollo program. The USSR had nothing comparable.


Well, the USSR did something similar - for a while you could only really sell a new space rocket by branding it as an ICBM.

Even the bloody 700 ton UR-500 which became the Proton eventually piggybacked on this, marked on paper as a 50-100 megaton warhead ICBM!

But looks like the Americans were thinking even bigger. :-)




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