This is the case with almost all large scale human endeavors. To get things done with lots of people takes compromises. Apollo program was the same way. I assume the pyramids and roman roads and so on as well. Though to be fair at some point once the shuttle program got going someone could have aborted on it and said that really this doesn't make sense.

And the Mercury program, which launched on adapted Redstone ICBMs [0], themselves improvements on V-2s.

An unfunded project that never gets built is objectively worse than a military-funded project.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-11_Redstone#Redstone_der...

If the military-funded project creates $1M worth of value using $1B of funds, the unfunded project is objectively better.

That's what army mapping service essentially did with early radar distance measuring projects. Huge expensive fleet of 18-wheeler trucks failure. And classical surveying methods beat it in every way at the time.

But it was the direct predecessor to microwave communications. It was just portable military distance measuring equipment (like the model-99 dme w/ ~1cm @50km) that used a signal they found easy to piggyback voice and data on. And included that in the field units.

AND 2nd, after a dozen or so more hugely expensive projects (ranging from failure to moderate success to "achieves objectives"), it led to the Airforce NAVSTAR program, which you know as... GPS.

So the question becomes: What was the actual "objective" value provided by those expensive initial radar experiments, despite failing to achieve their direct objective?

It's difficult to say without access to the counterfactual world where GPS was invented based on civilian microwave communication which itself would have evolved from civilian radio communication. We live in a world where the DoD redistributes money away from private industry and towards another sector of private industry, and it is hard to say what would happen if R&D tax laws were changed to move that money back from private military industry R&D to industry-industry R&D.

Maybe microwave transmission, but the economics of GPS or GNSS in general would preclude civilian investment in such an expensive constellation without obvious revenue channels.

And it's moot for both these cases because the technology was needed for direct military applications anyway.

What's the practical or ideological benefit of industry-industry R&D when the military is going to be the only customer, or at least the only paying customer for the first years/decades of use?

I agree with you in general, with it being better for governments not picking the winners of markets or deciding who gets research money.

But military is such a unique (yet universally needed) type of market, that practicality here means treating them as a large customer with unique product needs ( products unlikely to be revenue generating on the public market), even if you don't treat it as direct government allocation or a fixed/manipulated market.

The only way I can think of to avoid that entirely would be some libertarian version of an all private, defense-by-contract type military.

And then you'd have concerns about whether that could hold up to peer adversaries, and dozens of other wildcard concerns.

And sweeping von Braun's Nazi complicity under the rug while others were hanging from the gallows at Nuremberg.

As A German this really bugs me. Von Braun and friends knew exactly what was going on in their production facilities, didn't care and never had to confront their role in this.

"Once the rockets are up who cares where they come down, that's not my department" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

don't say that he's hyp-o-critical, say rather that he's a-po-litical

(For those who aren't familiar with 1967 humor: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro&t=17s )

Right, this is basically a "human politics" thing.

A pretty typical big government project to me. Lot's of power centers pulling in different directions, little focus on actual needs.

Space X does better work in part because it can make its own decisions and focus on long term goals.

That's the stereotype of government promoted by private business like SpaceX, so they can get the funding shifted from NASA to them. But no private business has accomplished in space anything approaching what government has. NASA has been spectacularly successful, orders of magnitude beyond any explorers in human history.

We're talking about just one of many successses on this page.

OTOH, they also influenced it in many good ways that you don't hear about.

E.g., my astronomy professor mentioned to me in a conversation that the original design for the Hubble was smaller due to expected budget, but that it got up-sized because it turned out that they could piggy-back off of other relevant military development, and iirc, that went beyond just the larger available size of the shuttle bay.

I thought the military money was promised but never ended being provided, making it doubly tragic.