Comment Re:Gov't project (Score 1) 516
All the early rockets in the space race were later used as ICMBs (mercury -> atlas, gemeni -> titan, both became ICBMs). Except the saturn V most prior mature rokets became ICBMs and NASA did the development. You might head over to wikipedia and read a bit about it. Usually it's not clearly stated but if you compare the military programmes with the NASA's you'll start to see that the space race actually survived because of the military value (and the obvious political one, but that wasn't the only reason).