No, they were thinking about how to effectively kill as much people as possible at a distance.
Remember that apollo program (just like soviet one) was an offshoot of military wanting to erase a nation on the other side of the world with efficiency.
The Mercury and Gemini programs, sure - both of them used ICBM as their boosters. So did the Vostok, Vokshod, and Soyuz programs.
Apollo was very different. The Saturn booster is so much larger and more complicated than any reasonable ICBM would be, it would be gloriously inefficient at that role.
The Apollo program was a cold war thing. But it wasn't a military thing, it was a different kind of competition.
If you take a look at the vintage Rockets of the World poster (https://venngage-wordpress-gallery.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/...) you can see how much bigger the N1 and Saturn V (spanning the last two rows), compared to the earlier boosters on the third and fourth rows.
Apollo was absolutely a part of a military thing (as I said, an offshoot) as well and it's also a reason why it died before finishing when its military use became questionable.
Well, from that perspective, what isn't a military thing?
The internet is a communication to survive nuclear war. Forklifts and pallets were to simplify military logistics. The highway system is to provide point to point connections without risking losing a railway. Cell phones are kinda private, but a lot of the components came from special hardware for the military.
I'm sure there's lots of neat tech we use everyday that isn't rooted in military funding, I just can't think of any at the moment.
Not really. By the time Apollo came around, erasing the nation on the other side of the world was pretty much a solved problem. 400,000 people were employed on Apollo and they weren't military (well, a few were) and were not thinking about nuclear weapons.
Even Space Shuttle later was driven (and funded) heavily by military applications, a lot of Apollo funding came from wish of improving missile guidance systems as well.
You're trying to make a distinction where there is none - it's the same bag of money. Which also why the money quickly dried up when rocket guidance, indeed, became a solved problem. Before Apollo was finished.
Interestingly I bet the kill thinkers killed fewer than the ad thinkers. Ads make people buy more stuff. More stuff makes people fat and unhealthy and sad and increase the mortality rate.
There is no MAD deterrence to limit advertising: only keeping up with the leader.
Once you've figured out how to efficiently kill most people on the planet, you can decrease investment in the endeavor and just keep a finger hovered over the button.
Apollo wasn't at all a military program - it was about as far from military as you could get, at that time, and still use huge rockets. And would have been a massive waste of money, if it were. There was a military space program, but Apollo was not part of it. It was a national prestige program.
> Kennedy as president had little direct interest in the U.S. space program. He was not a visionary enraptured with the romantic image of the last American frontier in space and consumed by the adventure of exploring the unknown. He was, on the other hand, a Cold Warrior with a keen sense of Realpolitik in foreign affairs, and worked hard to maintain balance of power and spheres of influence in American/Soviet relations. The Soviet Union's non-military accomplishments in space, therefore, forced Kennedy to respond and to serve notice that the U.S. was every bit as capable in the space arena as the Soviets. Of course, to prove this fact, Kennedy had to be willing to commit national resources to NASA and the civil space program. The Cold War realities of the time, therefore, served as the primary vehicle for an expansion of NASA's activities and for the definition of Project Apollo as the premier civil space effort of the nation. Even more significant, from Kennedy's perspective the Cold War necessitated the expansion of the military space program, especially the development of ICBMs and satellite reconnaissance systems.2
Remember that apollo program (just like soviet one) was an offshoot of military wanting to erase a nation on the other side of the world with efficiency.