Missile
Originally developed as weapons during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union spent billions of dollars developing rocket technology which could carry humans into space (and even eventually to the moon). The develoment of this peaceful rocket technology parralled the development of intercontinental ballistic missile technology and was a way of demonstrating to the otherside the potential of ones own rockets.
Those who seek to develop ballistic missiles may claim that their rockets are for peaceful purposes, e.g. are for commercial satellite launching or scientific purposes. However even genuinely peaceful rockets may be converted into weapons, and provide the technological base to do so. Japan for example posseses the means to design and manufacture long range ballistic missiles if she so wishes and is constrained from doing so only by self restraint.
Within peaceful rocket programs different peaceful applications can be seen as having parallel mlitary ones for example the demonstration of the ability to launch multiple satellites with a single laincher can be seen in a military context as having the potential to deploy multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles
Read more about this topic: Dual-use Technology
Famous quotes containing the word missile:
“... the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)