/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15854557
You almost got it figured out, but your conclusions about causality and outcomes are completely inverted, the JWST's advancements won't precipitate better intelligence satellites because the research required for its creation explicitly came from military black projects relating to spy satellites, likely decades old when the JWST project started. No new information was gained because it already existed.
Just like how the US Air Force was developing and launching rockets before NASA was even created, with NASA itself just being a spinoff of the Air Force's missile program for publicity sakes. Since Apollo ended, the Air Force has had greater launch capabilities and more advanced rocketry systems than NASA, picrel, especially in the last 2 decades with the space shuttle program ending.
It isn't just Rocketry and space flight where this occurs, pretty much every field, including Mathematics and Physics, sees most of their advancements either directly coming from classified military projects slowly intentionally percolating to the public, or indirectly as a result of said program. It has been this way for all of history, going back as far as the ancient Greeks and Chinese. Archimedes himself attempted to design a weapon that focused solar energy to murder people, as well as other weapons of war. Some quick examples, nearly all of modern: Cryptology, signals processing, nuclear Physics, nuclear Science, Aviation, Material Science, Computing, Networking, Robotics, Automation, Control Systems, Neuro-Science, Psychology, and many many more.
The truth is, Science, Mathematics, and nearly all Technology is a weapon. Thus, the major contributions to them are done/funded primarily by those that wage war. Modern soience worshipers conveniently ignore this fact and its history because they are weak pacifists that hate the 'military industrial complex' because they are told to, despite it being the single greatest actor for improving modern life.

>>9269972

Play Kerbal, which is very, very lenient with DV requirements.

Just getting a single stage bird to orbit is a feat. Putting it on a rocket and sending it up, will give you enough DV to get to the moon and back at most.

X-37 is our realistic "starfighter", and it needs a rocket launch to get it into orbit for it to do its orbital missions.