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Comment by mapt | Hacker News Reader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)

The Polyus is a great example of my point (and that Wikipedia page does not provide an abundance of references, although I enjoyed the Buran book). It was a failed mission whose expectations were drastically downgraded several times and launched seemingly for the sole purpose of posturing on the international stage. All of the primary technology like the Energia rockets were simply oversized versions of their predecessors like the Proton rocket, except designed in the mid 70s and cobbled together in the 80s.

but doesn't that show that russia used their limited resources to inefficiently respond to SDI, even if it's just for posture?

"The 1983 announcement by the US of their SDI program prompted further political and financial support for the satellite interceptor program."

Its extremely likely that the Soviet Union used far more resources to maintain control over the small republics and it's conventional military presence around the world than it did in tail end of the space race, the former two becoming even more expensive with the political uprisings and occupation of Afghanistan in the 80s. We're talking about 1-2 orders of magnitude here (no citations but the USSR was more populous than the United States so the numbers would be in the ballpark).

You can argue that this is the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back but there were many, much bigger straws that had already done so, it's just that camel took a while to collapse under its own momentum.

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