[bryondowd]

If there's significant overlap with ICBMs I could see it being reasonable from the perspective of maintaining military production readiness.

Imagine you need a bunch of people trained to do X, and machines capable of Y, in order to build your missiles, but you don't need many missiles right now, but if a war against a major power broke out you'd need to ramp up production massively and instantly. Either you keep making missiles you don't need, or you somehow train people and maintain machines without actually using them, either way you're spending just to maintain readiness for no immediate value. Or you find a close enough use where you can get some value by producing something similar enough that you can convert to military use rapidly.

That wouldn't be so much political pork as actually practical. But I know little to nothing in this area, so just speculation.

[panick21_]

> If there's significant overlap with ICBMs I could see it being reasonable from the perspective of maintaining military production readiness.

In the US this is partly historical. The Shuttle style large solids have no practical military application.

In general, I think by now the technology has diverged quite a bit as the requirements for launching potentially humans and ICBMs is quite different. I don't know how closely the technologies are still linked between the solids used on rockets like Vulcan and ICBMs.

In France this is certainty the case for example.

> major power broke out you'd need to ramp up production massively and instantly.

Lets hope we don't need to rapidly ramp up production of ICBMs since they are mostly just used to carry nukes.

If you think its politically necessary to fund that infrastructure just do so with your military budget. Tying down other space activities, specially civilian, is a bad idea.

[MichaelCollins]

> In the US this is partly historical. The Shuttle style large solids have no practical military application.

The huge Space Shuttle SRBs were never an ICBM part themselves. The military angle enters the picture when you realize the SRB fuel is the same fuel used in ICBMs, made by the same company (originally Thiokol, then ATK, which merged with Orbital Sciences to form Orbital ATK, which was then purchased by Northrop Grumman.)

[panick21_]

The fuel itself yes, but the military has no use for huge multi-part boosters.

[MichaelCollins]

You're responding to a comment in which I told you that the Space Shuttle SRBs were never missile parts.

[panick21_]

Yes, I was agreeing with you. But granted, unnecessary comment.

[bandyaboot]

I would think that if you find yourself engaged with a major power, expending your supply of ICBMs, replacing them is probably one of the few things you no longer need to worry about.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Solid fuels have a limited shelf life. There is always low level production to replace expired rockets whether you use them or not.

[ghaff]

And there are also regular tests as systems get upgraded etc.