Space exploration and the nuclear shield of the motherland

Last week I rummaged to “press a little article” on a Habr about my vision of the development of space. Then laziness won, the fact that I am not a direct participant in the events and the suspicion that a wave “someone is wrong on the Internet” picks up and carries me away.
However, the topic has surfaced again and not at its best. Article A brief history of space exploration authorship Sergei Kalenik and the desire to get an invite to Habr, still forced me to sit down and write these lines. I would like the engineering resource to discuss more and know the engineering side of the issue. In addition, the topic is strongly associated with the development of electronics and computer equipment.
There is, not even my opinion, that space exploration is directly related and is even a by-product of the creation of the “nuclear shield of the motherland”.

Quite briefly about myself, I lived a bit in the USSR, according to my feelings I didn’t eat him much, rather took the edge. He graduated from the University of Dnepropetrovsk, specialty, "Dynamics and strength of machines." Among the teachers were direct participants in the creation of the “nuclear shield of the motherland”. The curator brought and showed a part of the lunar landing module, in the development of which he took part. So romance was for those who were looking for. Preparing to create shells, such as rockets and submarines. He worked a little on his specialty in the Yuzhnoye design bureau, where he was widely known for creating an ICBM called the “Satan” by the Americans. For some reason, it happened that I was interested in various weapons. Since it was not possible to be a direct participant of significant historical events, my information will be more analytical from open sources, but I will try to fantasize less.
Here we will have to look a little into the history of the issue, as well as to speculate on the topic of weapons.
In my opinion, the newest history of jet propulsion in the volumes and forces of interest to the current topic of the article begins, in my opinion, immediately before the Second World War. In countries that then stood on opposite sides of the front, there were groups of scientists and engineers who created engines with jet propulsion. Such works were carried out including in the USSR, the USA, Germany. In particular, the well-known comrade Korolyov and other lesser-known comrades in Germany, the well-known von Braun in Germany, worked on the topic. As far as I remember, Germany at that time had a jet engine with the greatest burden. I think we can say that Germany had an advantage that influenced the alignment of forces in the industry and many years later.
Now about the weapons.
So it goes with humanity that they invest a lot of effort and money in creating more sophisticated and technically advanced means of destroying their own kind. The Second World War seems to have been nicknamed the “motor” war.
During the Second World War, technologies such as radar, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, guided missiles were brought to practical combat use. There were projects of intercontinental ballistic missiles and even orbital "ships". I think it’s hard to argue that according to the existence and application of such means, Germany was ahead of the rest.
V-1 and V-2 are well-known to many, but I am sure that a much smaller number of people know that the British conducted an analysis of the effectiveness of using various means of delivery based on the UK bombing information. As far as I remember, the analysis showed that the development of cruise missiles would be the most economically viable (as far as I remember, the effectiveness of the bombers at that time was better, but there were problems with the pilots), the ballistic V-2 were practically useless, since they could not hit the mark.
This is where concepts such as delivery system, efficiency, deployment, and technology begin to waltz together.
There is a bomb, there are means of delivering this bomb to the heads of the enemy.
As practice has shown, the delivery of aviation has its own problems, weather, navigation, accuracy, vulnerability from air defense systems, training of pilots in the end. The missiles had no problems with the crews, but with accuracy at large distances it was significantly worse than the aircraft. In order to inflict as much damage as possible, and at the same time to compensate for problems with precision guidance, the military sought to increase the power of bombs. But just to increase their size is also impossible. Almost everyone came to a certain maximum above which, of course it was possible to be thrust, but it was practically impractical, it spun about a tonne, both for aircraft bombs and for rockets. Thus, the development of the use of large bomb armaments, logically went in several directions, the development of the bomb itself, the development of delivery systems.
We tried to make the bomb more powerful, which resulted in a large size and weight, respectively, the delivery vehicles need a load-carrying capacity, but I also want a larger range, and if people don’t risk (letting the missiles go) it's great. By the way, how do people in these flying bombs come from? Why was the crew sitting on tons of explosives? And everything is simple, there was not at first another way. You can see that the operator in the person’s face is not needed. Man must DOOM'an, and the machine work. But complex systems needed to be managed and there was nothing else to do but create a cabin and put a person into it. From kamikaze not so far and gone ...
Thus, at the end of the Second World War, this situation developed.
The common enemy is defeated and insurmountable disagreements between “communist Russia” and the allies reappear.
For reasons of waging war overseas, the Americans had the most developed strategic bomber fleet in the world and the very, and possibly the most developed ocean navy. Base in Europe on the lands of the allies and liberated countries.
And here comes the nuclear weapons.
To be continued…

Picture at the beginning of an article from Wikipedia.
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Literature.

Chertok B.E. Rockets and people (in 4 vols.) - M .: Mashinostroenie, 1999

The book about the South Design Bureau:
Called by time. From confrontation to international cooperation.