The Cuban Missile Crisis is three months behind us and we survived it.

I’ve been sitting with the relationship between the space race and the arms race, trying to understand it clearly.

The rockets are the same technology. The Saturn V is not an ICBM, but the Atlas rocket that John Glenn flew on is an ICBM. The Soviet N1 lunar rocket is derived from the same engineering tradition as the Soviet SS-6, which launched Sputnik and which was also the world’s first operational intercontinental ballistic missile.

This is not coincidence. It’s the same physics problem: put a large mass on a small rocket and send it far away very fast. Whether that mass is a nuclear warhead or a chimpanzee is a policy decision, not an engineering one.

The deterrence argument for nuclear weapons goes: if both sides have enough weapons to destroy each other no matter who strikes first, neither side will strike. This is called mutually assured destruction, which has the apt acronym MAD, and it is the reason we didn’t have World War III in October 1962. Kennedy had nuclear weapons. Khrushchev had nuclear weapons. Neither was willing to launch first, knowing that launching first didn’t mean winning.

The space program runs on top of this deterrence structure. The rockets that could reach Moscow are the same rockets that can reach the Moon. The engineers who make the Moon missions work are the same engineers who design the ICBM guidance systems. The satellite reconnaissance that found the Cuban missiles is flown by the same spacecraft technology that will someday photograph Mars.

I don’t know what to do with this. It’s the condition we live in. The space program is genuinely inspiring and is also embedded in a military-industrial structure designed to deliver nuclear warheads. Both are true.

What I choose to focus on is the part that’s inspiring. Not because the military part doesn’t matter — it does — but because I can’t change it, and I can appreciate the inspiring part without pretending the rest away.

I’m grateful we survived October 1962. I’m grateful the rockets are also going to the Moon.