NavList:

Sean, that's the basic outline of the story as I remember it, too. This re-telling is suggesting a sort of ironic chain of events --the Soviet triumph of Sputnik enabled better targeting of Soviet cities-- which strikes me as reaching a little bit (yet for the sake of a good, memorable story, which has value of itself). Clearly if Sputnik had not "beeped" or if Sputnik had never been launched, the same satellite Doppler trick, essential to later satellite navigation, would still have been developed, and the missiles would still have found their targets.

Maybe it's worth nothing here, too, that early Polaris missile designs depended on inertial navigation corrected by automated celestial sightings. Did the satellite system entirely replace the celestial-aided system? Or was it kept as a backup to the satellites?? Maybe your subsim friends will know? :)

Frank Reed