What did the CIA know about the Soviet Space Programme 50 years ago?
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 5 December 1962.
The first NIE dedicated solely to the Soviet Space Program was far less cautious than the combined missile-space report a year earlier. Manned rendezvous and docking was now expected by 1963; and a manned lunar landing by 1967 to 1968. There didn’t seem to be any concrete intelligence that the Soviets were pursuing development of bigger boosters or a moon program (they weren’t), but these were based on a presumed Soviet capability to “concentrate human and economic resources on priority objectives” (which space exploration never was). 1.88mb PDF download available here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2vNx5pJAhkEcGJ1ai1yZ0xtZEE
