Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
Another question: What's the best translation of петушиться?
I think you got it right, it means "behave like a rooster". Obviously, the usage could be stretched that way or another depending on the context. In my day-to-day vocabulary that word is used in a sense of acting in a proactively aggresive manner; more specifically, being disproportionally aggresive so that nobody will even remotely contemplate to mess around with them. Could it be applied in the exact same sense to the situation? Maybe, if you stretch the context by insisting that the entire space program for both superpowers was primarily concerned with the development of the reliable delivery method of the WMD into each other territory dwarfing the scientific purposes. So, each advancement in space meant potentially more military power, or something like that.

Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
My FIRST guess was that it must have something to do with prison homosexuality!
It's been said the accidential usage of that word in prison would most likely mean some grave consequences to the speaker.