How Russia won the Space race

Rhys Essien

Great documentary now on BBC4.Anyone watching,its on till 10:30.

nokia69

good documentary, but a foolish title

OldRio

nokia69 wrote: »

good documentary, but a foolish title

If anyone missed this I think its repeated on BBC4 later in the week. Very interesting. Nice to see a program from a Russian perspective.
'Foolish title' ? The evidence was all there.

nokia69

OldRio wrote: »

If anyone missed this I think its repeated on BBC4 later in the week. Very interesting. Nice to see a program from a Russian perspective.
'Foolish title' ? The evidence was all there.

well most people would agree that the americans won the race to the moon which was the important race

at one point in the program they admitted that the Russians were just getting cheap firsts, like first woman in space, and I don't really see Mir as being all that impressive

OldRio

The title does not say 'Race to the moon' but 'Space race'.

Sputnik 1 was an incredible achievement. Mind blowing for the time. A satellite in Space sending a signal.
Yuri Gagarin was not just a Russian hero but a World hero. Who would have thought that man could leave this planet? The nearest we got was Flash Gordon at the 'pictures' on a Saturday morning.
Mir not impressive? First of its kind. That is what a race is about.

Maybe it's because I was born in the late 50's but these events were mind blowing to me.

Karl Stein

We're immersed in the western narrative of the 'space race' and thus grow up believing the Moon landing was the winning of it; I've personally come to take this narrative with a pinch of salt.

The Soviets were orbiting men around the Earth at 18,000 Mph when the US was only able to put a man into low Earth orbit for 15 minutes. Was the US manned moon landing an incredible achievement? Absolutely. Did the US win the space race? No.

The Soviet achievements are all the more remarkable when you consider the fact that Russia was a semi-feudal, agrarian nation a few decades earlier.

nokia69

OldRio wrote: »

Mir not impressive? First of its kind. That is what a race is about.

but Mir was not the first space station and they kept in in orbit for far too long, it was little more than a flying junk yard in the end

skylab was better that Mir IMO

Oregano_State

nokia69 wrote: »

but Mir was not the first space station and they kept in in orbit for far too long, it was little more than a flying junk yard in the end

We're not talking about the end though, we're talking about the start, i.e. when it was launched.

beauf

Great program. Much I'd seen before but not put all together and in that context. The tail end bit about Afghan guy was new to me.

namloc1980

nokia69 wrote: »

but Mir was not the first space station and they kept in in orbit for far too long, it was little more than a flying junk yard in the end

skylab was better that Mir IMO

Skylab was better than Mir? On what basis?

nokia69

namloc1980 wrote: »

Skylab was better than Mir? On what basis?

well you can say its just a matter of opinion, but look at the videos of skylab and Mir on youtube and be honest which one would you like to spend a few weeks on

Skylab is a perfect example of whats possible when you have a heavy lift rocket

Hotblack Desiato

OTOH Skylab was really just a clever way of using up surplus Apollo hardware. It was badly damaged during launch, only 3 relatively short missions visited it (due to lack of Apollo CSMs/Saturn Is), in between it was left unoccupied, and in the end was left to become decrepit and burn up, an embarrassment to NASA. Mir had its own issues but at least it was deorbited under control. It was occupied for 10 years continuously. It was the first modular space station and went on to become the first proper international collaboration in manned spaceflight. The Salyut programme had given the Russians experience with living in space, not holidaying there, and Mir built on that.

The Soviets had a lot of unmanned achievements in space too, e.g. first pictures of the far side of the moon and a series of successful Venus probes.

Anyway the programme is on again on Thursday at 2230

Karl Stein

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

The Soviets had a lot of unmanned achievements in space too

Including the first remote controlled rover to land on another world the 'Lunokhod 1'.

During its 322 Earth days of operations, Lunokhod 1 traveled 10.5 km and returned more than 20,000 TV images and 206 high-resolution panoramas. In addition, it performed twenty-five soil analyses with its RIFMA x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and used its penetrometer at 500 different locations.

space.com

stoneill

Russia first manned venture into space was placing Yuri Gagarin into orbit, The US managed a ballistic up down two weeks later.
Russia had the first space walk - Alexi Leonov.
Russia had first woman in space - Valentina Tereshkova.
Russia had first lunar landing and first spacecraft to leave geocentric orbit.
Russia had first landing on Venus - melted about an hour later.

The downfall of the Soviet space program was the death of the Chief Designer Sergei Korolev. His replacement did not have the vision
to continue.
You could say that Stalin killed USSR's hero - it was a broken jaw Korolev got in the Gulag under Stalins purges that caused medical complications during intubation during a routine operation that was his cause of death.

Or you could say he was going to die anyway as his health wasn't great.

Capt'n Midnight

stoneill wrote: »

You could say that Stalin killed USSR's hero

They also got the most senior surgeon to operate rather than the best one.

Skylab had a huge internal volume. But they lost it because , not for the first or last time , they retired their manned launchers. Shuttle was supposed to have boosted it 'cept it was late.

Can't remember the exact quote but it was by a US Astronaut about how getting to the moon was like a dog chasing a parked car , once they "marked" their territory they had no more interest in it.

I've said it many times before that the Americans have a saying "if it works, it's obsolete"


This is why the US have to hitch a ride to ISS using a 1967 Soviet capsule on a 1957 Soviet ICBM

This is why ULA are using Russian engines and given the diameters of the craft probably a lot more than the want to admit

The service module for Orion is based on ESA's ATV

SpaceX is doing new stuff , but much of it is reinventing the wheel given the number of historical boosters the US has had. Also the Russians have launched close to 2,000 of the R7's so they have figured out a few things on the way and have economies of scale that the US still haven't achieved.



Oh yeah the Russians have had problems too, just don't mention lens caps

But in general a lot of comparisons are between retired or planned US kit while the Russians have off the shelf flight tested hardware.


A personal pet hate is people praising VASMIR which on paper beats the Hall effect drives the Russians have been using in orbit for decades. There is a huge "not invented here" thing with US R&D.

still the Boeing space plane that's landed after two years is cool. ( but the Russians had them too )