Who do you think had it easier during the space race the Americans or the Russians?

AMKC

For me I think it was the Russians. NASA had Congress to put up with and the American people as we when looking for funding so that slowed there progress down especially when something like the 3 Astranauts on the manned section test got killed in 67. The Russian state was Communist so had none of that to put up with. It was up to there leaders where to spend there money.
I do think the Russians gave up to soon do after NASA got a man to the moon first. Russia should have done the same for there state and then started to build a settlement on the moon and this might have kept the space race going as the next target would naturally have been Mars.
Just imagine where we would be now if Nasa
Or the Russians had got to Mars. There could be colonies up there now but instead we are only still talking about going there and it will be 2030 at the earliest before a manned trip heads there if it ever happens. In some ways I am kind of happy as it means I might get to see it happen but if it had of happened on the 70s, 80s or even 90s I might not have noticed it as much.

knucklehead6

AMKC wrote: »

For me I think it was the Russians. NASA had Congress to put up with and the American people as we when looking for funding so that slowed there progress down especially when something like the 3 Astranauts on the manned section test got killed in 67. The Russian state was Communist so had none of that to put up with. It was up to there leaders where to spend there money.
I do think the Russians gave up to soon do after NASA got a man to the moon first. Russia should have done the same for there state and then started to build a settlement on the moon and this might have kept the space race going as the next target would naturally have been Mars.
Just imagine where we would be now if Nasa
Or the Russians had got to Mars. There could be colonies up there now but instead we are only still talking about going there and it will be 2030 at the earliest before a manned trip heads there if it ever happens. In some ways I am kind of happy as it means I might get to see it happen but if it had of happened on the 70s, 80s or even 90s I might not have noticed it as much.

Youve been watching For all Mankind, haven’t you?

Wibbs

It was crazily expensive in resources and manpower for both. That's why they stopped. America's Apollo setup did develop and build heavy lift rockets and they should have kept that going as the money was spent as such, but the actual Apollo setup itself wasn't sustainable and was very wasteful and risky, but they had to win so... Then they tried the Shuttle as the "cheaper" option for near Earth stuff, but it was doomed to failure from the start as a long term regular thing. Too many compromises. The Soviets figured space stations were the best idea going forward so concentrated on that.

In some ways Apollo and the Moon halted better ideas because it hoovered up all the cash and resources. They had an idea called Dynasoar which was a smaller manned "shuttle" which got cut when Apollo was the thing. If they had continued with that we likely would have had far more efficient and safer and routine earth to orbit spaceplanes by the 1970's. Going to Mars, or even the Moon needs a lot more going on though. Orbit is "easy", going to other bodies in the solar system takes a lot more heavy lifting.

Wibbs

knucklehead6 wrote: »

Youve been watching For all Mankind, haven’t you?

Do not get me started on the daftness of using a Shuttle to go to the moon. :mad::D:D

knucklehead6

Wibbs wrote: »

Do not get me started on the daftness of using a Shuttle to go to the moon. :mad::D:D

I know!! Or re-jigging the lunar orbit of a LEM

It’s in the so bad it’s good category.

Jimbob1977

The Americans had Werner Von Braun and lots of experienced Nazi scientists in their camp.

Weren't too worried about Werner's SS membership.

If it wasn't for Europe destroying itself in World War I or World War 2, I'd reckon Britain, France or Germany would have put a man on the moon decades before the United States.

The United States effectively inherited Nazi rocket propulsion technology.

AMKC

knucklehead6 wrote: »

Youve been watching For all Mankind, haven’t you?

Nope. I did start watching it ages back but way behind now. Am just going to wait till it is on DVD or maybe Blu Ray the whole show and then just buy it to binge watch it over a few nights. How many seasons long is it now?

I am however watching "First Man"

knucklehead6

AMKC wrote: »

Nope. I did start watching it ages back but way behind now. Am just going to wait till it is on DVD or maybe Blu Ray the whole show and then just buy it to binge watch it over a few nights. How many seasons long is it now?

I am however watching "First Man"

There’s one episode left in Season 2. Season 3 has been commissioned

Wibbs

AMKC wrote: »

Nope. I did start watching it ages back but way behind now. Am just going to wait till it is on DVD or maybe Blu Ray the whole show and then just buy it to binge watch it over a few nights. How many seasons long is it now?

I am however watching "First Man"

And thanks to the power of youtube you can even check out the actual approaches and landings of all the Apollo missions to the moon.

That's Apollo 12. I went to the part where they switch on the camera. The crew were friends outside the job and you can hear that in how the two boyos chat to each other. Note the excitement when after the computer(which flew most of it) pitches the LM over and the commander sees the landing zone for the first time.

It's also minus the OTT dramatics of Hollywood's First Man landing sequence, where the ship is jumping around like mad and the huge crater that didn't exist(there was a crater, but not like the star wars one in that flic).

Montage of Feck

The Soviets had the Buran, a rival to the space shuttle but only flew it once.

McGinniesta

Stanley Kubrick

Your Face

The Soviets didn't go to the moon because they didn't want to fight the Nazis again.

peasant

Jimbob1977 wrote: »

The Americans had Werner Von Braun and lots of experienced Nazi scientists in their camp.

So did the Soviets.

After the war, when the US had made sure to get von Braun, some of his leading engineers and all the plans and files of the V2, the actual factories, a good few parts and spares and a lot of German ex rocketeers ended up in the Soviet zone, where they were immediately put to work to replace/re-construct all the missing drawings and tech files and assemble more working V2s.

When it became clear that continuing work on weapons (which is what the A2 was) on German soil would violate international treaties, the whole operation was transferred into the USSR, including 170 German engineers...at gunpoint.

While US propaganda quite happily exploited the "unwilling Nazi" turned American dreamer with TV appearances talking about space, science and his dreams and the US enabling all that..
... USSR propaganda was not so kind and claimed any success for socialism only. They never mentioned "their" Germans

Capt'n Midnight

Montage of Feck wrote: »

The Soviets had the Buran, a rival to the space shuttle but only flew it once.

Buran was a copy of the Shuttle concept. Because the Russian leaders wanted one too. The only valid reason for the big wings on the US Shuttle was to give it enough range to glide back to Vandenburg AFB after a polar orbit over Moscow so conspiracy theory away. Every other mission could be done with smaller wings because there's lots of alternative airports when you are doing a new orbit every 90 minutes and almost no weight was spent on other safety features.

Buran was launched with Energia so no heavy engines to carry and it was flown by remote control.

Instead of SRB's Energia used Zenit boosters which were also used by Sea Launch and rebadged and tweaked as Northrop Grumman's Antares which launches the Cygnus (much of which is made in Italy BTW) for cargo to the ISS.

Energia has put four times the payload into orbit as the original Shuttle could. (Using extra boosters an upgrade could put 200 tonnes to LEO) The US has spent insane money since the 1970's to do the same. SLS may launch later on this year using bits left over from the Shuttle program, many of them used on previous flights.




These days it's a lot easier for US companies when they can use US government money to buy in foreign flight proven kit. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the Americans have used a lot of Russian (and European) hardware some of it stored for decades in warehouses.

uch

I like cake

ShatterAlan

The Russians put the first probe into space, the first man, the first woman. They designed the spacesuits used by NASA and still NASA uses their propulsion engines to get satellites into space.



The space race was run and won by the Russians long ago. Landing on the Moon was just bragging rights. A great feat but easy to beat your chest and give yourself the gold medal when you're the only one in that little dash.

Capt'n Midnight

Sputnik was launched the year after the last German prisoners of war from WWII were allowed to return home. ... Let that sink in for a minute.



The Apollo program was patriotic, "can do" , "not on my watch". For both sides the space race was part of the cold war. There was the death rate of test pilots, and there were 36,000 US deaths in Vietnam before the moon landing. The US put heart monitors on pilots during Vietnam. Combat was less scary than a night landing on a carrier. Brave men.

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
- Alan Shepard



Here's a picture of an Australian Aircraft Carrier HMAS Melbourne there was no room for mistakes back then.

Stovepipe

The great Russian rocket scientist, Korolev, was effectively a prisoner under sentence of death, and his prime aim was to stop Russian engines blowing up on the pad or immediately after take off, which they did with monotonous frequency.They also managed at least one mass killing of their own men when a rocket blew up on the pad, long before it was due to fly and killed dozens of techs gathered around the rocket itself. While a lot of Russian equipment is and was very good, they also tended to build more basic systems. NASA's computers were way ahead. Gagarin had to parachute out of his capsule when he landed back after his flight, as they could not guarantee to be able to land the capsule with him inside it. The whole Russian space programme, allied to it's vast military production, effectively bankrupted them. Even Reagan said it; when asked what factor "won" the Cold War,he simply said; "Money. We spent more than they did".

OldRio

Yuri Gargarin was a hero of mine as a child growing up in the Sixties. Some of those test pilots and cosmonauts, women and men, had bravery which is difficult to quantify.

Basically flying a tin can. Successfully meant living. Failure death.

thomil

Regarding your points @Stovepipe, the Soviets may have had more basic systems, but they certainly come first when it comes to reliability. The first stage of the R-7 Semyorka that launched Sputnik into orbit still forms the first stage of the Soyuz launcher to this very day. The Soyuz capsule itself was designed in the 1960s and is still in use as well, modernised, true, but still the same spacecraft.

As for cosmonauts having to eject before landing, that affected all Vostok cosmonauts and was due to the fact that the reentry module of the Vostok spacecraft was basically a modified camera return module of the USSRs first generation of reconnaissance satellites. The designers at OKB-1 simply couldn't make landing retrorockets work reliably in such a constrained space. Also, given that some Vostok spacecraft were used for relatively long-duration flights, I'd want to get out as soon as possible after reentry. Can you imagine the smell in there after even a four-day flight? :eek:

whisky_galore

OldRio wrote: »

Yuri Gargarin was a hero of mine as a child growing up in the Sixties. Some of those test pilots and cosmonauts, women and men, had bravery which is difficult to quantify.

Basically flying a tin can. Successfully meant living. Failure death.

The first his mum knew he was going into space was when the live coverage came on.
Couldn't tell his family, his wife or anyone, they volunteered to fly some new type of craft, no one told them at the outset they were heading into space.
Cosmonauts wives had to do cleaning jobs to make ends meet.

Astronauts were celebs from the second they were on a space program.

Stovepipe

As for cosmonauts having to eject before landing, that affected all Vostok cosmonauts and was due to the fact that the reentry module of the Vostok spacecraft was basically a modified camera return module of the USSRs first generation of reconnaissance satellites. The designers at OKB-1 simply couldn't make landing retrorockets work reliably in such a constrained space. Also, given that some Vostok spacecraft were used for relatively long-duration flights, I'd want to get out as soon as possible after reentry. Can you imagine the smell in there after even a four-day flight? :eek:[/QUOTE]

They were terrified that the cosmonaut would survive the flight and die in the parachute descent so the system was tested repeatedly until it was about as good as it was going to get. Russian equipment tends to be better designed than Westerners give it credit for and the best Russian gear is as good as anything Western.

Capt'n Midnight

The reasons the Americans were first on the moon, as given by the major Soviet participants.

Started three years late, and they didn't have Korolev to pull strings or tell truth to power, and military had priority.

whysobecause

ShatterAlan wrote: »

The Russians put the first probe into space, the first man, the first woman. They designed the spacesuits used by NASA and still NASA uses their propulsion engines to get satellites into space.



The space race was run and won by the Russians long ago. Landing on the Moon was just bragging rights. A great feat but easy to beat your chest and give yourself the gold medal when you're the only one in that little dash.

They also put the first dog into space.........and then killed him

whysobecause

Valentina Tereshkova, She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, and remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission.

She said last year, that when Space X lands on the moon she would like to be onboard.
Not bad for a woman aged 84.

Stovepipe

and military had priority.[/QUOTE]

Says it all. Anything to do with rockets had top priority and nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines and things like biological weapons got the best scientists and most of the funding. The best materials like stainless steel, nickel, tungsten, titanium, machine tool steel and so on went to rocketry, aerospace, complex weapons like submarines and ballistic missiles and everything else was low priority, such as civil car and bus manufacture, domestic white goods, clothing, leisure goods and so on. I recall reading about the Lada production and when a Russian factory manager was asked about the rust on production vehicles, he said that the sheet metal used for the car had a very high proportion of scrap metal in it's make up and they were unable to get decent steel so had to make do with what they had.

ShatterAlan

whysobecause wrote: »

They also put the first dog into space.........and then killed him

I don't get the point?

(And Laika was a she)