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Sounds like a rather weak comparison, as USSR did manage to get a set of impressive results in space - at least as American specialists were characterizing them

• hueving 11y ago
  Like what? I'm aware that they were early, but did they accomplish more once the US was landing on the moon?
  • moron4hire 11y ago
    They got several probes onto Mars. That's just off the top of my head, though. The Soviet space program was no joke. Though it may have been a combination of brute force and revisionist history over their failings. I personally suspect there are a lot more human corpses in orbit than anyone knows about.
    • avmich 11y ago
      Well, USSR had a really hard time with Mars landers. AFAIK, they got just one landed - and it stopped working shortly after that. But that one landed before Vikings.
      • CamperBob2 11y ago
        People forget how Mars was known as a graveyard for probes for many years. It's only fairly recently that anyone including the US has been able to deliver payloads to Mars with any reliability.
    • aninhumer 11y ago
      >I personally suspect there are a lot more human corpses in orbit than anyone knows about. I wouldn't be so sure, since we kind of have to know about them so we don't crash into them.
      • hueving 11y ago
        Well they would be officially registered as unmanned craft.
  • tim333 11y ago
    They landed probes on Venus that sent back photos. No one else has done that. And it's not the easiest thing given the surface temperature is 462C.
    • azernik 11y ago
      Look on the bright side - at least you don't need parachutes!
      • tim333 11y ago
        They did use parachutes a bit eg. Venera 14: "After entering the atmosphere a parachute was deployed. At an altitude of about 50 km the parachute was released and simple airbraking was used the rest of the way to the surface." The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 94x Earths so it slows stuff quite well. It survived 57 minutes before cooking. (Wikipedia)
        • azernik 11y ago
          Heh. True. What struck me when reading about these probes was more the final descent - dense balls of metal and electronics like the Venera probes had terminal velocities around a walking pace.
  • ehnto 11y ago
    They were also pioneering in the space station/space habitat arena. We have the Russians to thank for a lot of the technology aboard the ISS, both when it was being built and to this day.
  • avmich 11y ago
    Once US was landing on the moon? What kind of achievements you'd like to have? Planetary probes, like Lunokhods - several weeks of Moon exploration? Or Luna-16 - automatic probe which brought lunar soil to Earth? You can say that's less impressive than Apollos, and I'd agree, but that still different things - which USA couldn't do at the time, and those programs had some advantages over Apollos too. Or a series of Venera probes, including landers? Mastery of automated docking? Orbital stations - starting with Salyut-1 - with myriads of experiments (medical, industrial etc.)? Rocket engines - more advanced than American ones by such criteria as working process (gas-gas was tested during 1960's in RD-270 with single chamber thrust rather similar to F-1), Isp and mass ratio (NK-33), total thrust (RD-170)? VEGA comet fly-by? By which criteria these don't count?
    • edem 11y ago
      Actually a Venera lander was the first and only (so far) which returned a picture from the surface of Venus. Brilliant engineering imho. Not to mention the MIR space station.
  • akhatri_aus 11y ago
    There's also the fact they were the first in space with a true orbit. Whereas Alan Shepard was simply on a ballistic trajectory, much like Bezos's launch a couple of weeks ago. Also Mir.. They still have more knowledge when it comes to staying in space for longer periods of time. Landing on Venus.. The US's one up is landing on the moon.