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I recently watched a documentary about the space race, which mostly focused on von Braun and Korolev. As I was watching it, it seemed like the Soviets had a hu

I recently watched a documentary about the space race, which mostly focused on von Braun and Korolev. As I was watching it, it seemed like the Soviets had a huge advantage of secrecy. The Americans never knew what they were doing. But perhaps the constant media attention for the US held them accountable. Going further off-topic, the fact that Korolev died because he spent years in a work camp due to the dumbest of political spitefulness is just depressing. From what I can tell, Korolev could have single-handedly won the space race for the Soviet Union - too bad they killed him.

digi_owl 10y ago
One may wonder that one should be worried that the more the media profess their political independence, the less likely it is to be true.
- MegaButts 10y ago
  I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.
chadgeidel 10y ago
Could be a "retcon" but I always heard we (the US) opened up the media on our space program as a sort of "marketing program" to show how awesome we were (on the world stage generally and specifically to the Soviets).
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I'm pretty confident there's some truth to this. The core reasons may have had less to do with marketing than practicality, but at a minimum the government saw an opportunity and grabbed hold. As for the lack of initial secrecy, that may have just been a practical consequence of why we won. NASA and JPL opened subcomponent development to private industry. At least in propellant development, this meant both research contracts and a general understanding that someone coming up with particularly good products could expect a massive government payout. It produced great results and even got private investors to foot a large research bill. It also had the consequence that the work was rather less secret than it might have been - especially the failures, which were generally shopped around to other buyers if they had any interesting properties. But it worked out pretty well overall: even with Russia getting info about US efforts, the rate of new research was still impressive enough to be thoroughly competitive. Anyone looking for an internal account of the (propellant) story might enjoy Ignition. It's free here, though Chrome can't handle the pdf: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Space programs had immense propaganda value in those days. In the US, we rewired our whole primary education system in response to Sputnik. Then we structured our lunar exploration program as an unsustainable "race" for the sake of showmanship rather than science. This is one of the handier arguments to use against moon-landing deniers. If the Russians had the slightest reason to believe that we weren't doing exactly what we said we were doing, they'd still be laughing at us.
  - vkou 10y ago
    > Then we structured our lunar exploration program as an unsustainable "race" for the sake of showmanship rather than science. The entire Soviet space program was an unsustainable exercise in political showmanship, and 'Me first!' moments. Consider the visiting cosmonaut program, the first woman in space (Who was also the... last woman in space, for the subsequent two decades.) Consider the secrecy surrounding launches (To avoid getting egg on your face, if the mission fails/is aborted...) Fortunately (Or unfortunately), if it weren't for political showmanship, neither country would have had a space program.

digi_owl 10y ago

One may wonder that one should be worried that the more the media profess their political independence, the less likely it is to be true.

MegaButts 10y ago
I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.

chadgeidel 10y ago

Could be a "retcon" but I always heard we (the US) opened up the media on our space program as a sort of "marketing program" to show how awesome we were (on the world stage generally and specifically to the Soviets).

Bartweiss 10y ago
I'm pretty confident there's some truth to this. The core reasons may have had less to do with marketing than practicality, but at a minimum the government saw an opportunity and grabbed hold. As for the lack of initial secrecy, that may have just been a practical consequence of why we won. NASA and JPL opened subcomponent development to private industry. At least in propellant development, this meant both research contracts and a general understanding that someone coming up with particularly good products could expect a massive government payout. It produced great results and even got private investors to foot a large research bill. It also had the consequence that the work was rather less secret than it might have been - especially the failures, which were generally shopped around to other buyers if they had any interesting properties. But it worked out pretty well overall: even with Russia getting info about US efforts, the rate of new research was still impressive enough to be thoroughly competitive. Anyone looking for an internal account of the (propellant) story might enjoy Ignition. It's free here, though Chrome can't handle the pdf: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
CamperBob2 10y ago
Space programs had immense propaganda value in those days. In the US, we rewired our whole primary education system in response to Sputnik. Then we structured our lunar exploration program as an unsustainable "race" for the sake of showmanship rather than science. This is one of the handier arguments to use against moon-landing deniers. If the Russians had the slightest reason to believe that we weren't doing exactly what we said we were doing, they'd still be laughing at us.
- vkou 10y ago
  > Then we structured our lunar exploration program as an unsustainable "race" for the sake of showmanship rather than science. The entire Soviet space program was an unsustainable exercise in political showmanship, and 'Me first!' moments. Consider the visiting cosmonaut program, the first woman in space (Who was also the... last woman in space, for the subsequent two decades.) Consider the secrecy surrounding launches (To avoid getting egg on your face, if the mission fails/is aborted...) Fortunately (Or unfortunately), if it weren't for political showmanship, neither country would have had a space program.