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You need to check out the electronics that the Soviets had on board the spacecraft after Sputnik. The kit they had to get to the moon, Venus and Mars was quite

You need to check out the electronics that the Soviets had on board the spacecraft after Sputnik. The kit they had to get to the moon, Venus and Mars was quite special in those analogue days, if you only know digital electronics then it is even more impressive. Hence bugging a few American typewriters the Soviet way results in such a cool solution. The task was probably relatively easy compared to space. The space race story we tell ourselves is not entirely true, the Russians didn't have 'better Germans than what the Americans had', actually their rocket science was far ahead of the amateur German efforts and they didn't need help from the Nazis. Meanwhile, in America they pushed their guys to one side and insisted that the Nazi work be what was the basis of the ICBM/space program. It was the American rockets that were relatively crude, not the Soviet ones. So cut them some slack, bespoke electronics with clever radio wave stuff was something that the Soviets were extremely good at, mass production a different story.

dagenleg 9y ago
> actually their rocket science was far ahead of the amateur German efforts That's not really what happened. At the end of the war, Germany had the absolute lead in the rocket development, except maybe the rocket artillery. Ever heard of V-2 rocket? It was the most advanced thing at the time. It's true though that USSR didn't use the German talent as much as Americans did, immediately after the war, but I think it's mostly due to the security concerns and ideological reasons. Why have Germans building rockets when you can use brilliant Korolev instead.
azernik 9y ago
The Soviet advantage wasn't really even in better rocket science - it was in a greater applicability of military knowledge. In addition to making earlier investments in ICBMs (because of their lack of bases for strategic bombers), the Soviets also couldn't miniaturize their warheads as much and so had to build larger-payload ICBMs to launch them. As long as the space race was all about Earth orbit, where repurposed ICBMs like the Soviet R-7 or the American Atlas and Titan-II were all that was necessary, the Soviets could do more piggybacking on their existing engineering. Once it came to designing a new rocket purely for space exploration, the Soviets didn't have the resources to pull off something like the Saturn V. This advantage played out militarily as well - when MIRVs became practical, Soviet missiles that had been built for the older larger Soviet warheads were capable of throwing more MIRVed warheads than American missiles.

dagenleg 9y ago

> actually their rocket science was far ahead of the amateur German efforts That's not really what happened. At the end of the war, Germany had the absolute lead in the rocket development, except maybe the rocket artillery. Ever heard of V-2 rocket? It was the most advanced thing at the time. It's true though that USSR didn't use the German talent as much as Americans did, immediately after the war, but I think it's mostly due to the security concerns and ideological reasons. Why have Germans building rockets when you can use brilliant Korolev instead.

azernik 9y ago

The Soviet advantage wasn't really even in better rocket science - it was in a greater applicability of military knowledge. In addition to making earlier investments in ICBMs (because of their lack of bases for strategic bombers), the Soviets also couldn't miniaturize their warheads as much and so had to build larger-payload ICBMs to launch them. As long as the space race was all about Earth orbit, where repurposed ICBMs like the Soviet R-7 or the American Atlas and Titan-II were all that was necessary, the Soviets could do more piggybacking on their existing engineering. Once it came to designing a new rocket purely for space exploration, the Soviets didn't have the resources to pull off something like the Saturn V. This advantage played out militarily as well - when MIRVs became practical, Soviet missiles that had been built for the older larger Soviet warheads were capable of throwing more MIRVed warheads than American missiles.