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Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy. USSR failed badly once it was time to go forward. Especially on electronics and computers. We shouldn't under

by mantas 9y ago

Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy. USSR failed badly once it was time to go forward. Especially on electronics and computers. We shouldn't underestimate what focused dictatorships are capable of. They're bloody effective.

realusername 9y ago
> Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy That's easy to say now but no other country achieved that at that time. Especially not in a such a short time, it was an impressive feat.
- mantas 9y ago
  Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based. But they had quite a few smart people. The only lacking thing was push from the government to industrialize. Let alone they were far from catching up with the West by the time WW2 started or at any other point in their history. It’s impressive in the same way that holocaust is impressive.
  - realusername 9y ago
    > And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland. > Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time. One of the main argument of the communists at that time was actually to point out the failures of capitalism in Asia as why capitalism would never work. At that time the industrialisation receipe did not work for a lot of countries and plenty of people believed the industrialisation of the West could not be reproduced, and especially not with capitalism. Everything is obvious in hindsight, it's how history work, you would create your own country now, it would not take that much time to industrialise it with modern techniques. The Soviets managed to take one of the least developed agricultural country of Europe (comparatively worse that current African countries) and transform it into a global superpower while other countries failed to even industrialise, this isn't a small feat at all.
    - mantas 9y ago
      > That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland. They did have factories. In fact, factories in Petrograd were one of the hotbeds of revolutionary mind. Railroad in more densely populated areas. Electric power plants did exist here and there. St Petersburg or Moscow were rather similar to cities of similar size in the West. Countryside was just too sparsely populated to do anything with it. > But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time Succeeded by what measure? GDP? Satisfaction of citizens? Soviet Union had abnormally large amount of people working in agriculture all the way till the fall. Consumer industry never even came close to West. Sure, if you focus on military alone and put oppressive state apparatus behind it, with a lot of natural resources, you can have a damn sweet army. But the rest will crumble. And it did. > transform it into a global superpower Russia was already a super power. Purely by sheer size and manpower. They had some great minds in science in arts as well. The 19th century super powers fell in first half of 20th century thanks to the raise of national identities and human rights. Making vast colonies too expensive to maintain in all sorts of ways. This gave birth to 2 superpowers that ruled the world in 2nd half of 20th century. USA avoided the fall because they were built on freedom and humanity (to certain extent, obviously) to begin with. USSR just avoided all of that thanks to totalitarian regime.
AsyncAwait 9y ago
So, you're saying that being first in space wasn't moving forward? > Especially on electronics and computers. I strongly suspect that was due to lack of resources for research, rather than lack of ability, as by the time there was a serious focus on these areas, the economy wasn't doing so well.
- mantas 9y ago
  Computer research was more because Soviet elite didn't believe in computing. Thus resources were allocated differently. Sicne there was no free market, nobody took a stab on their own either. "Economy" didn't mean shit in USSR. It was all about priorities. War in Afghanistan got plenty of resources in meantime. As well as aiding friendly regimes around the globe. Meanwhile citizens were having a hard time in their daily lives and civilian industry was falling behind. If we're going to cherry pick, we could say that tsarist Russia was highly modern country since Medelev figured out the elements table. Yet it's accepted it was an agricultural country, falling behind and fast. USSR, aside from several areas where they threw all their resources, was falling behind too. So yes, sending first human to space is sad when you can't provide adequate life to your own citizens. It's like saying that North Korea is catching up thanks to their ICBM programme progress :) P.S. Germans/Nazis were the ones who got both USSR and USA into space.
  - AsyncAwait 9y ago
    > Computer research was more because Soviet elite didn't believe in computing True, what I meant was exactly this. There's always resources plenty for the things elites consider important, but if there was enough of them and then some, something would have trickled down to computing also. > War in Afghanistan got plenty of resources in meantime. As well as aiding friendly regimes around the globe. Meanwhile citizens were having a hard time in their daily lives Just like in every empire ever, including the U.S. at present, (still no universal healthcare there). > So yes, sending first human to space is sad when you can't provide adequate life to your own citizens. Agreed, but how is this different today?
    - 9y ago
TheForumTroll 9y ago
Would you mind answering why it took the US more than 20 years to catch somewhat up with Russian rocket engines even though they had access to information on how it was made if it is so easy? The best Russian rockets from the Soviet era wasn't beat by the US before SpaceX did so.
- mantas 9y ago
  It's kinda cool that US managed to put man on the moon first, even with much worse rockets, eh? Also, US had reusable spaceships in 80s. While USSR struggled with a similar programme and didn't finish it before the collapse.
- Fins 9y ago
  Soviet Moon program ended in a big nothing because by the time it was started all the German designers (who made all those great engines) had went home, and without them USSR never managed to catch up to anything like F-1. Native designs tended to blow up.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  The US still hasn't caught up. SpaceX's Merlin engine is more advanced and less advanced than the best Russian engines: less efficient, but extremely simple (in sophisticated ways like face shut-off), and much cheaper, despite being built in LA. Raptor and the BE-4 will probably close the gap.

by mantas 9y ago

realusername 9y ago

> Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy That's easy to say now but no other country achieved that at that time. Especially not in a such a short time, it was an impressive feat.

mantas 9y ago
Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based. But they had quite a few smart people. The only lacking thing was push from the government to industrialize. Let alone they were far from catching up with the West by the time WW2 started or at any other point in their history. It’s impressive in the same way that holocaust is impressive.
- realusername 9y ago
  > And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland. > Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time. One of the main argument of the communists at that time was actually to point out the failures of capitalism in Asia as why capitalism would never work. At that time the industrialisation receipe did not work for a lot of countries and plenty of people believed the industrialisation of the West could not be reproduced, and especially not with capitalism. Everything is obvious in hindsight, it's how history work, you would create your own country now, it would not take that much time to industrialise it with modern techniques. The Soviets managed to take one of the least developed agricultural country of Europe (comparatively worse that current African countries) and transform it into a global superpower while other countries failed to even industrialise, this isn't a small feat at all.
  - mantas 9y ago
    > That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland. They did have factories. In fact, factories in Petrograd were one of the hotbeds of revolutionary mind. Railroad in more densely populated areas. Electric power plants did exist here and there. St Petersburg or Moscow were rather similar to cities of similar size in the West. Countryside was just too sparsely populated to do anything with it. > But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time Succeeded by what measure? GDP? Satisfaction of citizens? Soviet Union had abnormally large amount of people working in agriculture all the way till the fall. Consumer industry never even came close to West. Sure, if you focus on military alone and put oppressive state apparatus behind it, with a lot of natural resources, you can have a damn sweet army. But the rest will crumble. And it did. > transform it into a global superpower Russia was already a super power. Purely by sheer size and manpower. They had some great minds in science in arts as well. The 19th century super powers fell in first half of 20th century thanks to the raise of national identities and human rights. Making vast colonies too expensive to maintain in all sorts of ways. This gave birth to 2 superpowers that ruled the world in 2nd half of 20th century. USA avoided the fall because they were built on freedom and humanity (to certain extent, obviously) to begin with. USSR just avoided all of that thanks to totalitarian regime.

AsyncAwait 9y ago

So, you're saying that being first in space wasn't moving forward? > Especially on electronics and computers. I strongly suspect that was due to lack of resources for research, rather than lack of ability, as by the time there was a serious focus on these areas, the economy wasn't doing so well.

mantas 9y ago
Computer research was more because Soviet elite didn't believe in computing. Thus resources were allocated differently. Sicne there was no free market, nobody took a stab on their own either. "Economy" didn't mean shit in USSR. It was all about priorities. War in Afghanistan got plenty of resources in meantime. As well as aiding friendly regimes around the globe. Meanwhile citizens were having a hard time in their daily lives and civilian industry was falling behind. If we're going to cherry pick, we could say that tsarist Russia was highly modern country since Medelev figured out the elements table. Yet it's accepted it was an agricultural country, falling behind and fast. USSR, aside from several areas where they threw all their resources, was falling behind too. So yes, sending first human to space is sad when you can't provide adequate life to your own citizens. It's like saying that North Korea is catching up thanks to their ICBM programme progress :) P.S. Germans/Nazis were the ones who got both USSR and USA into space.
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  > Computer research was more because Soviet elite didn't believe in computing True, what I meant was exactly this. There's always resources plenty for the things elites consider important, but if there was enough of them and then some, something would have trickled down to computing also. > War in Afghanistan got plenty of resources in meantime. As well as aiding friendly regimes around the globe. Meanwhile citizens were having a hard time in their daily lives Just like in every empire ever, including the U.S. at present, (still no universal healthcare there). > So yes, sending first human to space is sad when you can't provide adequate life to your own citizens. Agreed, but how is this different today?
  - 9y ago

TheForumTroll 9y ago

Would you mind answering why it took the US more than 20 years to catch somewhat up with Russian rocket engines even though they had access to information on how it was made if it is so easy? The best Russian rockets from the Soviet era wasn't beat by the US before SpaceX did so.

mantas 9y ago
It's kinda cool that US managed to put man on the moon first, even with much worse rockets, eh? Also, US had reusable spaceships in 80s. While USSR struggled with a similar programme and didn't finish it before the collapse.
Fins 9y ago
Soviet Moon program ended in a big nothing because by the time it was started all the German designers (who made all those great engines) had went home, and without them USSR never managed to catch up to anything like F-1. Native designs tended to blow up.
greglindahl 9y ago
The US still hasn't caught up. SpaceX's Merlin engine is more advanced and less advanced than the best Russian engines: less efficient, but extremely simple (in sophisticated ways like face shut-off), and much cheaper, despite being built in LA. Raptor and the BE-4 will probably close the gap.