4 ms·

the soviets had a pretty successful space program back in the day...

• mrkstu 6y ago
  They threw the whole resources of a nation state at it to do it as well, vs the bootstrapping of one guy with about a hundred million bucks. It takes the right guy and the right environment to make that kind of magic happen.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    They really didn't. The Soviet space program operated with around a third of the US Space program (about one 200th of the USSR economy in 1970), or the equivalent of, give or take, 30 billion 2020 US dollars, or around 10 times the budget of SpaceX, notwithstanding technological price deflation. With 1970s tech and only ten times the budget, the Soviet space program certainly innovated a lot more than SpaceX did, in all fields, from computer science to basic physics, to metallurgy, to jet engines, and built more ambitious missions.