7 ms·

Honestly, I have never understood why landing on the Moon first would amount to winning the space race (except being nice to think about it as such).

pueblito 6y ago
Every race has to have a finish line
- sobellian 6y ago
  The most obvious counterexample to this would be an arms race.
  - conk 6y ago
    Maybe we just haven’t hit the “finish line” yet with the arms race...
    - Teknoman117 6y ago
      I really hope that line would have been "the weapons are good enough", but considering the US stockpile of nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War was enough to cause the extinction of humanity a few times over, I guess not...
      - learc83 6y ago
        The claim that we have (or had) enough nuclear weapons to cause the actual extinction of humanity, much less cause it several times over, is dubious. If you google it there are numerous articles debating it. At the very least there isn’t scientific consensus.
        danielheath 6y ago
        > scientific consensus Do you propose an experimental measurement? /s
  - gengear 6y ago
    We can reduce this to halting problem. We will never know finish line exists until we reach one?
jaegerpicker 6y ago
I think that's part of the premise for the show. Landing on the Moon did slow down the Space Race, there are a ton of documented plans for the advancement of the Space program but the will to push them through disappeared as soon as the US "beat" the Soviets. I think the real reason was that many, maybe even most people only really cared about Space from a standpoint of beating the other team. The show really leans into that in the early episodes. It does cast the USA as the "good" guys, in that even if we are losing we never give up until we win.
- ljf 6y ago
  Totally this. I have a little (uniformed) ramble I do when explaining 'Vision' over 'Mission' to people. In that putting a man on the moon was just the mission, we don't actually know the vision. The vision statement (if there was one) could well have been 'win at space, and therefore have the most developed scientific processes' 'beat the damn Russians' 'show the world the superiority of capitalism' (then you can rattle down the vmost pyramid - the objectives (bring them back alive, broadcast it in real time etc) - the strategies (a pure oxygen environment simplifies some things for engineering - and is far too dangerous... ) and the tactical day to day/week to week decisions that had to be made. But all the 'MOST' are easier when people on the project understand the vision.
  - dmix 6y ago
    Did the ruskies slow down after the moon landing too? I remember watching a great video on their giant (unrealistic) N1 rocket that Russia was trying to create to get to the moon (and elsewhere) with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YscKBzvHBSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YscKBzvHBSw Another good video as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gklVhRzkVqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gklVhRzkVqA Besides the space-race part, just the pure industrial might of the Soviet Union at the time is quite amazing to even build such a massive rocket, seeing it rolling towards the launcher. Shows the value competition has on society, it's not limited to markets.
    - blackrock 6y ago
leetcrew 6y ago
it seems even more odd if you view the space race as mostly being a fig leaf for ICBM development. I find this argument mostly convincing, but if the main goal is to build effective warhead delivery systems, why spend so much on manned flight specifically? there's not much of a practical case for building stuff that can take humans all the way to the moon and back. ICBMs don't need nearly as much delta-v nor do they need to keep humans onboard alive, and by far the most useful things to put in space are LEO or GEO satellites.
- arethuza 6y ago
  President Johnson made a fascinating comment about the space program: I wouldn't want to be quoted on this.... We've spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Yes but the manned space program was very different than the spysat spacelaunch program. If the goal was only unmanned satellites, the space program would have cost a tenth of what it did. just look to the ICBM/SLBM programs, which diverged from the manned rocket programs after only a couple years. The tech looks similar but is actually very different in practice.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - jrumbut 6y ago
      A spy satellite program isn't worth much if your adversary can send astronauts up to mess with them and you can't.
rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
On one hand, it’s pure propaganda from the side that didn’t already have the first satellite or human in space to their name. On the other, landing on an extraterrestrial body is a significantly more difficult challenge, particularly the precision computing to steer the lunar lander. Computers at the time were hand-welded and unsuitable for the rigors of space (turbulence, radiation). The brand new invention of the integrated circuit sought to solve these problems, but they were wildly expensive, so the US dumped boatloads of money into making them cheaper and easier to manufacture. Neil Armstrong stood on the moon, and the foundations for the personal computing era were in place. So in a way, Silicon Valley owes an eternal debt of gratitude to Cold War propaganda insistent that the finish line of the space race was to be the lunar surface.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  OTOH see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9
HeavenFox 6y ago
I think the U.S. basically won by the Soviets' "forfeiting". If USSR landed on the moon second but soon after, say, landed a man on Mars, and the U.S. unable to accomplish the feat, we would say the Soviets won.
- nickff 6y ago
  The Soviet program was doomed by technology and circumstance. The USSR was far behind on hydrogen, computers, and control systems; then the linchpin of their program, Sergei Korolev died (likely due in part to his term in the Gulags). They didn't give up, they failed (as exemplified by the N1 rocket failures).
  - izacus 6y ago
    No, the Sovient program was doomed because the military lost any interest in funding Korolev's trips to Moon after they got what they wanted from the program - a fully working ICBM capable of reaching USA. After that the funding was heavily curtailed and redirected to other near-military projects like spy satellites. The fact that the program itself was ruinously expensive for USSR (which was still less developed than US) and was burning precious R&D resources was also not insignificant. Korolev by James Harford is a rather readable insight into what was going on inside the Soviet space program: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213301.Korolev https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213301.Korolev
    - nickff 6y ago
      I think there's a great argument to be made for Kruschev's downfall being the 'but for' cause of the abandonment of the program, but Korolev and technologies were the 'sine qua nons' of a moonshot.
wwarner 6y ago
Scientific and technological achievement are critical for evaluating the effectiveness of policy. As I understand it, the issue really was that the Soviets believed that socialism should lead to a more scientific society, as they believed that socialism itself was based on the values of scientific progress. So defeat in the sciences was truly a blow to the philosophical underpinnings of the entire Soviet project. Not to mention that scientific advances lead directly to economic power and military superiority. I read that when Reagan announced the plan to fund the hugely expensive Strategic Defense Initiative, Soviet generals, having exhausted all their financial reserves losing the space race, felt that there was no way that the Soviet economy could keep up with the military advances of the West.
- wwarner 6y ago
  I guess recently released Soviet documents don't support the idea that Soviet generals were afraid of the scale of SDI. [0] http://russianforces.org/podvig/2013/03/did_star_wars_help_end_the_col.shtml http://russianforces.org/podvig/2013/03/did_star_wars_help_e...

pueblito 6y ago

Every race has to have a finish line

sobellian 6y ago
The most obvious counterexample to this would be an arms race.
- conk 6y ago
  Maybe we just haven’t hit the “finish line” yet with the arms race...
  - Teknoman117 6y ago
    I really hope that line would have been "the weapons are good enough", but considering the US stockpile of nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War was enough to cause the extinction of humanity a few times over, I guess not...
    - learc83 6y ago
      The claim that we have (or had) enough nuclear weapons to cause the actual extinction of humanity, much less cause it several times over, is dubious. If you google it there are numerous articles debating it. At the very least there isn’t scientific consensus.
      - danielheath 6y ago
        > scientific consensus Do you propose an experimental measurement? /s
- gengear 6y ago
  We can reduce this to halting problem. We will never know finish line exists until we reach one?

jaegerpicker 6y ago

I think that's part of the premise for the show. Landing on the Moon did slow down the Space Race, there are a ton of documented plans for the advancement of the Space program but the will to push them through disappeared as soon as the US "beat" the Soviets. I think the real reason was that many, maybe even most people only really cared about Space from a standpoint of beating the other team. The show really leans into that in the early episodes. It does cast the USA as the "good" guys, in that even if we are losing we never give up until we win.

ljf 6y ago
Totally this. I have a little (uniformed) ramble I do when explaining 'Vision' over 'Mission' to people. In that putting a man on the moon was just the mission, we don't actually know the vision. The vision statement (if there was one) could well have been 'win at space, and therefore have the most developed scientific processes' 'beat the damn Russians' 'show the world the superiority of capitalism' (then you can rattle down the vmost pyramid - the objectives (bring them back alive, broadcast it in real time etc) - the strategies (a pure oxygen environment simplifies some things for engineering - and is far too dangerous... ) and the tactical day to day/week to week decisions that had to be made. But all the 'MOST' are easier when people on the project understand the vision.
- dmix 6y ago
  Did the ruskies slow down after the moon landing too? I remember watching a great video on their giant (unrealistic) N1 rocket that Russia was trying to create to get to the moon (and elsewhere) with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YscKBzvHBSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YscKBzvHBSw Another good video as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gklVhRzkVqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gklVhRzkVqA Besides the space-race part, just the pure industrial might of the Soviet Union at the time is quite amazing to even build such a massive rocket, seeing it rolling towards the launcher. Shows the value competition has on society, it's not limited to markets.
  - blackrock 6y ago

leetcrew 6y ago

it seems even more odd if you view the space race as mostly being a fig leaf for ICBM development. I find this argument mostly convincing, but if the main goal is to build effective warhead delivery systems, why spend so much on manned flight specifically? there's not much of a practical case for building stuff that can take humans all the way to the moon and back. ICBMs don't need nearly as much delta-v nor do they need to keep humans onboard alive, and by far the most useful things to put in space are LEO or GEO satellites.

arethuza 6y ago
President Johnson made a fascinating comment about the space program: I wouldn't want to be quoted on this.... We've spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Yes but the manned space program was very different than the spysat spacelaunch program. If the goal was only unmanned satellites, the space program would have cost a tenth of what it did. just look to the ICBM/SLBM programs, which diverged from the manned rocket programs after only a couple years. The tech looks similar but is actually very different in practice.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    A spy satellite program isn't worth much if your adversary can send astronauts up to mess with them and you can't.

rm_-rf_slash 6y ago

On one hand, it’s pure propaganda from the side that didn’t already have the first satellite or human in space to their name. On the other, landing on an extraterrestrial body is a significantly more difficult challenge, particularly the precision computing to steer the lunar lander. Computers at the time were hand-welded and unsuitable for the rigors of space (turbulence, radiation). The brand new invention of the integrated circuit sought to solve these problems, but they were wildly expensive, so the US dumped boatloads of money into making them cheaper and easier to manufacture. Neil Armstrong stood on the moon, and the foundations for the personal computing era were in place. So in a way, Silicon Valley owes an eternal debt of gratitude to Cold War propaganda insistent that the finish line of the space race was to be the lunar surface.

Koshkin 6y ago
OTOH see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9

HeavenFox 6y ago

I think the U.S. basically won by the Soviets' "forfeiting". If USSR landed on the moon second but soon after, say, landed a man on Mars, and the U.S. unable to accomplish the feat, we would say the Soviets won.

nickff 6y ago
The Soviet program was doomed by technology and circumstance. The USSR was far behind on hydrogen, computers, and control systems; then the linchpin of their program, Sergei Korolev died (likely due in part to his term in the Gulags). They didn't give up, they failed (as exemplified by the N1 rocket failures).
- izacus 6y ago
  No, the Sovient program was doomed because the military lost any interest in funding Korolev's trips to Moon after they got what they wanted from the program - a fully working ICBM capable of reaching USA. After that the funding was heavily curtailed and redirected to other near-military projects like spy satellites. The fact that the program itself was ruinously expensive for USSR (which was still less developed than US) and was burning precious R&D resources was also not insignificant. Korolev by James Harford is a rather readable insight into what was going on inside the Soviet space program: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213301.Korolev https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213301.Korolev
  - nickff 6y ago
    I think there's a great argument to be made for Kruschev's downfall being the 'but for' cause of the abandonment of the program, but Korolev and technologies were the 'sine qua nons' of a moonshot.

wwarner 6y ago

Scientific and technological achievement are critical for evaluating the effectiveness of policy. As I understand it, the issue really was that the Soviets believed that socialism should lead to a more scientific society, as they believed that socialism itself was based on the values of scientific progress. So defeat in the sciences was truly a blow to the philosophical underpinnings of the entire Soviet project. Not to mention that scientific advances lead directly to economic power and military superiority. I read that when Reagan announced the plan to fund the hugely expensive Strategic Defense Initiative, Soviet generals, having exhausted all their financial reserves losing the space race, felt that there was no way that the Soviet economy could keep up with the military advances of the West.

wwarner 6y ago
I guess recently released Soviet documents don't support the idea that Soviet generals were afraid of the scale of SDI. [0] http://russianforces.org/podvig/2013/03/did_star_wars_help_end_the_col.shtml http://russianforces.org/podvig/2013/03/did_star_wars_help_e...