4 ms·

Interesting comment. Do you think the only country that has been to the moon somehow lost the space race at some point if you choose to continue the space race

by iends 5y ago

Interesting comment. Do you think the only country that has been to the moon somehow lost the space race at some point if you choose to continue the space race til today?

fer 5y ago
Hard to tell, but it was consistently losing to the Soviet Union by most space-dick measurement metrics. Please don't see me as defending the USSR in any way, it's a widely accepted fact that the USSR was 0.5-2 years ahead in most milestones. My comment was more in line to contradict the statement of "this country invented everything!" when obviously the Soviets had a strong know how that certainly didn't come from the US [0]. The man on the moon is what it is: an incredibly impressive feat with an objectively terrible risk/benefit ratio, but pulling it off makes it great for propaganda purposes. Once the US did that, the crewed moon landing programs in the USSR, which already had problems, were instantaneously de-funded, as the value of being the first was gone. It's not casual that since the space race ended, rational thinking kicked in and 100% of surface exploration and analysis has been done with unmanned rovers and sample return missions. And in my opinion, unmanned missions are more impressive from a technical standpoint, but that's another topic. This is an article on the subject that covers well the main reason why the USSR failed at what they seemed to be winning. [1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this-is-why-the-soviet-union-lost-the-space-race-to-the-usa/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this...
- avmich 5y ago
  It's a complicated issue. You can perhaps argue both ways. For example, one could say space race definitely didn't end with the Moon landings. Even though there was 1975 Apollo-Soyuz flight, the technology and science went ahead - the whole epoch of space stations, winged spacecrafts, automatic probes and commercial projects happened after "the small step for man". USSR did have less resources to dedicate to space. USA spent massively more on the Moon race - and while the technology was somewhat conservative in places, they reached the goal. The close call of Apollo-13 could illustrate both how stretched the resources were and how sufficient level of redundancy was. USA won the Moon landing, even though USSR claimed many secondary prizes - Zond flights, automatic orbiting, landing, Lunokhods and probe returns. Even though Luna-24 clearly brought important materials, still the scientific return from - massively more expensive - Apollo flights could be considered higher. Yet USSR spent maybe 1/5 of what USA spent on the Moon race. Space stations are also somewhat hard to compare. While USSR had much more, and with better capabilities, the Skylab's heritage is still important - even today. Same goes to Shuttle/Buran - while Buran flew just one, rather symbolic flight, and Shuttle run a massive scientific (and others) program, still Energiya-Buran project produced Zenit launcher, family of engines leading to e.g. RD-180, not to mention the development of underlying technologies - e.g. Al-Li alloys and (I believe) friction welding were worked on in the scope of the project. Shuttle can be accused in killing two crews and in being excessively expensive. Buran can be accused in helping to bankrupt the USSR. USSR had quite good automatic probes at the time of breaking, too. VEGA program was a resounding success, while Phobos was much less so - even though quite ambitious. Only pieces of those capabilities survived - post-Soviet Russia managed to participate well in commercial launch market and practically created space tourism industry, but seems like it works well only initially, and serious investments are hard to come by. Yet coming back to USSR it's hard to disagree that the space program - till the end of the country - was quite robust, despite the loss of the Moon race. We can still consider the manned Moon flights as the biggest achievement in the manned space. But going back to USSR/USA comparison - we aren't even sure if USA is able to repeat them easily (USA can, but with lots of efforts, which modern programs demonstrate), which shows importance of political will. So it looks like there were different "kinds of sport" and participants showed different results in them, and if we assume that only Moon landings matter, then USA is the clear winner. The reality is probably more complex.
  - RF_Savage 5y ago
    Don't forget Mir! Or how the ISS is built around modules meant for Mir 2.
    - avmich 5y ago
      Yes, I've mentioned space stations - which were the next frontier after the Moon race for manned spaceflight. USA had a tremendous success with space probes - starting with Hubble. Actually, Voyager - still chugging along - and even Vikings - started massive Mars science - but I'd consider the wave of many space projects - Pathfinder, Galileo, Cassini, many space telescopes etc. - started roughly with Hubble launch. In manned space USA was arguably tied with Shuttle, which eventually stopped flying in 2011, and had to send astronauts with Soyuzes; only when SpaceX completed the Crew Dragon, USA resumed sending people to orbit again; but these are better known recent events. Similarly USA recently got much stronger in commercial space sectors, including regarding manned space - launches, suborbital space; here modern Russia so far offers the same tourist flights as 20 years ago, while having troubles in modernizing, or even maintaining, the launcher fleet. But that's Russia, not USSR. So if we stop the clock at the moment USSR dissolves, the relative space capabilities are different than now. In space USSR had - up until the end - enough of achievements to be considered world class.

by iends 5y ago

Interesting comment. Do you think the only country that has been to the moon somehow lost the space race at some point if you choose to continue the space race til today?

fer 5y ago

Hard to tell, but it was consistently losing to the Soviet Union by most space-dick measurement metrics. Please don't see me as defending the USSR in any way, it's a widely accepted fact that the USSR was 0.5-2 years ahead in most milestones. My comment was more in line to contradict the statement of "this country invented everything!" when obviously the Soviets had a strong know how that certainly didn't come from the US [0]. The man on the moon is what it is: an incredibly impressive feat with an objectively terrible risk/benefit ratio, but pulling it off makes it great for propaganda purposes. Once the US did that, the crewed moon landing programs in the USSR, which already had problems, were instantaneously de-funded, as the value of being the first was gone. It's not casual that since the space race ended, rational thinking kicked in and 100% of surface exploration and analysis has been done with unmanned rovers and sample return missions. And in my opinion, unmanned missions are more impressive from a technical standpoint, but that's another topic. This is an article on the subject that covers well the main reason why the USSR failed at what they seemed to be winning. [1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this-is-why-the-soviet-union-lost-the-space-race-to-the-usa/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this...

avmich 5y ago
It's a complicated issue. You can perhaps argue both ways. For example, one could say space race definitely didn't end with the Moon landings. Even though there was 1975 Apollo-Soyuz flight, the technology and science went ahead - the whole epoch of space stations, winged spacecrafts, automatic probes and commercial projects happened after "the small step for man". USSR did have less resources to dedicate to space. USA spent massively more on the Moon race - and while the technology was somewhat conservative in places, they reached the goal. The close call of Apollo-13 could illustrate both how stretched the resources were and how sufficient level of redundancy was. USA won the Moon landing, even though USSR claimed many secondary prizes - Zond flights, automatic orbiting, landing, Lunokhods and probe returns. Even though Luna-24 clearly brought important materials, still the scientific return from - massively more expensive - Apollo flights could be considered higher. Yet USSR spent maybe 1/5 of what USA spent on the Moon race. Space stations are also somewhat hard to compare. While USSR had much more, and with better capabilities, the Skylab's heritage is still important - even today. Same goes to Shuttle/Buran - while Buran flew just one, rather symbolic flight, and Shuttle run a massive scientific (and others) program, still Energiya-Buran project produced Zenit launcher, family of engines leading to e.g. RD-180, not to mention the development of underlying technologies - e.g. Al-Li alloys and (I believe) friction welding were worked on in the scope of the project. Shuttle can be accused in killing two crews and in being excessively expensive. Buran can be accused in helping to bankrupt the USSR. USSR had quite good automatic probes at the time of breaking, too. VEGA program was a resounding success, while Phobos was much less so - even though quite ambitious. Only pieces of those capabilities survived - post-Soviet Russia managed to participate well in commercial launch market and practically created space tourism industry, but seems like it works well only initially, and serious investments are hard to come by. Yet coming back to USSR it's hard to disagree that the space program - till the end of the country - was quite robust, despite the loss of the Moon race. We can still consider the manned Moon flights as the biggest achievement in the manned space. But going back to USSR/USA comparison - we aren't even sure if USA is able to repeat them easily (USA can, but with lots of efforts, which modern programs demonstrate), which shows importance of political will. So it looks like there were different "kinds of sport" and participants showed different results in them, and if we assume that only Moon landings matter, then USA is the clear winner. The reality is probably more complex.
- RF_Savage 5y ago
  Don't forget Mir! Or how the ISS is built around modules meant for Mir 2.
  - avmich 5y ago
    Yes, I've mentioned space stations - which were the next frontier after the Moon race for manned spaceflight. USA had a tremendous success with space probes - starting with Hubble. Actually, Voyager - still chugging along - and even Vikings - started massive Mars science - but I'd consider the wave of many space projects - Pathfinder, Galileo, Cassini, many space telescopes etc. - started roughly with Hubble launch. In manned space USA was arguably tied with Shuttle, which eventually stopped flying in 2011, and had to send astronauts with Soyuzes; only when SpaceX completed the Crew Dragon, USA resumed sending people to orbit again; but these are better known recent events. Similarly USA recently got much stronger in commercial space sectors, including regarding manned space - launches, suborbital space; here modern Russia so far offers the same tourist flights as 20 years ago, while having troubles in modernizing, or even maintaining, the launcher fleet. But that's Russia, not USSR. So if we stop the clock at the moment USSR dissolves, the relative space capabilities are different than now. In space USSR had - up until the end - enough of achievements to be considered world class.