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Interesting twist of history: the photographic film from one of these balloons' cameras ended up on a Soviet space probe, and exposed humanity's first picture o

Interesting twist of history: the photographic film from one of these balloons' cameras ended up on a Soviet space probe, and exposed humanity's first picture of the far side of the moon. - "The film, temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened, came from American Genetrix balloons which had been recovered by the Soviets.[15]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3#Lunar_photography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3#Lunar_photography According to one of the Soviet space program engineers (writing publicly in 1993), this was an unauthorized, renegade act, done without knowledge of the Soviet government, - "Why was the thought "crazy"? Yes, because in space, as in the "defense", at that time nothing foreign was allowed. Literally everything - materials, instruments, technologies - had to be only domestic. It was part of the flesh and blood, in the minds of the developers, becoming their ideology. If I had only hinted to someone about the possibility of using an American film, I would be mistaken for a foolish joker or even for a person who was not completely normal. Only two people knew about this venture - me and Volodya Kondratyev, who was engaged in the chemical processes of the Yenisei. We cut an American 180-millimeter film to 35 millimeters, then punched it. We wrote "technical conditions of the film type AB-1", which after having been shown to the military representatives was filed in the appropriate folder with the stamp "top secret". Of course, we both stayed silent. What would become of us if this story was revealed, I can not say. In any case, not only in cosmonautics, but in general, I think we would not have worked for a long time ... " " http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/SpyBalloon.htm http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/SpyBalloon.htm ("Article from the newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" of April 10, 1993. by Igor Borisovich Lisochkin.")

gumby 4y ago
My favorite irony about the space race was the difference between how the two programs operated. The US had a huge, centrally-planned program managed by the government. While the Russian program was chronically underfunded and had limited politburo support. They had to produced products to barter for other things they needed. And they had a capricious “customer” with bizarre requirements (as with the local content one above) and who only cared about one thing. Basically perpetually a startup. In essence each country’s program was organized the way you would have expected the other country’s program to have been run.
- consumer451 4y ago
  > The US had a huge, centrally-planned program managed by the government. As recently pointed out to me by a comment here on HN, that's also how the USA conducted defense manufacturing during WWII.

gumby 4y ago

My favorite irony about the space race was the difference between how the two programs operated. The US had a huge, centrally-planned program managed by the government. While the Russian program was chronically underfunded and had limited politburo support. They had to produced products to barter for other things they needed. And they had a capricious “customer” with bizarre requirements (as with the local content one above) and who only cared about one thing. Basically perpetually a startup. In essence each country’s program was organized the way you would have expected the other country’s program to have been run.

consumer451 4y ago
> The US had a huge, centrally-planned program managed by the government. As recently pointed out to me by a comment here on HN, that's also how the USA conducted defense manufacturing during WWII.