4 ms·

It is not surprising that it remained intact for 53 years. In USSR, unlike modern times, all products were made to last, like refrigerators, motorcycles, TV set

It is not surprising that it remained intact for 53 years. In USSR, unlike modern times, all products were made to last, like refrigerators, motorcycles, TV sets or clothes, because there was not enough supply to replace them every year.

squigz 1y ago
Weren't USSR products rather famously poorly built?
- codedokode 1y ago
  I saw still working after many years Soviet refrigerators, motorcycles and TV sets, so maybe they were built not that poorly after all. Of course there could be some survivorship bias, but generally modern (inexpensive) things seem to break earlier.
  - pavel_lishin 1y ago
    I wonder if they just had a lot of repairs done to them, due to the unavailability of alternatives.
  - sssilver 1y ago
    A lot of them were built like a tank. Their issue was lack of features, not lack of reliability.
- linksnapzz 1y ago
  Depends; they might not have had the most expensive materials available, or the trickiest assembly quality, but were often designed so that the inevitable repairs could be made quickly in the field by minimally-trained personnel. See: Zaporozhets 968 vs. Hillman Imp, AK-47 vs. AR-15, T-72 vs. M1.
- spyrja 1y ago
  I think "simple but rugged" would be a more apt description. Less moving parts than the US equivalent, easier to maintain, and usually fairly sturdy. On the other hand, since cost was a constant concern, Soviet equipment was generally not designed with aesthetics in mind. So "ugly but reliable" might be another way to put it!
- matkoniecz 1y ago
  One joke/observation was that soviet product will either fall apart immediately or will last 70 years. Other ones: > What's as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a shit-load of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces? A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces. > What is it? It doesn't glow, and it doesn't fit into ass. Answer: soviet thing to glow in the ass. > A man walks into a shop. He asks the clerk, “You don’t have any meat?” > The clerk says, “No, here we don’t have any fish. The shop that doesn’t have any meat is across the street.” Also, exaggerated (but partially true) stories about factory fulfilling production quota for 10 tons of nails by producing single enormous 10 ton nail.
  - stodor89 1y ago
    "This year a semiconductor factory, next year a whole-conductor factory!" "Soviet microchips are the largest microchips in the world!"
    - tguvot 1y ago
      Soviet microchips have 8 legs and two handles
pezezin 1y ago
We are talking about space junk, a dead chunk of metal just orbiting Earth until its inevitable decay. Saying that it was "intact" and "built to last" is disingenuous.
- dylan604 1y ago
  But it wasn't built to orbit Earth for 53 years. It was built to land and survive for a period on the surface of Venus. I can think of few places more difficult to survive, so to say it wasn't built to last is disingenuous on your part.
- coolcase 1y ago
  Yeah Elons car will last forever in space, but probably won't start. Maybe it will.
rdtsc 1y ago
> It is not surprising that it remained intact for 53 years. I mean we couldn't use for the last 53 years and it didn't fulfill its mission. It's like saying the boulder in my yard has remained intact for 100 years "they just don't build them like they used".
II2II 1y ago
I was under the impression that the Soviets launched multiple identical missions to account for failure. In other words: rather than investing a huge effort into reducing the probability of failure of a singular mission, they invested in multiple missions in hopes that one would be successful. If that is the case, it sounds like the had much more confidence in the engineers who did the design work than their ability to do quality control while building. Any how, it's meaningless to compare old Soviet products to new Western ones. The older Soviet ones are likely still in use due to an incentive to maintain and repair them. Old Western products were probably just as repairable, but there was less incentive to do so. As for new Western products, there are both technological and business reasons to ignore repairability.
- ogurechny 1y ago
  For starters, there was little to be shared between unique programs in space industry and products for general public, they belonged to different universes even when being made by the same factories. In fact, it was quite common to point to the split between praise of spaceships in media and regular people living like swine, both in servile and in critical works. Which, of course, is not in any way specific to USSR, or very original. “Quality” and chances of success are relative, you need to have reference points. As space missions had none, they all were test flights AND scheduled flights at the same time. If boosters for a new rocket to Venus, radios and solar panels were ready, you launched a rocket with a dummy to check how those systems behaved, and so on.

squigz 1y ago

Weren't USSR products rather famously poorly built?

codedokode 1y ago
I saw still working after many years Soviet refrigerators, motorcycles and TV sets, so maybe they were built not that poorly after all. Of course there could be some survivorship bias, but generally modern (inexpensive) things seem to break earlier.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  I wonder if they just had a lot of repairs done to them, due to the unavailability of alternatives.
- sssilver 1y ago
  A lot of them were built like a tank. Their issue was lack of features, not lack of reliability.
linksnapzz 1y ago
Depends; they might not have had the most expensive materials available, or the trickiest assembly quality, but were often designed so that the inevitable repairs could be made quickly in the field by minimally-trained personnel. See: Zaporozhets 968 vs. Hillman Imp, AK-47 vs. AR-15, T-72 vs. M1.
spyrja 1y ago
I think "simple but rugged" would be a more apt description. Less moving parts than the US equivalent, easier to maintain, and usually fairly sturdy. On the other hand, since cost was a constant concern, Soviet equipment was generally not designed with aesthetics in mind. So "ugly but reliable" might be another way to put it!
matkoniecz 1y ago
One joke/observation was that soviet product will either fall apart immediately or will last 70 years. Other ones: > What's as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a shit-load of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces? A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces. > What is it? It doesn't glow, and it doesn't fit into ass. Answer: soviet thing to glow in the ass. > A man walks into a shop. He asks the clerk, “You don’t have any meat?” > The clerk says, “No, here we don’t have any fish. The shop that doesn’t have any meat is across the street.” Also, exaggerated (but partially true) stories about factory fulfilling production quota for 10 tons of nails by producing single enormous 10 ton nail.
- stodor89 1y ago
  "This year a semiconductor factory, next year a whole-conductor factory!" "Soviet microchips are the largest microchips in the world!"
  - tguvot 1y ago
    Soviet microchips have 8 legs and two handles

pezezin 1y ago

We are talking about space junk, a dead chunk of metal just orbiting Earth until its inevitable decay. Saying that it was "intact" and "built to last" is disingenuous.

dylan604 1y ago
But it wasn't built to orbit Earth for 53 years. It was built to land and survive for a period on the surface of Venus. I can think of few places more difficult to survive, so to say it wasn't built to last is disingenuous on your part.
coolcase 1y ago
Yeah Elons car will last forever in space, but probably won't start. Maybe it will.

rdtsc 1y ago

> It is not surprising that it remained intact for 53 years. I mean we couldn't use for the last 53 years and it didn't fulfill its mission. It's like saying the boulder in my yard has remained intact for 100 years "they just don't build them like they used".

II2II 1y ago

I was under the impression that the Soviets launched multiple identical missions to account for failure. In other words: rather than investing a huge effort into reducing the probability of failure of a singular mission, they invested in multiple missions in hopes that one would be successful. If that is the case, it sounds like the had much more confidence in the engineers who did the design work than their ability to do quality control while building. Any how, it's meaningless to compare old Soviet products to new Western ones. The older Soviet ones are likely still in use due to an incentive to maintain and repair them. Old Western products were probably just as repairable, but there was less incentive to do so. As for new Western products, there are both technological and business reasons to ignore repairability.

ogurechny 1y ago
For starters, there was little to be shared between unique programs in space industry and products for general public, they belonged to different universes even when being made by the same factories. In fact, it was quite common to point to the split between praise of spaceships in media and regular people living like swine, both in servile and in critical works. Which, of course, is not in any way specific to USSR, or very original. “Quality” and chances of success are relative, you need to have reference points. As space missions had none, they all were test flights AND scheduled flights at the same time. If boosters for a new rocket to Venus, radios and solar panels were ready, you launched a rocket with a dummy to check how those systems behaved, and so on.