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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 int
by 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 agoFor 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.