Who won the space race?

[Zmrzlina]

So my local new station did a piece on Sally Ride the first American woman in space and throughout the piece she was incorrectly referred as the first woman in space and the achievements of Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova were completely erased. That had me thinking, as a hobbyist of astronomy of how little the American public knows about the space race how much the US struggled to keep up with the Soviet Space program.

Here is a breakdown of the two nations accomplishments:

• First satellite sent into orbit-USSR with Sputnik
• First animal sent into space-USSR with a dog.
• First human sent into space-USSR with Yuri Gagarin
• First probe to Venus-USSR with Venara 1
• First probe to Mars-USSR with Mars 1
• First woman sent into space-USSR with Valentina Tereshkova
• First space walk-USSR with Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov
• First manned orbit of the moon-USA with Apollo 8
• First landing and walk on the moon-USA with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
• First permanently manned space station-USSR with Mir

The point of this thread is not to advocate for centrally planned economies, those failures speak for themselves. The purpose is that these accomplishments are a benefit for all of humanity and should never be erased for the sake of politics.

 

[hjmick]

We quit. They win by default...


Now it's all going private for profit. That's a whole different ball game...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Yep, we quit and my respect for humanity has been fallling ever since.

 

[dilloduck]

Bad decision making or Von Braun would have launched the first satellite. Might have been his Nazi connections that put him in the back seat.

 

[KissMy]

Russia would have beat US to the Moon had they not accidentally sabotaged their space program by firing off a nuke 200 miles up hitting their entire space program with the EMP wave. Even after they got their launch facility operational again, every rocket launched crashed for a long time after that.

 

[dilloduck]

Technically the Nazis were the first to launch something into "space ".

 

[ScienceRocks]

Technically the Nazis were the first to launch something into "space ".

The nazi's were the last respectable "right wing" government that valued science, infastructure and the family above all. They value their nation...

Serioiusly, Hitler took Germany out of a depression and made Germany the most powerful nation on earth within 5 years. What did FDR do??? 7 or 8 years later the nation was just starting to recover from our depression. Had Hilter kept Germany out of the war and didn't thrist to control the world...WEll, maybe we'd be talking about him as the role model.

Think about it for a second...The Nazi government developed the first rockets! The first computers, the first of many things.

Shame Hitler fucked up. Would of been a better model than todays losertrianism that says the public sector is just bad no matter what. PUblic and private working together to make us better!

 

[whitehall]

After the Russians killed most of their astronauts in hunks of junk they seemed to drop out of the space race. The moon was the prize and it was the US of A who planted the Flag which will probably stand for another millennium without challenge. USA,USA,USA,USA

 

[KissMy]

After the Russians killed most of their astronauts in hunks of junk they seemed to drop out of the space race. The moon was the prize and it was the US of A who planted the Flag which will probably stand for another millennium without challenge. USA,USA,USA,USA

The Soviet rockets had an excellent record until they launched their nuclear EMP tests 184 and 187 above their spaceport & rocket centers. For years after that all those same rockets self destructed. The EMP had damaged all the electrical components in the rockets & on the warehouse shelves. It took them a very long time to discover all the damage the EMP did to electronics, guidance, satellites, communications & power grid.

 

[September]

The Nazis

 

[Vikrant]

Manned space flight towards destinations that are centuries of flight time away is not practical or necessary. Robot controlled and manned flights are the future for such missions. That is why there is not much emphasis on manned flight among seafaring nations. Having said that, we should always keep our options open when it comes to manned flights within our solar system if we can ever find water on any of these moons and planets in our solar system. There is some good news regarding that. An Indian lunar exploration found traces of water on the Moon few years back. But that is about it. So you can get the idea that there is not much use in manned space exploration beyond a point other than the national pride.

 

[Old Rocks]

Bad decision making or Von Braun would have launched the first satellite. Might have been his Nazi connections that put him in the back seat.

No, it was the conservatives of the period that saw no use for space, other than as a trajectory for intercontinental missiles.

 

[Old Rocks]

Technically the Nazis were the first to launch something into "space ".

The nazi's were the last respectable "right wing" government that valued science, infastructure and the family above all. They value their nation...

Serioiusly, Hitler took Germany out of a depression and made Germany the most powerful nation on earth within 5 years. What did FDR do??? 7 or 8 years later the nation was just starting to recover from our depression. Had Hilter kept Germany out of the war and didn't thrist to control the world...WEll, maybe we'd be talking about him as the role model.

Think about it for a second...The Nazi government developed the first rockets! The first computers, the first of many things.

Shame Hitler fucked up. Would of been a better model than todays losertrianism that says the public sector is just bad no matter what. PUblic and private working together to make us better!

The Nazis destroyed the Germany that might have been. They literally drove many of their best scientists out of Germany. After Krystallnacht, Germany was committed to destroy itself.

 

[Old Rocks]

Today, if we choose to spend the money, we are in the postition to go back into space big time.

Falcon Heavy | SpaceX