Slashdot Mirror
What If America Had Beaten the Soviets Into Space?
MarkWhittington writes "April 12 is the 50th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's first space flight. Coming less than four years after Sputnik, Gagarin's orbital space voyage galvanized the United States and led to President Kennedy announcing the race to the Moon six weeks later. The question arises: what if America had beaten the Soviet Union into space instead?"
That would imply that American ballistic missile program would have also went ahead of Soviet one. Which, I suspect, would mean some glowing rubble in place of Moscow and some other major Soviet cities.
I suppose I might as well start the game by saying nothing would have been much different. Getting first to the moon would still have been a matter of prestige, so why wouldn't that contest have happened? And would it change who got there first? IIRC the soviets weren't that close, having some issues with the willingness to back the project, and one of the main designers passing away. Here's a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Moonshot
No faked moon landing, and humans might have really visited the moon by now.
Americans had Man In Space Soonest - MISS program, to get to space first. It was already fast-paced, and should some opportunities arise earlier, some other might not happen instead. NASA wasn't delaying the flight for no reason.
Similarly, Soviets had flight after flight testing hardware, sending dogs and devices and keeping an eye on Americans. Should intelligence hint on earlier possible American launch, Korolev might move the day of the first flight to an earlier date.
In short, it was unlikely to happen - the lead in rockets and overall activity was rather big at the time. America should have started earlier. This is further supported by subsequent events - next few years Soviets lead in terms of flight time, number of flights, important firsts.
Would it really matter? I guess it helped us fuel other areas of advancement, but as far as space itself? All we've accomplished in the 42 years since we landed on the moon is sending out a bunch of probes and fancy RC cars. No doubt, the photographs from these endeavors are amazing and we're still acquiring knowledge. It's just too bad we've reached a point where we aren't willing to do anything that might put a person at risk of so much as chipping a fingernail, we've exhausted our shuttle program and are currently having to rely on transport from other nations, and are put off by spending any money on space at all, because we've got to save all that precious monopoly money to bail out corporations and foreign banks at a number that dwarfs the entire space program.
Don't get me wrong - I know that a lot of our advancements are being off-loaded to privacy industry and that we are making enough advances in other areas of technology and science so that whenever we really do make another massive push into space, we will be doing so from a more capable point (kind of like you might have been able to start a computer at the task of decrypting some data in 1980 and that same computer would still be trying to decode it in 2011, while a computer you got last month and set to the task of decrypting the same data would have finished by now).
However, can you really imagine people's responses in the last half of 1969 if you had told them "revel in this, because mankind won't touch the moon or any other soil or make it beyond our low orbit for the next fifty years"? They would have said you were a fucking lunatic.
I'm thrilled that the space race brought us the home computer and memory foam, but my mom was a little girl when we landed on the moon and I would love more than just about anything for us to have another world-stopping-all-eyes-on-television space-moment like that during my life time. I suspect I'll be long dead before that happens.
It is before my time but I seem to recall being told that the big wake-up call was sputnik. The first men in space was big as well but easily diminished because it was essentially a ballistic shot not a real space trip. Sputnik was up there a long time, beeping all the way, undeniable.
Anyway, the Americans were to focussed on giving nazi war criminals a cozy ride and failing miserably to realize that there was a reason the german lost the war, their tech sucked. Still American history teaches that german tech led to space conquest, forgetting that it was a shift away from this that finally allowed the americans to catch up. But hey, if you chance history perhaps you might want to go after those that allowed killers of american POW's to get of scot free.
What if America had been first?
It wasn't. Examine WHY this was the case before you go into fantasy land. WHY was a 3rd world nation that had suffered a decimating war ahead of a country that was swimming in money and the only effect of war had been fewer unemployed? Once you can answer that, you have learned a lot about the true nature of the US and might even be able to use to help explain the current mess it is in.
Don't treat the USSR beating the US as some kind of freak accident, EXAMINE your history as it is, so you can learn from it. Or do you want to soon ask the question "what if the US had beat China to a space colony?"
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I suspect that USA, after losing the race to the moon since they lost the interest after getting into space, would have went for something else. Such as creating a zombie virus. Maybe then the zombie apocalypse could have happened and my shotgun/crowbar combo wouldn't just be gathering dust on my wall.
It was 50 years ago, get over it.
The hang-wringing in the western press about this seems to me to be largely due to an inability to fit the event into the triumphalist narrative that has endured in government and media since the end of the cold war. The idea that capitalism, specifically our version of capitalism is best always, everywhere and forever.
Its disquieting to such dogmatists to be reminded of even a single success from an alternative way of doing things. Even if that way of doing things ultimately imploded on itself decades later, it makes a rational person question the absolutism of the narrative, and thus the narrators must try and dissect and blunt the impact of the threatening event.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
...in soviet russia, AMERICA beats YOU!
One thing that we forget is that a number of corporations were considering space programs. Make no mistake, as soon as the reality of rocket tech meaning bomb-throwing tech (see V1 and V2) everybody knew, in theory, that this was heavy mojo. But until the Soviets started getting stuff up there and making us scared, space shots were thought of by most folks as "science fiction foolishess" that would never impact the "real world" and regulation and control wasn't taken very seriously. And without FAA and military microcontrol some pretty small players were doing some pretty cool stuff. Lots of tech that is only now getting tried seriously again was actually invented decades ago and implementation was delayed largely by NASA/Soviet conservatism and bureaucratic prioritizing. Who knows how much would have been done sooner in a more "free for all" dynamic? Deaths and all sorts of tragedies would have been far more common. But we might have actually gone considerably further, faster.
So it just may be that the pioneers in space wouldn't have been the American OR the Soviet governments but instead a mix of governments, companies, "hobbyists" and scientists backed by folks like Werner Von Braun (he kinda backed that play as it is), and wild cards of sorts we can't even picture. Remember, when Heinlein wrote "The Man Who Sold The Moon" it wasn't considered that low in credibility. And Hilton Hotels, among others, was intermittently serious about having hotels in orbit ASAP and was willing to back this with at least small amounts of real funding and leverage for years.
We might not have had Apollo. But by now Earth orbit would probably be as cheap to reach and as practiced a route as Europe to New England by the late 1600's.
This is all just conjecture of course, but the biggest impact I would imagine would have been less sense of urgency and competition to get to the moon first. The Soviet orbit was a wake-up call, causing JFK to say "WE choose to go to the moon", interesting how he started that with "We".
no comment
For geopolitical reasons the Eisenhower administration wanted the USSR to be first to orbit a satellite -- because it would set a precedent for free orbital flight over any territory, thus allowing the USA to orbit the Corona spy satellites without the USSR being legally free to pop off ASAT weapons at them.
In practice, Von Braun was ordered to ballast Thor IRBM tests with concrete to prevent them "accidentally" making orbit prematurely.
At the time, first to space was not a big deal. Von Braun could have put the first satellite into orbit, but that honor was given to the Vanguard program over at Navy. The Soviets saw one of the Jupiter launches (which was commanded not to enter space), and surmised that it failed and then proceeded to push up Sputnik. We could have been in space a full year ahead of the Soviets, but it wasn't deemed necessary by Eisenhower. He was more interested in targeting and putting a nuclear warhead on the tip of von Braun's rocket. After Sputnik and the failed Vanguard launches, Eisenhower recognized the propaganda coup (in part because of LBJ) and later LBJ would advise Kennedy. America was always ahead. Stalin and later Kruschev won the first rounds out of paranoia but they had much more failure than success.
Being first actually confers very little commercial advantage (just look at the first web browser - much good it did them, or the first personal computer). So far was geographical firsts goes: unless there's something there which can be exploited, even less benefit. The only reasons the americans went to the Moon was as a catch-up. Once it had been proved possible, there was no reason to go back (nothing to exploit).
The only possible difference might be that the money spent on the 1960s space programme could have financed another war somewhere - so I suppose there was a side-benefit to exploring space, after all.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You might ask why:
America discovered the Airplane but Europeans are beating us big time with Airbus.
America discovered the transistor but it was not until the Japanese came that we saw its true potential. No wonder all electronics in America are Asian made.
I'm genuinely shocked! Who would have thought that rash, purely political decisions weren't the best long term choices? That's really hard to believe!
But if you think we'd have all these delusional fantasy-level technologies like Moon colonies and Mars mining, well. you better get back to your high-school physics and economics.
For crying out loud, we had supersonic passenger transport in the 1970s, and we don't even have THAT anymore. Our "technology" such as it is, consists of making smaller and smaller transistors so the software retards can create more and more complex virtual ways of doing the same things over and over again, thus allowing our economic model of constant growth a last gasp of growth before the cheap energy runs out.
Then we'd all be sieging heil !!
If we beat the Soviets, we would have become a complacent country in regards to science to the point that the bulk of the population is scientifically illiterate and preferring to believe in supernatural explanations for everything. We would become a society based on intangibles: finance, retail, and other services that are a commodity. We'd also be mostly obese because of all of our time in front of the TV watching reality shows, talking heads telling us what we should be concerned about and telling lies and half truths.
Fortunately, that never happened.
we would be on Mars by now instead of getting groped by TSA guards.
It is known today that even the CIA's estimate was too high; the actual number of ICBMs, even including interim-use prototypes, was 4.
So, let's see: Washington, New York, Chicago, Detroit? Or would they put San Francisco on that list? Los Angeles?
I don't think any leader in the world would risk losing his main four cities like that.
On avoiding the use of "begs the question"! Do you people realize this is a new era in /. editing? Next we'll master the incredibly difficult and subtle its/it's thing.
While much (most?) of American tech was great (A-bomb, radar, penicillin, cryptography/computers) to say that German tech "sucked" is a pretty uninformed view of history. Consider that while Robert Goddard was playing with his (relatively) puny liquid fueled rockets (which looked like flying pieces of plumbing!) Werner Von Braun developed ballistic missiles capable of reliably delivering 1 ton "payloads" (ok warheads) hundreds of miles away on an industrial scale. (Just ask any Londoner of the time). This was without digital computers let alone GPS! Also consider the Messerschmidt 262, the world's first jet fighter, again produced and used on an industrial scale.
Finally consider German tech would've been much better had Hitler not chased a lot of German Jewish* scientists (like a guy named Einstein) and their friends out thanks to his insane ideas about Aryans (which he wasn't! was he)?
Remember that Werner Von Braun basically took over the American space program after the first disastrous launch (you look it up) with his Vanguard. He followed it through all the way to the Saturn V, an incredible achievement that boggles the mind when you consider most of it was done on paper with slide rules. Too bad he never was able to build the Nova, otherwise the US might've had man on mars in the 70's!
*I once heard a joke(?) as to why the Japanese never followed German orders to kill the Jews who were living in Japanese controlled territory (like Shanghai where 20,000 Jews managed to survive during WWII). Basically they were afraid of doing so because they knew that the three most important (some people may disagree but needless to say they were very important!) people in HISTORY were Jews. Do you know who they are? No I'm not Jewish, nor married to a Jew! (Nor married :( )
Anyway look below for their initials (in chronological order). Still doesn't excuse what they're doing to the Palestinians.
(J.C., K. M., A.E.)
Quantum Physics and Relativity were considered "Jewish Science", and it is kind of hard to do anything in space without those things.
It would be like trying to build an Mars probe under a religious state that banned the discussion of heliocentric solar systems.
Apollo 8 was rushed and sent to the Moon (the first manned test of a Saturn V went to lunar orbit, not staying in Earth orbit), specifically to beat a manned Soviet lunar flyby planned with the Zond spacecraft. (I.e., the Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 missions were swapped; the reasons for this were kept secret at the time.) As we beat both Zond and the Soviet lunar landing program (Zond was more or less flight ready, with 2 unmanned test flights, the landing program, not so much) before the Soviets actually flew any people to or around the Moon, the Soviets were able to pretend that they didn't have a manned lunar program, which made it possible for the Nixon administration to kneecap manned space flight a few years later. NASA and the US have never recovered from that, and the USA has (to be blunt) never really done much with manned space flight since.
Arguably, if Apollo 8 had stayed in Earth orbit, Alexei Leonov would have commanded the first mission to circle the Moon, the "space race" would have extended to lunar operations, and humanity would probably have multiple bases on Mars at this moment.
In Soviet America, space beats you!
is at http://www.space.com/11336-space-race-united-states-soviets-spaceflight-50years.html
Why do we keep getting second hand news links?
As a person who lived during this age, I will tell you much could have been different. If America would have regained it's national pride about space and technology sooner, then the massive research and funding of science education would have dried up much sooner, and Americans would have gone back to their own self-centered, tunnel-vision lives. We would have been content to remain slightly ahead in a space race between tortises. Remember many of the advances in electronics were a direct result of the space race. The calculators and computers we use today are a direct by-product of the space race. If space had not captured the national imagination, no Star Trek or Star Wars, as Hollywood types would still be remaking Buck Rogers- with sad, non-computer generated special effects. Electronics would still be bulky and for a long time would have been running off of vacuum tubes. Yes, transistors would have eventually been introduced into electronics, but much, much slower.
If the Soviet national pride had been wounded sufficiently, it might have been the motivation not to back down as soon as they did during the 1960's Cuban missle crisis. That was nearly world war III, so a lot could have changed. If the Soviets truly did not have the stomach to launch missles at us (hopefully the threat of mutually assured destruction would NOT have changed), then the stalemate would have continued, and we would have eventually invaded Cuba. Cuba, not Vietnam could have been the focus of the late 60's and the peace movement of the era could have become insignificant based on the real threat off the coast of Florida. Most protest signs would have said "Down with Castro" rather than "Down with WAR!" Without Castro in power for the past 50 years, the political climate of the hemisphere would have been at least somewhat different. Cuba, if not the 51st state by now, would have eventually morphed back to the island vacation spot it used to be before the revolution.
Yes, one would hope most the advances of the past 50 years would have gotten private funding and taken place anyway, but having lived through the time, it is clear to me, such funding for systems not directly or indirectly related to defense would have not been a high priority.
We could learn a thing or two about capitalism from the Russians. We are retiring our fleet and will be hitching rides on Russian shuttles over the next 4 years. While I do think private and commercial space flight will play a major role in future space flight, I think NASA Is a bit optimistic in thinking that we'll have private rockets in place by 2015. I suspect we'll still be riding on Russian shuttles well past 2015.
+3 insightful? Really slashdot? Not only insulting to Americans, but Homosexuals too. How far this site has slipped.
The amount of butthurt USSR did to the USA amazes me. I still have a space encyclopaedia for teens composed by USA authors, which doesn't mention Gagarin or "Mir" space station. Actually, the chapter about space station only mentions some fictional US project to build one (which never came into fruition) , as if it had never been done before. Lulz.
(Decora, you are truly a genius, why didn't we do think of this long ago?!)
good point. now let me add enough meaningless text in so that slashdots comment filter will not destroy my post.
In the big picture of life in the USA and in Russia it is all irrelevant.
Site's down now but check out the "Wagging the Moondoggie" series of articles. Wow.
I think that for the US to have beaten the Soviets in placing a man in space, you would have to go further back in time than simply the Ham and Able launches. The Soviets were well ahead of the US primarily due to one man: Korolev. It was his development of the R-7 rocket that accomplished everything. But in April 1957, there was a mishap - an R-7 prototype exploded. Had that (and I do stress here, HAD THAT) been as devastating an explosion as that of the N1 explosion of 1969 and killed Korolev then it is possible that Khrushchev would have lost interest in the ballistic missile program and scrapped it. That would have given the US - which was far more concerned with nuclear capable bombers - time to catch up and potentially surpass the advancements of the Soviets. Eventually, I think, Van Braun would have been given a chance to pull off a stunt like Korolev did and put a satellite into orbit. That being the case, it would have been the Soviets playing catch-up, not the US. It's entirely likely then that the US would have beaten the Soviets to the punch and placed a man into space first. But that's a lot of "ifs," and it is not how history actually turned out. This is just "navel-gazing" and I'm honestly surprised that something like this would turn up on Yahoo News (not that it's the greatest source of news in the world, but still). I think it's time we started looking forward, not backward - at least in terms of space exploration.
It's not very often that I'm in such agreement with an AC, but also having lived through the time, well, yeah. What he said. Indeed, imagine what the US might have done with the Bay of Pigs invasion (which took place the week after Gagarin's flight) if it had been, say, John Glenn -- a Marine Corps officer -- on that orbital flight, instead of Gagarin. Intriguing.
Sometimes I think ours is the alternate history. We took a wrong turn somewhere back there, and that's why "the future" is devoid of moon bases, Mars colonies, and dramas in space. I should be a pioneer, exploring a new world, helping to create a new free society in space! But instead, I am an ordinary guy with a mortgage and a job. The fact that I'm lazy can't be relevant...
Small boats threat? It makes more sense as a defence against anti-ship missles. Modern anti-ship missles are programmed to approach in an erratic trajectory that makes it very difficult for CIWS to track and take out since they have to compensate for the flight time and distance of the projectiles. A laser will CIWS will most certainly be more effective.
"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
Then the Americans would probably have made it to Mars before 1980. And then never bothered to go back again.
i am just wondering, how far modern materials science, lasers, telecommunications, computers, opto-electronics, radio communication, etc, would have gotten without quantum physics, ... ?
You see, when the Russian Vostok1 came back from orbit, they were so afraid it wouldn't land safely, that when it reached an altitude for safe ejection, they shot him out. Now, if you read the report, the soviets lied to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which REQUIRED that the pilot who was in space LAND with his spaceship. The soviets lied and said that he did, but it was proved years later that he did not. So, the Americans "technically" were the first into space, if you use the FAI guidelines. The soviets did the Americans a favor by lying to the world, and got the Americans off their butts and they once again proved that if you piss us off, there isn't anything we can't do.
Still would have been a race. We were already exploding nukes and doing all kinds of testing in that realm. About the only thing the Russians accomplished is us maybe turning the speed knob from 9 to 11.
There was already an atomic race on.
Capitalism didn't build either country's space program - their governments did. The respective countries' economies are irrelevant*.
Yes, the Soviets may have reached the early Space Race milestones before the US did, but the Russians are still using the EXACT SAME launch vehicle, 50 years later, that put up their first satellite. It's like sprinting the first mile of a marathon and dropping out. The US paced itself and finished the race, and as an avid space exploration fan, I feel no need to "blunt the impact." (I kind of enjoy the irony.)
*For an exceptional analysis of contemporary free market space travel, watch Bill Whittle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h_d6YVA1Kg). This is happening nowhere else in the world.
The question arises: What if ______________________________________?
The question then goes away and stops bothering people.
-kgj
Poster just got my money for a Kindle edition.
After WWII, the USA put significant effort into creating a light weight A-bomb because the size of the rocket you need to put a bomb on the other side of the earth grows exponentially with payload weight. Stalin, OTOH, pretty much said: "This one's good enough. Now go build a rocket big enough to throw it." The result of this is that the USSR had launch vehicles with a larger throw weight than the USA.
Launching a person into orbit requires a certain minimum throw weight because you need room for the person and life support systems. The USSR could re-purpose an ICBM and achieve orbit. The USA, however, needed to build a bigger launch vehicle to put that much weight into orbit.
The thing most people forget about the space race is that military analysts looked at every manned launch as a demonstration of weapon capability. Which is was. That is why Sputnik scared the crap out of the government. That is why being first to orbit scared the crap out of the government.
1) Reliable solar energy harvesting from geostationary orbit and transporting it to the surface,
2) Relaying energy produced on the surface, over the chain of satellites, back to any point on Earth (equipped with receiving station),
using technology from (1) - MILITARY APPLICATION PO$$IBILITY ! On a side note, disaster relief application possible too, as well as surface ship propulsion, etc.
3) manufacturing, maintaining, and recycling the satellites "up there", without costly launches from planet surface.
...we would never have heard the last of it. Still be banging on about it now.
"Yes, the Soviets may have reached the early Space Race milestones before the US did, but the Russians are still using the EXACT SAME launch vehicle, 50 years later, that put up their first satellite. It's like sprinting the first mile of a marathon and dropping out. The US paced itself and finished the race, and as an avid space exploration fan, I feel no need to "blunt the impact." (I kind of enjoy the irony.)"
Well, sort of. You might enjoy the irony even more realizing that the US is currently contracting the Russians and their exact same launch vehicle to provide supplies (now) and human transport (after the shuttle retires) to the space station.
They can't get over it, as it is connected to some Western fears. The West and especially the USA are not that important anymore and the Chinese are considered to be commies (even if they are not). So the USA fears to loose against the commies after all. "We are all doomed!" This leads to the problem that the US think they are safe when they can control everything. But this normally piss of others. Now when they are getting closer to bankruptcy they feel other gaining on them. Even if this is just a normalization.
The submitter, Mark Whittington, is also the person who wrote the "Yahoo! Contributor Network" story he links to (i.e., a blog). And at the articler, he links to an Amazon page to buy a book that Mark Whittington wrote and self published.
What would have happened if the Russians had invented TV?
Excuse me - but have you heard about Boris Rosing (patent for CRT as receiving device in Germany in 1907) and Vladimir Zworykin (studied under Rosing in St. Petersburg Institute of Technology)? Are you sure Russians have nothing to do with invention of TV?
Your zen trumps my sarcasm.
-kgj
Frist, the USSR wasn't 3rd world, they were 2nd world. They are the definition of 2nd world. 3rd world were countries that were not 1st world (US and allies) or 2nd world (USSR and allies), and thus tended to be the minor ones the brush fire wars were fought in. While I know that is not the current usage of 3rd world, in a discussion about the cold war, you should probably use the cold war usage.
Anyway, why did the USSR beat us to space? Because we were essentially going down a much harder technical road to get there. We weren't using rockets to try and get there. If you read various books by Chuck Yeager and the other "Right Stuff" guys, the USA essentially believed that we would just keep building planes that went faster and higher until we got to space. That is a technically hard route that we are still working on. The Soviets instead concentrated on brute force rockets to get to space. When they did it first, the USA changed their technological development and caught up fairly quickly.
Not quite. The R-7 had several upper stages added over 10 years to become the first Soyuz rocket, and that rocket was then modified to be safer during the Apollo-Soyuz test program. Further modifications were made after the cold war ended and the US bought Russia into the ISS.
The thing is; it works. It puts ~8t into orbit very reliably, very cheaply, and provides human occupants with what is generally a very smooth ride (based on the description of the launch given by an American).
Why change what works so well? The big irony of the moon race is that the Soviets effort produced a lot more hardware that continued to be used after the moon race was over (Soyuz capsule+rocket, Proton, Block-D upper stage, NK-33 engines)
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
No, not smoking at all :) and I hope you'll agree.
Remember, what I'm trying to say is "Yuri Gagarin's flight in April 1961 was approximately as far ahead of Alan Shepard's flight in May 1961 technologically and timewise, as Apollo-8 Moon orbital mission in December 1968 was ahead of - cancelled - Zond mission soon afterwards".
I don't think that's too far from the truth. Let's review your objections and see.
In Dec 1968... Soviets were considering a flyby because they couldn't go into lunar orbit. (And the manned flyby was delayed multiple times because of safety problems with the spacecraft.)
True, I agree - but similarly in April 1961 Americans were considering a suborbital flight because they couldn't go into orbit. And delays on the American side early in 1961 had similar nature.
They didn't have, and never successfully tested a craft that could go into lunar orbit. Both attempts to test it (both in 1969) failed when the booster failed. (By December 1968, Apollo had flown twice unmanned suborbital, once unmanned orbital, and once manned orbital.)
Here I'm not sure what you're talking about. If you mean N1 rocket, then it was tested not 2, but 4 times - all unsuccessfully. If you mean Soyuz spacecraft, then - before December 1968 - it was flown manned twice, first time (April 1967) it was Komarov catastrophe, second time (October 1968) it was Beregovoi's unsuccessful flight. In addition to that many unmanned flights both of Soyuz and Zond happened before December 1968. For example, Zond 5 and 6 both flew around the Moon and came back intact - in September and November of 1968.
So, Russians were very close to ability to send a crew to a lunar fly-by mission. Not to Moon orbit, of course, but definitely to a fly-by.
They [Russians] didn't have a functional lunar lander - it's first unmanned test wasn't until November 1970. (By December 1968 the LM had flown once unmanned orbital.)
We're talking about comparison of American Moon orbital mission with Soviet Moon fly-by mission. Lunar landers don't matter that much here. They matter, of course, if we would compare the ultimate goal of Moon landing - and then the difference will be much bigger - but the difference was gradually accumulating.
They didn't have proven booster that could boost the spacecraft (that never did reach orbit) and the lunar lander (which never flew manned either) to the Moon. The first launch attempt wasn't until 1969 - and it was a failure. (By December 1968 the Saturn V had flown twice unmanned.)
Right, but again, we're talking about Moon orbital and Moon fly-by missions vs. Earth orbital and Earth suborbital missions. Russians didn't need N-1 to fly Zond, neither Americans needed Atlas to fly Freedom 7.
Overall potential of a program was definitely bigger for American one, but it didn't manifested itself yet by December 1968. Future events showed that delay accumulated, but it wasn't a given in December 1968.
In 1961, the US was only weeks behind - in 1968 the Soviets were years behind.
If you, as I do, compare Gagarin's flight with Shepard's - then I agree that US were weeks behind, but then I maintain that Russians were not that behind in their Moon fly-by flight after Apollo-8 flight.
If you compare Gagarin's first orbital flight with Glenn's first orbital flight, then US certainly was some serious months behind in April 1961.
The Soviets not only weren't even not close in December 1968, the were very nearly not even in the race at all. Between divisive internal politics and a very late start, they'd hobbled themselves right out of the gate. Their lag and defeat was so decisive that for decades their official line was that they hadn't succeeded because they hadn't even tried. (I.E. if a
What if the chicken didn't cross the road? Would there still be jokes?
Since America is capitalist it would NEVER have taken the first steps into space, since it is unprofitable. Capitalism is only concerned with short term profit. The ONLY reason we went to the Moon was to compete with the Soviets, who are WAY more idealistic and long-term goal orientated (like China). This ALSO explains why we have NO space program and have regressed as a country AND are destroying ourselves from the inside (exporting jobs, listening to megacorps [republicans, fox news, anti-health care, anti-unions etc etc)
The true irony here is that the central idea of capitalism is that competition creates efficiency and lack of competition allows inefficiency. Thus, when capitalism no longer has any competition, it should (according to itself) become less and less efficient - which, of course, is just what has happened.
Basically, capitalism is incompatible with itself triumphing. Capitalism needs communism and preferably other competing systems around to stay competitive.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Also, everyone would think America was a jerk.
Exactly. If it works, don't fix it. Moreover, what did the Americans do on the moon once they got there? Play golf and drive a moon buggy. What a royal waste of 10 years of hard work.
that basicly sums up the whole core of the space race
One theory is that the Soviets relied on larger rockets because their missile guidance systems were not as accurate. To compensate, they built larger nukes, which required bigger rockets. The side effect is that their missile-projecting rockets were capable of space-flight, and they decided to take advantage of this situation.
Table-ized A.I.
So, no. The US would not have "beaten the Soviets into space."
I thought it was an open secret that there were lost cosmonauts before Yuri Gagarin - he was just the first guy to make it back down.
Not really. There's plenty of competition here in capitalist countries like the USA, Canada, China, India, and the EU.
The problem is that the US space program was NOT a product of capitalism at all. It was a product of socialism. Capitalism is when private companies gather capital and make things which they can sell to customers for a profit. Socialism is when the government takes money from taxpayers, and uses it to buy stuff or create programs it thinks the People need. The space program wasn't capitalist at all, because it didn't involve any private capital: it was both government-financed, and government-run. Sure, there were some private companies (like Rocketdyne) operating as government contractors, but these companies are basically fascist, as they're a combination of government and private entities. These companies don't do anything without answering to the government for it, and every little thing they do is scrutinized by the government.
If a bunch of private companies had, without any government funding or coercion, gathered capital and created their own space program, with the end goal of generating profit somehow, THAT would be a "triumph of capitalism". Spending billions of taxpayer dollars to send some people to the Moon to play golf and drive buggies isn't capitalism at all, it's socialism, exactly like what the Soviets did. The only difference between the two systems is how the government gained power: in the USA, the people in government were elected there (with help from a biased media of course), and in the Soviet Union they had an autocratic ruling party with no elections at all. Beyond that, they were essentially the same.
Capitalism is really a pretty lousy and unworkable system if your goal is to do BIG things, such as giant scientific endeavors with no short-term profit, or build large public-works projects like dams or bridges. There's capital out there, but these things aren't profitable enough to bother with, unless a government is willing to foot the bill. Who's going to pay for a giant suspension bridge across a bay? Yes, sometimes these things do get built privately, and then run as toll roads, but it's pretty rare. Instead, they're usually purchased by state or federal government, and the people allowed to use them for free (though they pay for it with gasoline taxes). What about something like the Superconducting SuperCollider (SSC)? There's no profit in high-energy physics, at least none that we can foresee, so no private companies are going to build such a thing. Instead, governments build these things, like the LHC built by the EU. Capitalism is only good for small things, like building cars to be sold to individuals and businesses, or building computers, or buildings, or other things that can be purchased by individuals or medium-size or smaller companies. For anything big, you need socialism, because only governments have both the money and foresight to pay for something in society's interest that doesn't generate a quick profit.
If the Americans had beaten the Soviets, all the Soviet space stations would be American space stations now. And instead of not having a Soviet moon base, we would not have an American moon base.
There was no reality of russians landing people on the Moon, because USSR's chief designer Sergey Korolev died early in 1966. Soviet space programme was just as much "personality cult" based as the USA one, where von Braun left in 1977 and the glory immediately vaned. Both USA and USSR space programmes were run by a single genius, respectively and when they became unavailable, progress essentially stopped.
Hi,
I just wanted to point out that I think your assessment that Soviet Union was willing to wait it out until communist revolutions happen in the capitalist world is false. At least during the Stalin years of Soviet Union, the doctrine was "We'll bring communist revolution to the west on the tips of our bayonetts". This might have changed during the cold war, but it's not entirely certain. During cold war Soviets had a lot of tanks, (20k, more than the rest of the world), and tanks can survive relatively high levels of radiation. This implies they were preparing for offensive conventional and nuclear war. I also remember during my own civil defence classes that the question was not whether the war will happen, but when. BTW, Stalin was preparing for offensive war as well- but Hitler altered his plans. Soviets had more tanks than Germans in 1939 (Read about Russian BT tanks).
I think this probably changed during later years of the cold war, when struggling economy and stagnation made Soviet Union fall further and further back.
--Coder
It was only the declared race to the moon that Kennedy announced. The actual race to the moon had begun a decade earlier at least in the US.
I remember that one of the major concerns was that the Soviets would put nuclear weapons in space, and even that they would "claim" the moon by landing there, just as the Europeans "claimed" other parts of what became their colonial empires. I used to have a deed to one square inch of the moon, coordinates precisely stated, with the caveat in the text that my ownership was subject to the ability of those granting me the deed to claim ownership and thus transfer it to me.
My guess is that if the Soviets had not put a human up first, we would still have had the race, but perhaps we would not have been motivated quite so much. The debate over funding was huge. I remember the letter sent out by my father's company "permitting" them to vote for Johnson because Goldwater was likely to want to cancel the space program. That was an interesting election for those normally Republican.
All in all, the fact that we landed men on the moon demonstrated that we could do whatever we wanted to do, provided we had the will. The quality control on the manned filght programs (at least) was incredibly fierce; I have anecdotes. But we have not demonstrated that we have the national will to sustain something like the space program (or many other things as well). At one point when my father briefed Congress about manned trips to Mars, the time line was 44 years out and back. And the staffer's comment was "That's eleven presidential terms. It would never happen."
so basically the Greater German Reich would have had no flatscreens and Xbox.
Though generally regarded inferior, ape was actually before man in space. A great sign of splendid intellect and courage.
Wait, the Soviets beat us into space? I thought my fairy-tale US education told me that we beat everybody at everything for completely sound logical and ethical reasons!?!?!
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Nothing to see here but a bunch of amerifags crying. Move along.
You're quite mistaken. We're breeding.
postmodernsideshow.com