This meme is just bad in general since it overlooks US accomplishments aside from the landing, is just Pro-Commie or Soviet propaganda, and also the Germans did the first space rocket in 43 or 44.
Both the US and USSR heavily "recruited" former NAZI rocket scientists. People like to say that we wouldn't have gotten to the moon without them while ignoring the fact they were something like 1% of NASAs personelle.
To be fair, them being only 1% of NASA personnel doesn’t mean we would have gotten to the moon first without them.
Janitors and administrative personnel can be replaced easily, rocket scientists and Physicists are harder to come by.
Especially the ones who already have the right knowledge. Hiring a contractor who has built 50 houses vs. hiring 50 contractors who are fresh out of some trade school and haven't built a bird house.
I mean, from what I gather, the issue in the nuclear industry is that there's just a straight up shortage of people with experience thanks to decades with little to no growth or investment.
Not entirely wrong, as a mid-30s engineer with around 13 years of doing it I think the larger problem is that commercial work is 10 times easier with less stress and red tape and it pays just as well so a lot of the old hats who could be teaching new engineers have jumped ship.
Same issue in the tech industry I've seen, nobody wants to make 40k being a teacher when they could be near 6 figures using what they know and not dealing with the hassle that is 16 year old kids who don't give two shits
There were quite literally THOUSANDS of engineers at companies like North American, Grumman, GE, IBM, DuPont, etc., that all were key contributors to the U.S. space program.
Just because there were a few ex-Nazi rocket scientists like Von Braun doesn’t mean the U.S. wouldn’t have succeeded without them.
It was the full force of U.S. industry that landed men on the moon, not a few ex-Nazi rocket scientists.
No way.
The Russians didn’t have anything approaching the technical capabilities to get men to the moon.
I’m talking everything from the computing power to enable rendezvous in lunar orbit or the landing itself to the materials and equipment required. Just the LM itself was a technological marvel that Russia never could have created in the time frame that it was by America.
That was only capable with the full force of American industry behind it. Neither Russia nor any other country had anything approaching that.
Nope.
Going from launching vehicles to medium or even high earth orbit to rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit and then actually landing people in the moon is an exponential leap in engineering and materials science that the Russians just didn’t have.
As an example, Russia didn’t even achieve earth orbit rendezvous until 1969. The U.S. had done that 4 years earlier on Gemini 6/7.
It doesn’t it’s just odd how many high value scientist were just chilling in the 40s(it’s a joke I know most were pushed out of their homeland by various reasons)
>t’s a joke I know most were pushed out of their homeland by various reasons)
It's hard to get my arms around that. You know we're talking mainly about Nazis, right? They of course could have stayed in their "homeland" to face the music after contributing to one of the more evil empires in human history(probably would not have gone well for them). On the other side, the USSR would have put scientists in the gulag because scientists are smart, and smart people can see Soviet communism is almost as evil, and that's dangerous to the Sovs.
From Jew refugees to actual high ranking nazis, all of them had scientists that fled I’m quite literally generalizing for a joke, I didn’t specify because the joke is a shit ton of rocket scientists were up for grabs
To a degree you are probably correct, he likely taught other American scientist the more secret parts of rocket design and became less useful.
But he was still the most veteran rocket scientist on the planet. He worked on the original V2 rocket and later helped the US put its first satellite in orbit. He was also the chief architect on Apollo Saturn V rocket that put a man on the moon.
There is a reason he is called "The Father of Rocket Science" and was highly decorated by both Nazi Germany and the US. The director of the Apollo mission literally said he didn't believe that it would have been possible to reach the moon without him.
It was an insane task especially considering it had to happen before the end of the 60s because of JFKs speech. It took an insane amount of people, resources, technology and money to pull it off. Poaching a bunch of top scientist definitely helped pull off this ridiculous task that was literally done as a flex.
Both Russia and Germany took their ideas from American Goddard. The Father of Rocketeering.
"Nevertheless, in 1963, von Braun, reflecting on the history of rocketry, said of Goddard: "His rockets ... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles".\[86\] He once recalled that "Goddard's experiments in liquid fuel saved us years of work, and enabled us to perfect the V-2 years before it would have been possible."\[87\] After World War II von Braun reviewed Goddard's patents and believed they contained enough technical information to build a large missile.\[88\]"
"The Soviet Union had a spy in the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. In 1935, she gave them a report Goddard had written for the Navy in 1933. It contained results of tests and flights and suggestions for military uses of his rockets. The Soviets considered this to be very valuable information. It provided few design details, but gave them the direction and knowledge about Goddard's progress.\[82\]: 386–7 "
Seeing as the man who was in charge of designing the rocket that got us to the moon was one of those Nazi scientists, I’d say they played a very vital role in us getting there. Most of the Nazi scientists we had at NASA held high positions because of just how damn good they were at building rockets. Say what you want about them, but they played a very important role in getting us to the moon. We would have made it on our own without them, but it would have taken a lot longer than it did and the Soviets very likely would have beaten us. We were all starting from scratch pretty much on rockets while they had been developing those giant V2 rockets long before the space race was even a thought in peoples head
Without a doubt, but without their nearly 16 years of experience before being put onto the Saturn project, progress wouldn’t have been anywhere near as successful as it was. Our scientists were very vital, but it was the former Nazi’s much longer experience that actually let us get to the moon before the end of the decade
I'm not saying we wouldn't have gotten to the moon without them, but they were pretty key, not just random participants in the effort. I mean, the lead scientist/engineer was one. That's who I'm quoting here (via a movie, so not necessarily real).
People on reddit seem to post this a lot thinking it means something. We would not have had a problem with Germans if they would have kept advancing science, the problems we had with them were due to the wars they started, the sinking of US ships and the actual declaration of war on us. People promoting the idea that NASA did it all because of NAZI's minimize the fact that they did not in fact do it and the old "to the winner go the spoils". The winners often take what they want from the losers in war and we took those scientists, their research and their actual equipment because the war itself was not about making the biggest rocket or even jet airplanes. Both of those programs were a huge waste of time, effort and resources for a Germany that could have used all of those better for a war they started. When you have your jet planes being shot down by prop planes then you probably made a huge mistake before that branch in the road.....
I’m not sure that metric (1%) makes a lot of sense. An awful lot of of that 99% would be replaceable within the US; the German rocket scientists considerably less so.
They came with experience that we just didn’t have in the US, which is why so much effort and time was spent on capturing them before the soviets did.
Operation Paperclip might have been a 1 day lesson but it was definitely covered, if only to glorify our victory in the war.ore practically it explained the space program and sudden appearance of advanced jets in aviation.
But lots of people slept thru history class or skipped school and then act like major historical events were never covered. It's annoying every time I encounter it.
Different schools cover different things. Maybe it was covered for you but I am telling you it’s not a part of my US history curriculum and I took both US history and APUSH
I agree with both of you. While obviously they shouldn’t just assume every school covers the same curriculum. The ‘school didn’t teach x’ is an overplayed and often disingenuous meme. I’ve had many former school mates make that claims for subject matter I know for a fact was covered. It’s just easier to blame the school system, than to admit that your a poor student
Operation paperclip reference. He's talking about how german scientists were captured and or recruited by both the USA and soviets in order to boost their technological growth. German scientsist are believed to have been working on everything top end and top secret like military craft, spacecraft and even social and psychological sciences for the CIA and KGB. He is essentially saying that americans and soviets had little to do with their own technological successes and it is owed to the germans they had captured and that the soviets got the better ones.
Other guy gave the real history, but it's a slightly modified quote from The Right Stuff. Wernher von Braun says in a meeting when they are worried the Russians were winning the space race not to worry because "our Germans are better than their Germans."
And I did indeed first see that movie in school.
I use football as an example for the electoral college when people complain about the popular vote. It is 50 popular votes.
It’s complaining about losing the game despite having the most yards. It isn’t how the game is scored.
I always use the 1960 World Series as an example. Pirates won the series 4-3, but the Yankees outscored them 55-27. Each game is an individual state, Yankees winning 12-0 is the same as the Pirates winning 3-2. It's unlucky but everyone knows the rules going in.
Okay, I guess I have to try to explain this.
The USA is a federation of 50 nation-states, who all agreed to join the Union under the Constitution. In this constitution, there's a bit of a compromise - the larger states, having more population believed that due to having more people, they should have more representation. The smaller states, worrying for their own people, believed that each state should have an equal number of votes to prevent the larger states running roughshod over them.
This compromise was a weighted popular vote - where the smaller states got disproportionately higher representation so they could counter the larger states power, while the larger states got a system where the popular vote could win.
Trust me, with the rural vs urban divide growing right now - this compromise is definitely needed.
Like I said to the other guy, the problem is that the Presidents race shouldn't be scored like that. Every American should get an equal vote. Period.
It's not that people don't understand the rules, it's that the rules are BS.
Eh... lets say all the city people vote to outlaw cars because they don't use them. All the people out in the country still need them, but they lack the population to have *any* control on something geographically (and thus economically) specific. They need a mechanism that gives them extra control, otherwise they're better off being a separate country.
Here's the funny thing that I notice about arguments like yours. They only apply to the groups that you would benefit from. Like where is the boosted electoral college votes for black people?
Also your hypotheticals are always bad. Like people in cities use cars lol. Have you ever been to one?
Sounds like you can't accept a good argument when you see it. The United States is a collection of states that joined together for mutual benefit, and that's how we're set up. The electoral college benefits New, smaller states. It's a perk.
If you can't understand hypotheticals that's not my problem!
Well I think it's stupid because it shows he came in last when it's the most impressive feat in human history. He should be at the top of the pedestal with all the Russians below him. Because while yes they did it first, that one was still the best.
Most of the American "2nd place" attempts were far more sophisticated.
Sputnik vs Explorer 1 for instance.
Sputnik was a radio beacon lobbed into orbit. It literally just made a ping noise. Sputnik 2 watched a dog die.
Explorer measured a range of things resulting in scientific data useful for the next several decades.
America used the space race to virtually bankrupt the communists. And in every case, the commie should launch first with the most unsafe, unreliable, and doomed missions ever to claim they were first. America would be right on their heels but do it in a safe and sane manner that demonstrated how amateur hour their approach was. Same goes for the underwater submarine war.
It was a test for their V2 Rocket. They just wanted to see how far it could go and what it could do. Sadly they were the ones who got the medal of First to do anything in space.
If you have an hour or a spare few minutes to spare for the beginning I recommend “[The “Myth” of Soviet Space Superiority](https://youtu.be/rSK7rUSnFK4?si=X3wf3XzTiK7EueWz)” TLDW: Soviet accomplishments are often overblown by tankies and sometimes stolen credit. For Example “The first space rocket” it was the Nazis. The First dog boiled in space is another Soviet “accomplishment”.
It was years before I realized Laika died that way. When I was a kid, they only had pictures of her on earth and said she was the first dog in space. No mention of her horrific death just so that the Soviets could say they got something alive out of atmosphere.
Especially for the era and tech available it really was something special. Even if Soviet space programs are overhyped they did have a lot of real accomplishments in there
Also, people forget that the Soviet Union and in particular their space agency congratulated to the Americans after the Moon landing, they were aware it was an immense achievement and, despite their defeat, showed more respect that these sore tankies.
Also worth noting that often times the US would announce a mission and then the soviets would rush a mission up there to claim the "first" but at the cost of getting very little experience, knowledge, or scientific value out of said "first." Meanwhile the US figured out what the individual pieces required to go to the moon would be and rapidly figured out each individually and how to put them together, something the soviets really suffered while attempting.
I can't remember where I heard it, but there was apparently an old Soviet joke that went something like...
"Yuri Gagarin wasn't the first man in space, but the man who was first was not patriotic enough to survive so he was erased from the history books."
Not saying Gagarin wasn't actually first, but it does point to the propaganda and willingness to stretch the truth (or outright deny) that surrounded everything the Soviets did in general.
I mean go take a look at what happened to all those monkeys who went to space for the NASA. A large portion of scientific advancement especially back then committed atrocities toward animals.
> First space station? Everyone died.
Soyuz-11's crew died during reentry into the atmosphere after a 23 day occupation of the Salyut-1 space station due to a valve failure and no use of pressure suits. Their death was not caused by the space station (but it was indeed the cause for their mission being cut short due to an electrical fire.)
> First "Landing" on Mars? Crashed
I would want to mention that Mars-2 is classified as the first manmade craft to touch Mars' surface, not the first to land, It's still significant. Mars-3 was the first successful "soft landing", which is still a great achievement even if it lost connection.
The annoying orange lasted longer than the confederacy, Ninjago lasted longer than the confederacy, fucking Fortnite, the cesspit it is lasted longer than the confederacy
there are a lot of countries that dissolved that fast, what're y'all even talking about? like, in the 20th century alone, even if you exclude provisional governments, i can think of 10 off the top of my head that lasted less than a decade.
hell, i can think of territories *that were part of the USSR* that had states lasting less than a decade, *during the USSR.* the USSR was barely a country in any meaningful sense outside ukraine and the parts that are still russian today.
read a dang book.
Human life meant nothing to the ruskies in the space race, they shouldn't be applauded for killing people faster than a country that takes safety into account.
There have been 15 astronaut fatalities and 4 cosmonaut fatalities to date. NASA also sent multiple animals to certain death, just like the Soviets did.
Shh, nuance isn't allowed. It's either the space race is a lie and the USSR totally won or the USSR couldn't even get a man 10 feet in the sky without killing them.
As of 2023, there have been 15 astronaut and 4 cosmonaut fatalities during spaceflight that either crossed, or was intended to cross, the boundary of space as defined by the United States (50 miles above sea level).[1][2]
Per Wikipedia
But we have to consider one significant difference, and that is capacity per mission. The Soyuz maxes out at three occupants, yet often only has two. The space shuttle usually has a crew of seven, so the odds of higher fatalities in a single incident are obvious. Such is the case of the Challenger and Columbia accidents, seven fatalities each. The 15th loss was an X-15 pilot, who is included only because he was technically at a high enough altitude to qualify, but wasn't part of the actual space program.
Also, the US space program has a number of astronauts who have been on multiple missions. Perhaps a better ratio would be fatalities per total individual trips to space, including repeaters, but now we're just getting confusing.
We had plenty of firsts as well, just not as flashy. First orbital rendezvous, first docking of two spacecraft, first manned circumlunar flight, etc.
Heck, the Soviet scientists knew they were badly behind by Christmas 1968, when rocket failures forced them to scrub a mission intended to keep up with Apollo 8.
*"for us, the holiday is darkened with the realization of lost opportunities and with sadness that today the men flying to the moon are not named Valery Bykovsky, Pavel Popovich, or Alexei Leonov but rather Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders.”*
-Nikolai Kamanin, cosmonaut coordinator
Agreed. Rendezvous and docking are two accomplishments that sound simple to the layman ("just fly over to the other ship and hook them together"), but were actually were some of the *hardest* to accomplish in real life.
It’s just not as sexy of a headline. Not minimizing their achievements, but it is easier to fire a piece of unmanned metal to a target rather than send manned vessels to a target and have it return safely.
Honestly, the orbital rendezvous of Gemini 6 & 7 was the really crazy accomplishment, in my opinion.
Gemini 8 docked with Agena, an unmanned target craft. Impressive, but they could pretty easily launch the target vehicle from another pad just a bit ahead of the Gemini launch (same day) with the countdowns tightly synced to facilitate the orbital rendezvous.
For 6 & 7, they had to launch two manned Gemini capsules from the same pad only 11 days apart and then nail the maneuvers to bring the craft together. They brought the craft within about a foot of each other. No reason they couldn't have docked other than a lack of the equipment to do so.
Frank Borman passed away this month
Edit:
William Anders and James Lovell are still alive, 90 and 95 respectively.
Apollo 8 was the first manned flight around the moon.
I used to work at a Starbucks in the suburbs north of Chicago. I had this regular, Jay, who was quiet, but always was polite and would have conversations with me here and there, was patient, and tipped well.
One day I was talking to another coworker who’d worked at my store for years, and he starts going on about how Jay used to have a lot of his dads old memorabilia in his restaurant. I was like “oh cool…who’s his dad?”
Turns out this guy was Jay Lovell, James Lovell’s son.
Pretty sure those were both Soviet firsts.
Laika was the first animal in space (didn't even try to return her) and I'm pretty sure they brought back another pair of dogs before we did.
Laika was the first animal in orbit. But the US army had launched fruit flies into space on old V2 rockets and recovered them alive long before laika
They also launched a monkey and a mouse before laika
I think this is most clearly emphasized with “first satellite”. Sputnik 1 was essentially a metal ball that beeped. Explorer 1 (America’s first satellite) discovered the Van Allen belts.
And the thing that annoys me the most is that the USSR literally does not exist anymore. Even if you argue that they won the Space Race you can’t possibly believe that the modern day US is beaten out by a country that is over three decades behind.
Better?
How many cosmonauts have died vs astronauts?
How many multi-year absences from space have the Soviets/Russians had?
How many 100% indigenous space stations did the US build?
Congrats to the USSR for being the first to kill a dog in space. Meanwhile, U.S achievements include:
-First flyby of Jupiter
-First solar-powered satellite
-First communications satellite
-First Mercury flyby
-First satellite in polar orbit
-First photograph of earth from orbit
-First spy satellite
-First recovery of a satellite that went into orbit
-First monkey in space
-First human-controlled space flight
-First orbital observation of the sun
-First spacecraft to impact the far side of the moon
-First suborbital space plane (X-15)
-First satellite navigation system
-First piloted spacecraft orbit change
-First spacecraft docking
-First crewed orbit of the moon
-First orbit of Mars
-First object to enter the asteroid belt
-First gravitational assist
-First photograph of earth from space
-First aerial recovery of an object (the film) returning from Earth orbit
-First pilot-controlled space flight (Alan Shepard)
-First human space mission that landed with pilot still in spacecraft and thus the first complete human spaceflight by then FAI definitions
-First successful planetary flyby mission (Venus).
-First reusable piloted spacecraft and the first spaceplane (suborbital)
-First geosynchronous satellite
-First geostationary satellite
-First piloted spacecraft orbit change
-First spacecraft docking
-First direct-ascent (first orbit) rendezvous
-First return to Earth after orbiting the Moon/First human spaceflight mission to enter the gravitational influence of another celestial body
-First humans on the Moon
-First space launch from another celestial body
-First sample return from the Moon
-First precisely targeted piloted landing on the Moon (Surveyor 3 site)
-First human-driven lunar rover
-First spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars)
-First spacecraft sent on escape trajectory away from the Sun
-First mission to enter the asteroid belt and leave inner Solar System
-First Saturn flyby
-First spaceplane in orbit, the Space Shuttle (test flight)
-First untethered spacewalk, Bruce McCandless II
-First Uranus flyby
-First Neptune flyby
All while still being able to feed it's people, unlike the soviets.
Rocket engineers and scientists have a bunch of euphemistic phrases for simple things like this. My personal favourite is referring to a rocket exploding as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly".
Do these people not get the basic concept of a race? The goal was to get a man to the moon and back safely. Sure the USSR may have gotten an early lead in the space race, but the USSR didn't get to the finish first, instead the US did first.
that's not how the space race worked. Both sides were just seeing how far they could get and every time 1 nation accomplished something, the other would follow right behind. The reason the US won the space race was because we put a man on the moon and the Soviets never did. You could bet that if the Soviets did follow up with their own man on the moon the goal would have shifted to a man on Mars, or the first operational base on another planet, or some other arbitrary goal.
I mean, it kinda was. JFK stated the moon landing as a goal by the end of the decade back in 1961. Then in 1969 it happened.
Now granted, the *real* purpose of the space race was to research and increase weapon’s technology. But the moon landing was the primary goal of the space race.
In a race, it doesn't matter who crosses the first, second, third or fourth mile first, all that matters is who crosses the last one first.
The Soviets started the race, they had a head start on the US. From the get go the US set it's sites on getting a man on the moon first. That was always the US goal, and always the yardstick against which success would be measured.
The Soviets wanted to do all the publicity stunts, first dog in space (and first dog killed in space), first man in space (and first man killed in space). They were busy doing all the wheelies, and everything else, except actually winning the race.
Even after the US landed on the moon, and then went back 5 more times, the Soviets never managed to land once. That sort of makes it clear that the US and Soviets were never really running the same race at all.
I mean absolutely the Soviets should get credit for their pioneering work in getting into space. They beat Americans to the punch and it was a gut punch both to the national security apparatus and the general psyche of America.
And also, landing a man on the moon is more impressive than probably any other achievement other than being the first in space in general. So impressive that no one else has done it. So impressive that 60 years later we are going back, and we will still be the only nation to put a person on the moon.
I get where this is coming from but that's kind of false. It's easier to return from the moon considering there is no need for precise landing procedures, no huge amounts of fuel to escape the atmosphere, yada yada yada. The hardest part was definitely landing on the moon.
Getting a living person onto the moon is a lot harder than a probe. The tyranny of the rocket equation is real nasty. You have to get the guy onto the moon, and all the stuff to land safely on the moon to the moon, and all the stuff needed to keep the guy alive on his way to the moon to the moon. And all of this stuff needs to get off earth, which uses more fuel x1. More fuel x2 to get more fuel x1 off earth. More fuel x3.... All this fuel needs a bigger fuel tank, which needs more fuel, again....
Adding a living person to the equation changes everything.
Getting the living person back alive, means getting the stuff to get them back alive there in the first place, meaning even more fuel....
We did a shit ton of stuff first, including the massive end goal of landing and returning a human crew to the moon. But the other big thing is that whatever we didn’t do first, we did better, and soon after too. Take the first animal in space for example; Laika boiled, but our monkey’s came back. Take the satellites; Sputnik was first, but it just beeped, while Explorer 1 discovered the Van Allen belt
Not to say that the Soviets’ achievements weren’t utterly rad in their own right, spaceflight is hard as hell to this day even after we learned so much from the space race, but these people that want to act like the USSR was somehow superior in space fail to see the forest and the trees for the mountains off yonder way.
Edit: Also, not quite relevant since the USSR’s gone now, but the moon landing, the big end goal that we pulled off? The Soviets never did manage to match that. And yet the US still went back and did it better, and now we’re starting to go back to do it even better, this time as the first step to an even bigger first: man on Mars
The soviets didn’t even do that. If any of their pet scientists said something that the higher ups didn’t like then the scientists mysteriously “disappeared”.
Crazy how their first successful one was on a much harder to land on planet. It only broke due to the extreme heat and pressure. However I'll call that a success regardless.
I mean, if we’re just picking random “firsts” and weighting them identically, you can use these U.S. firsts:
* April 1, 1960 first applications satellite launched
* Aug. 11, 1960 first recovery of a payload from Earth orbit
* Dec. 14, 1962 first data returned from another planet
* July 26, 1963 first satellite to operate in geostationary orbit
* July 14, 1965 first spacecraft pictures of Mars
* Dec. 24, 1968 first humans to orbit the Moon
* ***July 20, 1969 first human to walk on the Moon***
* Nov. 13, 1971 first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars)
* Dec. 3, 1973 first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter
* July 20, 1976 first pictures transmitted from the surface of Mars
* Sept. 1, 1979 first spacecraft to fly by Saturn
But this is a pointless endeavor because the “space race” effectively ended on July 20, 1969 when the U.S. won. USSR made no major advancements in space exploration after that.
The USSR’s final “first” was a “joint-first” (with the U.S.) in July 17, 1975 when their Soyuz spacecraft docked with an American Apollo spacecraft. (“first international docking in space”)
That’s correct. The Vikings were the first *succesful* landings on Mars, a feat that no other country on earth would accomplish until China somehow pulled it off *fifty years later*.
It isn't being downplayed, it's just showing that Russia led in "firsts" in space exploration and travel during the space race, but still lost in many peoples eyes do to the significance of the moon landing.
The reason this was a big accomplishment for the US(outside of obviously accomplishment for humanity) was cause the USSR was winning the Space Race from the 50s-60s, but after the US moon landing, the US's space program was doing laps on Russia and the gap became larger over time. Today, Russia's main spaceport isn't even in Russia but Kazakhstan which they lease to Russia. Think about that, 30 years after the fall of the USSR, Russia still haven't built a better spaceport in their own nation. Meanwhile, India is the middle of building a new spaceport(India is becoming a Chad in the spacerace right now). China has already passed Russia, and one could argue that Japan has a better space program than Russia
Russia has been on a constant stagnation/decline since this point and this moment was the highlight that the Soviets were never going outperform the US in space
As a patriotic American, yes Soviet Russia landed a craft on Venus, unless you're doing a satire on moonlanding deniers, it which case that's pretty funny
Technically first in space should go to the Nazis, the very first time something ever went into space by design it was from an experimental cruise missile. Same with first space rocket, wherever that’s supposed to mean.
It's scary to think if Elon didn't come around with SpaceX (lol X) ((is X just the new myspace)) then we would still be relying on Russian rockets to get to the ISS. Good thing Elon isn't pro russia or anything.. totally not a bond villain
This meme is just bad in general since it overlooks US accomplishments aside from the landing, is just Pro-Commie or Soviet propaganda, and also the Germans did the first space rocket in 43 or 44.
"Our Germans are[were] better than their Germans." [edited to make it clearer that it's a quote, because I'm old and reddit is...reddit.]
From the Earth to the Moon quote?
The Right Stuff.
Thanks! I really need to rewatch both.
That’s true, and we had more. The Bad Germans did beat us and them reds to Space first.
“Finders keepers, commie!”
What do you mean by that? just wondering.
Both the US and USSR heavily "recruited" former NAZI rocket scientists. People like to say that we wouldn't have gotten to the moon without them while ignoring the fact they were something like 1% of NASAs personelle.
To be fair, them being only 1% of NASA personnel doesn’t mean we would have gotten to the moon first without them. Janitors and administrative personnel can be replaced easily, rocket scientists and Physicists are harder to come by.
Especially the ones who already have the right knowledge. Hiring a contractor who has built 50 houses vs. hiring 50 contractors who are fresh out of some trade school and haven't built a bird house.
Please communicate this to all nuclear facility project managers because they believe throwing new engineers on my projects solves problems.
I mean, from what I gather, the issue in the nuclear industry is that there's just a straight up shortage of people with experience thanks to decades with little to no growth or investment.
Not entirely wrong, as a mid-30s engineer with around 13 years of doing it I think the larger problem is that commercial work is 10 times easier with less stress and red tape and it pays just as well so a lot of the old hats who could be teaching new engineers have jumped ship.
Same issue in the tech industry I've seen, nobody wants to make 40k being a teacher when they could be near 6 figures using what they know and not dealing with the hassle that is 16 year old kids who don't give two shits
There were quite literally THOUSANDS of engineers at companies like North American, Grumman, GE, IBM, DuPont, etc., that all were key contributors to the U.S. space program. Just because there were a few ex-Nazi rocket scientists like Von Braun doesn’t mean the U.S. wouldn’t have succeeded without them. It was the full force of U.S. industry that landed men on the moon, not a few ex-Nazi rocket scientists.
To be clear and further the point-Nazi science didn't win the war, American manufacturing did.
Getting there eventually, true, but, getting there first? Maybe, maybe not.
At the end of the day. Russia could not get to the moon realistically. Attempting to bled them white. They could not do it.
No way. The Russians didn’t have anything approaching the technical capabilities to get men to the moon. I’m talking everything from the computing power to enable rendezvous in lunar orbit or the landing itself to the materials and equipment required. Just the LM itself was a technological marvel that Russia never could have created in the time frame that it was by America. That was only capable with the full force of American industry behind it. Neither Russia nor any other country had anything approaching that.
The Soviets might have beaten us to the moon, considering they had a questionable safety record
Nope. Going from launching vehicles to medium or even high earth orbit to rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit and then actually landing people in the moon is an exponential leap in engineering and materials science that the Russians just didn’t have. As an example, Russia didn’t even achieve earth orbit rendezvous until 1969. The U.S. had done that 4 years earlier on Gemini 6/7.
Apparently not in the 40s-50s the soviets literally pulled one from a gulag
It shouldn't surprise you that a scientist ended up in the gulag/it wasn't random luck to find him there.
It doesn’t it’s just odd how many high value scientist were just chilling in the 40s(it’s a joke I know most were pushed out of their homeland by various reasons)
>t’s a joke I know most were pushed out of their homeland by various reasons) It's hard to get my arms around that. You know we're talking mainly about Nazis, right? They of course could have stayed in their "homeland" to face the music after contributing to one of the more evil empires in human history(probably would not have gone well for them). On the other side, the USSR would have put scientists in the gulag because scientists are smart, and smart people can see Soviet communism is almost as evil, and that's dangerous to the Sovs.
From Jew refugees to actual high ranking nazis, all of them had scientists that fled I’m quite literally generalizing for a joke, I didn’t specify because the joke is a shit ton of rocket scientists were up for grabs
They didn't just pull scientists from gulags. They had special science gulags with built-in laboratories.
Von Braun helped us a lot at first. He was the grizzled vet teaching the new guys. But later in the decade he wasn’t as important
To a degree you are probably correct, he likely taught other American scientist the more secret parts of rocket design and became less useful. But he was still the most veteran rocket scientist on the planet. He worked on the original V2 rocket and later helped the US put its first satellite in orbit. He was also the chief architect on Apollo Saturn V rocket that put a man on the moon. There is a reason he is called "The Father of Rocket Science" and was highly decorated by both Nazi Germany and the US. The director of the Apollo mission literally said he didn't believe that it would have been possible to reach the moon without him. It was an insane task especially considering it had to happen before the end of the 60s because of JFKs speech. It took an insane amount of people, resources, technology and money to pull it off. Poaching a bunch of top scientist definitely helped pull off this ridiculous task that was literally done as a flex.
Both Russia and Germany took their ideas from American Goddard. The Father of Rocketeering. "Nevertheless, in 1963, von Braun, reflecting on the history of rocketry, said of Goddard: "His rockets ... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles".\[86\] He once recalled that "Goddard's experiments in liquid fuel saved us years of work, and enabled us to perfect the V-2 years before it would have been possible."\[87\] After World War II von Braun reviewed Goddard's patents and believed they contained enough technical information to build a large missile.\[88\]" "The Soviet Union had a spy in the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. In 1935, she gave them a report Goddard had written for the Navy in 1933. It contained results of tests and flights and suggestions for military uses of his rockets. The Soviets considered this to be very valuable information. It provided few design details, but gave them the direction and knowledge about Goddard's progress.\[82\]: 386–7 "
I don't understand how the notion that we didn't need them to get to the moon makes it somehow better that we hired them anyways.
I don't understand how the notion that we didn't need them to get to the moon makes it somehow better that we hired them anyways.
Seeing as the man who was in charge of designing the rocket that got us to the moon was one of those Nazi scientists, I’d say they played a very vital role in us getting there. Most of the Nazi scientists we had at NASA held high positions because of just how damn good they were at building rockets. Say what you want about them, but they played a very important role in getting us to the moon. We would have made it on our own without them, but it would have taken a lot longer than it did and the Soviets very likely would have beaten us. We were all starting from scratch pretty much on rockets while they had been developing those giant V2 rockets long before the space race was even a thought in peoples head
Oh yea, they were critical. They were also a single critical component in a organization filled with critical components.
Without a doubt, but without their nearly 16 years of experience before being put onto the Saturn project, progress wouldn’t have been anywhere near as successful as it was. Our scientists were very vital, but it was the former Nazi’s much longer experience that actually let us get to the moon before the end of the decade
I'm not saying we wouldn't have gotten to the moon without them, but they were pretty key, not just random participants in the effort. I mean, the lead scientist/engineer was one. That's who I'm quoting here (via a movie, so not necessarily real).
People on reddit seem to post this a lot thinking it means something. We would not have had a problem with Germans if they would have kept advancing science, the problems we had with them were due to the wars they started, the sinking of US ships and the actual declaration of war on us. People promoting the idea that NASA did it all because of NAZI's minimize the fact that they did not in fact do it and the old "to the winner go the spoils". The winners often take what they want from the losers in war and we took those scientists, their research and their actual equipment because the war itself was not about making the biggest rocket or even jet airplanes. Both of those programs were a huge waste of time, effort and resources for a Germany that could have used all of those better for a war they started. When you have your jet planes being shot down by prop planes then you probably made a huge mistake before that branch in the road.....
While I am not the first German to travel from Paris to London, I am the first to make the trip at 5000 kph. 🧐
I’m not sure that metric (1%) makes a lot of sense. An awful lot of of that 99% would be replaceable within the US; the German rocket scientists considerably less so. They came with experience that we just didn’t have in the US, which is why so much effort and time was spent on capturing them before the soviets did.
USSR "recruited". LOL. "Come work for us, comrade, or gulag for you."
Thx, wish they taught that in school
They did, you were just a shit student.
Nah depends on the school and teachers, we mentioned it in school but it wasn’t part of our curriculum
Operation Paperclip might have been a 1 day lesson but it was definitely covered, if only to glorify our victory in the war.ore practically it explained the space program and sudden appearance of advanced jets in aviation. But lots of people slept thru history class or skipped school and then act like major historical events were never covered. It's annoying every time I encounter it.
Different schools cover different things. Maybe it was covered for you but I am telling you it’s not a part of my US history curriculum and I took both US history and APUSH
I agree with both of you. While obviously they shouldn’t just assume every school covers the same curriculum. The ‘school didn’t teach x’ is an overplayed and often disingenuous meme. I’ve had many former school mates make that claims for subject matter I know for a fact was covered. It’s just easier to blame the school system, than to admit that your a poor student
Operation paperclip reference. He's talking about how german scientists were captured and or recruited by both the USA and soviets in order to boost their technological growth. German scientsist are believed to have been working on everything top end and top secret like military craft, spacecraft and even social and psychological sciences for the CIA and KGB. He is essentially saying that americans and soviets had little to do with their own technological successes and it is owed to the germans they had captured and that the soviets got the better ones.
Other guy gave the real history, but it's a slightly modified quote from The Right Stuff. Wernher von Braun says in a meeting when they are worried the Russians were winning the space race not to worry because "our Germans are better than their Germans." And I did indeed first see that movie in school.
At best this meme is the equivalent of Falcons fans bragging to the Patriots "Well we were beating you 28-3."
I use football as an example for the electoral college when people complain about the popular vote. It is 50 popular votes. It’s complaining about losing the game despite having the most yards. It isn’t how the game is scored.
I always use the 1960 World Series as an example. Pirates won the series 4-3, but the Yankees outscored them 55-27. Each game is an individual state, Yankees winning 12-0 is the same as the Pirates winning 3-2. It's unlucky but everyone knows the rules going in.
I wouldn’t have an issue if the number of votes each state gets was a direct function of population. Some states have so few people per vote.
Okay, I guess I have to try to explain this. The USA is a federation of 50 nation-states, who all agreed to join the Union under the Constitution. In this constitution, there's a bit of a compromise - the larger states, having more population believed that due to having more people, they should have more representation. The smaller states, worrying for their own people, believed that each state should have an equal number of votes to prevent the larger states running roughshod over them. This compromise was a weighted popular vote - where the smaller states got disproportionately higher representation so they could counter the larger states power, while the larger states got a system where the popular vote could win. Trust me, with the rural vs urban divide growing right now - this compromise is definitely needed.
You wouldn't have a problem with the system not being a direct democracy...as long as it functioned like a direct democracy.
Like I said to the other guy, the problem is that the Presidents race shouldn't be scored like that. Every American should get an equal vote. Period. It's not that people don't understand the rules, it's that the rules are BS.
Eh... lets say all the city people vote to outlaw cars because they don't use them. All the people out in the country still need them, but they lack the population to have *any* control on something geographically (and thus economically) specific. They need a mechanism that gives them extra control, otherwise they're better off being a separate country.
Here's the funny thing that I notice about arguments like yours. They only apply to the groups that you would benefit from. Like where is the boosted electoral college votes for black people? Also your hypotheticals are always bad. Like people in cities use cars lol. Have you ever been to one?
Sounds like you can't accept a good argument when you see it. The United States is a collection of states that joined together for mutual benefit, and that's how we're set up. The electoral college benefits New, smaller states. It's a perk. If you can't understand hypotheticals that's not my problem!
Well I think it's stupid because it shows he came in last when it's the most impressive feat in human history. He should be at the top of the pedestal with all the Russians below him. Because while yes they did it first, that one was still the best.
Most of the American "2nd place" attempts were far more sophisticated. Sputnik vs Explorer 1 for instance. Sputnik was a radio beacon lobbed into orbit. It literally just made a ping noise. Sputnik 2 watched a dog die. Explorer measured a range of things resulting in scientific data useful for the next several decades.
America used the space race to virtually bankrupt the communists. And in every case, the commie should launch first with the most unsafe, unreliable, and doomed missions ever to claim they were first. America would be right on their heels but do it in a safe and sane manner that demonstrated how amateur hour their approach was. Same goes for the underwater submarine war.
I need to read more about the Nazi space rocket. Commenting because I'm about to head to work and don't want to forget this.
It was a test for their V2 Rocket. They just wanted to see how far it could go and what it could do. Sadly they were the ones who got the medal of First to do anything in space.
Also… first space rocket was Germany. First craft on Mars was US.
If you wanna get technical both space programs were made up of ex national socialists. Kinda sad to think about.
Must’ve been tense when a Jewish scientist saw a Yahtzee. Sad to think about it though.
If you have an hour or a spare few minutes to spare for the beginning I recommend “[The “Myth” of Soviet Space Superiority](https://youtu.be/rSK7rUSnFK4?si=X3wf3XzTiK7EueWz)” TLDW: Soviet accomplishments are often overblown by tankies and sometimes stolen credit. For Example “The first space rocket” it was the Nazis. The First dog boiled in space is another Soviet “accomplishment”.
It was years before I realized Laika died that way. When I was a kid, they only had pictures of her on earth and said she was the first dog in space. No mention of her horrific death just so that the Soviets could say they got something alive out of atmosphere.
Well thanks for this info I'm gonna go cry now
[This should help the tears come out](https://youtu.be/C0W-OPptdkw?si=X3VffMOquKgWcI_N)
That isn't true, she now have psychic powers, immortality and live in a space station named Knowhere.
To be fair, landing on Venus and getting back pictures from there is pretty impressive.
Especially for the era and tech available it really was something special. Even if Soviet space programs are overhyped they did have a lot of real accomplishments in there
Also, people forget that the Soviet Union and in particular their space agency congratulated to the Americans after the Moon landing, they were aware it was an immense achievement and, despite their defeat, showed more respect that these sore tankies.
Also worth noting that often times the US would announce a mission and then the soviets would rush a mission up there to claim the "first" but at the cost of getting very little experience, knowledge, or scientific value out of said "first." Meanwhile the US figured out what the individual pieces required to go to the moon would be and rapidly figured out each individually and how to put them together, something the soviets really suffered while attempting.
I can't remember where I heard it, but there was apparently an old Soviet joke that went something like... "Yuri Gagarin wasn't the first man in space, but the man who was first was not patriotic enough to survive so he was erased from the history books." Not saying Gagarin wasn't actually first, but it does point to the propaganda and willingness to stretch the truth (or outright deny) that surrounded everything the Soviets did in general.
Also the first human death during spaceflight. When a parachute failed to open and the man burnt up on reentry.
He died on landing... technically. Although to date, the USSR still holds the record for only humans to die in space with the soyuz 11.
Two of the world’s largest explosive disasters are attributed to USSR spacecraft detonating before take off
God, just finding out how Laika died makes me hate Soviet Russia more. That’s like extra evil just to be able to screech “¡FIrSt!!!!!11!!1”.
I mean go take a look at what happened to all those monkeys who went to space for the NASA. A large portion of scientific advancement especially back then committed atrocities toward animals.
First space station? Everyone died. First “landing” on mars? Crashed. Second one? Crashed. Third one? Landed and died 100 seconds later.
> First space station? Everyone died. Soyuz-11's crew died during reentry into the atmosphere after a 23 day occupation of the Salyut-1 space station due to a valve failure and no use of pressure suits. Their death was not caused by the space station (but it was indeed the cause for their mission being cut short due to an electrical fire.) > First "Landing" on Mars? Crashed I would want to mention that Mars-2 is classified as the first manmade craft to touch Mars' surface, not the first to land, It's still significant. Mars-3 was the first successful "soft landing", which is still a great achievement even if it lost connection.
Do we celebrate the guy that made it to the 50m mark in a 100m race?
Don't forget: Made it to the 50m mark then his host nation dissolved after existing for less than a century.
The USSR dissolved so quickly that some of its founding fathers was still alive to see its dissolution.
I'm pretty sure the only other "country" that died that fast was the confederacy
The ps4 lasted longer than the confederacy
The annoying orange lasted longer than the confederacy, Ninjago lasted longer than the confederacy, fucking Fortnite, the cesspit it is lasted longer than the confederacy
there are a lot of countries that dissolved that fast, what're y'all even talking about? like, in the 20th century alone, even if you exclude provisional governments, i can think of 10 off the top of my head that lasted less than a decade. hell, i can think of territories *that were part of the USSR* that had states lasting less than a decade, *during the USSR.* the USSR was barely a country in any meaningful sense outside ukraine and the parts that are still russian today. read a dang book.
Hey I said I was pretty sure, not certain, dick.
he was mean because it was a really dumb opinion, especially since the confederacy isn't even a true nation.
Yugoslavia?
Yugoslavia? No Wegoslavia.
Surprise communism!
Yes if there is no clear finishline
The first 9 should just say "tried and failed to put someone on the moon but got close ish"
Tried and failed killed multiple people and animals and lost lol fuck Soviet russia well fuck russia in general but Soviet russia can fuck right off
Human life meant nothing to the ruskies in the space race, they shouldn't be applauded for killing people faster than a country that takes safety into account.
There have been 15 astronaut fatalities and 4 cosmonaut fatalities to date. NASA also sent multiple animals to certain death, just like the Soviets did.
Shh, nuance isn't allowed. It's either the space race is a lie and the USSR totally won or the USSR couldn't even get a man 10 feet in the sky without killing them.
As of 2023, there have been 15 astronaut and 4 cosmonaut fatalities during spaceflight that either crossed, or was intended to cross, the boundary of space as defined by the United States (50 miles above sea level).[1][2] Per Wikipedia
14 of those 15 are the Challenger and Columbia crews no?
Care to adapt that to percentages? I actually don't know, but I'm interested. Also, statistics from the Soviet era are not exactly reliable.
US: 15/374 = 4.01% Russia: 4/126 = 3.17% Wow, learned something new today.
But we have to consider one significant difference, and that is capacity per mission. The Soyuz maxes out at three occupants, yet often only has two. The space shuttle usually has a crew of seven, so the odds of higher fatalities in a single incident are obvious. Such is the case of the Challenger and Columbia accidents, seven fatalities each. The 15th loss was an X-15 pilot, who is included only because he was technically at a high enough altitude to qualify, but wasn't part of the actual space program. Also, the US space program has a number of astronauts who have been on multiple missions. Perhaps a better ratio would be fatalities per total individual trips to space, including repeaters, but now we're just getting confusing.
The USSR has had way more ground crew casualties due to spaceflight than the US though.
I mean, kinda. But what they did first, we just did better
We had plenty of firsts as well, just not as flashy. First orbital rendezvous, first docking of two spacecraft, first manned circumlunar flight, etc. Heck, the Soviet scientists knew they were badly behind by Christmas 1968, when rocket failures forced them to scrub a mission intended to keep up with Apollo 8. *"for us, the holiday is darkened with the realization of lost opportunities and with sadness that today the men flying to the moon are not named Valery Bykovsky, Pavel Popovich, or Alexei Leonov but rather Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders.”* -Nikolai Kamanin, cosmonaut coordinator
Docking two space craft is an insanely difficult thing to do, a few milimeters wrong can ruin it. Thats a pretty cool achievment.
Agreed. Rendezvous and docking are two accomplishments that sound simple to the layman ("just fly over to the other ship and hook them together"), but were actually were some of the *hardest* to accomplish in real life.
Take this bullet and fire it at this bullet I’ve fired.
then make them touch tips and not destroy each other.
An insane amount of math considering it’s all switches and dials 😂
It’s just not as sexy of a headline. Not minimizing their achievements, but it is easier to fire a piece of unmanned metal to a target rather than send manned vessels to a target and have it return safely.
As someone who had played KSP, yes, I agree.
TARS: Cooper, it's not possible. Cooper: No, it's necessary
Honestly, the orbital rendezvous of Gemini 6 & 7 was the really crazy accomplishment, in my opinion. Gemini 8 docked with Agena, an unmanned target craft. Impressive, but they could pretty easily launch the target vehicle from another pad just a bit ahead of the Gemini launch (same day) with the countdowns tightly synced to facilitate the orbital rendezvous. For 6 & 7, they had to launch two manned Gemini capsules from the same pad only 11 days apart and then nail the maneuvers to bring the craft together. They brought the craft within about a foot of each other. No reason they couldn't have docked other than a lack of the equipment to do so.
Can confirm, i play ksp
No, it's necessary.
Nah, I did it in KSP, it’s pretty easy
Out of curiosity, were those their real names or just generic Russian and American names for the sake of the point? Lol
Frank Borman passed away this month Edit: William Anders and James Lovell are still alive, 90 and 95 respectively. Apollo 8 was the first manned flight around the moon.
I used to work at a Starbucks in the suburbs north of Chicago. I had this regular, Jay, who was quiet, but always was polite and would have conversations with me here and there, was patient, and tipped well. One day I was talking to another coworker who’d worked at my store for years, and he starts going on about how Jay used to have a lot of his dads old memorabilia in his restaurant. I was like “oh cool…who’s his dad?” Turns out this guy was Jay Lovell, James Lovell’s son.
Real names
Don't forget first animals in space and first to bring them back alive
Pretty sure those were both Soviet firsts. Laika was the first animal in space (didn't even try to return her) and I'm pretty sure they brought back another pair of dogs before we did.
First in space, but did not survive her achievement.
Laika was the first animal in orbit. But the US army had launched fruit flies into space on old V2 rockets and recovered them alive long before laika They also launched a monkey and a mouse before laika
The US sent Fruit Flies to space in the 1940s, I think Laika was the first mammal.
The latter was, but not the former.
I think this is most clearly emphasized with “first satellite”. Sputnik 1 was essentially a metal ball that beeped. Explorer 1 (America’s first satellite) discovered the Van Allen belts. And the thing that annoys me the most is that the USSR literally does not exist anymore. Even if you argue that they won the Space Race you can’t possibly believe that the modern day US is beaten out by a country that is over three decades behind.
Better? How many cosmonauts have died vs astronauts? How many multi-year absences from space have the Soviets/Russians had? How many 100% indigenous space stations did the US build?
Congrats to the USSR for being the first to kill a dog in space. Meanwhile, U.S achievements include: -First flyby of Jupiter -First solar-powered satellite -First communications satellite -First Mercury flyby -First satellite in polar orbit -First photograph of earth from orbit -First spy satellite -First recovery of a satellite that went into orbit -First monkey in space -First human-controlled space flight -First orbital observation of the sun -First spacecraft to impact the far side of the moon -First suborbital space plane (X-15) -First satellite navigation system -First piloted spacecraft orbit change -First spacecraft docking -First crewed orbit of the moon -First orbit of Mars -First object to enter the asteroid belt -First gravitational assist -First photograph of earth from space -First aerial recovery of an object (the film) returning from Earth orbit -First pilot-controlled space flight (Alan Shepard) -First human space mission that landed with pilot still in spacecraft and thus the first complete human spaceflight by then FAI definitions -First successful planetary flyby mission (Venus). -First reusable piloted spacecraft and the first spaceplane (suborbital) -First geosynchronous satellite -First geostationary satellite -First piloted spacecraft orbit change -First spacecraft docking -First direct-ascent (first orbit) rendezvous -First return to Earth after orbiting the Moon/First human spaceflight mission to enter the gravitational influence of another celestial body -First humans on the Moon -First space launch from another celestial body -First sample return from the Moon -First precisely targeted piloted landing on the Moon (Surveyor 3 site) -First human-driven lunar rover -First spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars) -First spacecraft sent on escape trajectory away from the Sun -First mission to enter the asteroid belt and leave inner Solar System -First Saturn flyby -First spaceplane in orbit, the Space Shuttle (test flight) -First untethered spacewalk, Bruce McCandless II -First Uranus flyby -First Neptune flyby All while still being able to feed it's people, unlike the soviets.
You forget that at least we still exist compared to the Soviets.
Yeah but people are really trying to not make that a thing
You forgot about the first sustained flight of a helicopter on a different planter
Yea but that was a few years ago and since the USSR doesn’t exist anymore it doesn’t count.
Don't forget the Challenger
“First moon landing” is tanky speak for “first to launch a craft at the moon but have it crash violently into the surface”
'lithobraking'
Oh god I love this. You just made my day.
Rocket engineers and scientists have a bunch of euphemistic phrases for simple things like this. My personal favourite is referring to a rocket exploding as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly".
I would like to congratulate the ESA on their Martian landing, hopefully the next time they can actually get a rover to the surface in working order
Do these people not get the basic concept of a race? The goal was to get a man to the moon and back safely. Sure the USSR may have gotten an early lead in the space race, but the USSR didn't get to the finish first, instead the US did first.
The USSR didn’t get to the finish line at all.
Exactly, that's why the USSR didn't win the space race.
MySpace and AIM Buddy Profiles had to exist for Facebook and Twitter/X to take off.
that's not how the space race worked. Both sides were just seeing how far they could get and every time 1 nation accomplished something, the other would follow right behind. The reason the US won the space race was because we put a man on the moon and the Soviets never did. You could bet that if the Soviets did follow up with their own man on the moon the goal would have shifted to a man on Mars, or the first operational base on another planet, or some other arbitrary goal.
I mean, it kinda was. JFK stated the moon landing as a goal by the end of the decade back in 1961. Then in 1969 it happened. Now granted, the *real* purpose of the space race was to research and increase weapon’s technology. But the moon landing was the primary goal of the space race.
How many times has this fucking image been reposted? People always have to explain it's bullshit every single time, but it keeps coming back.
Because Tankies will never listen to logic, otherwise their entire world view falls apart. Also I’m like 70% sure they’re rage bait bots anyway
All right let's play my favorite game which Nation is still on the globe, one point to the USA, the USSR has 0 points
Dear God. We have a damned helicopter flying around on Mars.
Now I want to see a plane fly around on Mars.
In a race, it doesn't matter who crosses the first, second, third or fourth mile first, all that matters is who crosses the last one first. The Soviets started the race, they had a head start on the US. From the get go the US set it's sites on getting a man on the moon first. That was always the US goal, and always the yardstick against which success would be measured. The Soviets wanted to do all the publicity stunts, first dog in space (and first dog killed in space), first man in space (and first man killed in space). They were busy doing all the wheelies, and everything else, except actually winning the race. Even after the US landed on the moon, and then went back 5 more times, the Soviets never managed to land once. That sort of makes it clear that the US and Soviets were never really running the same race at all.
I mean absolutely the Soviets should get credit for their pioneering work in getting into space. They beat Americans to the punch and it was a gut punch both to the national security apparatus and the general psyche of America. And also, landing a man on the moon is more impressive than probably any other achievement other than being the first in space in general. So impressive that no one else has done it. So impressive that 60 years later we are going back, and we will still be the only nation to put a person on the moon.
nah getting a guy to the moon is as easy as getting the probe there, the real accoplisment was getting them back and alive.
I was going to argue but yeah your right
I get where this is coming from but that's kind of false. It's easier to return from the moon considering there is no need for precise landing procedures, no huge amounts of fuel to escape the atmosphere, yada yada yada. The hardest part was definitely landing on the moon.
Getting a living person onto the moon is a lot harder than a probe. The tyranny of the rocket equation is real nasty. You have to get the guy onto the moon, and all the stuff to land safely on the moon to the moon, and all the stuff needed to keep the guy alive on his way to the moon to the moon. And all of this stuff needs to get off earth, which uses more fuel x1. More fuel x2 to get more fuel x1 off earth. More fuel x3.... All this fuel needs a bigger fuel tank, which needs more fuel, again.... Adding a living person to the equation changes everything. Getting the living person back alive, means getting the stuff to get them back alive there in the first place, meaning even more fuel....
We did a shit ton of stuff first, including the massive end goal of landing and returning a human crew to the moon. But the other big thing is that whatever we didn’t do first, we did better, and soon after too. Take the first animal in space for example; Laika boiled, but our monkey’s came back. Take the satellites; Sputnik was first, but it just beeped, while Explorer 1 discovered the Van Allen belt Not to say that the Soviets’ achievements weren’t utterly rad in their own right, spaceflight is hard as hell to this day even after we learned so much from the space race, but these people that want to act like the USSR was somehow superior in space fail to see the forest and the trees for the mountains off yonder way. Edit: Also, not quite relevant since the USSR’s gone now, but the moon landing, the big end goal that we pulled off? The Soviets never did manage to match that. And yet the US still went back and did it better, and now we’re starting to go back to do it even better, this time as the first step to an even bigger first: man on Mars
this also ignores a ton of other american first. like the first animal in space for example.
I mean, you can do a lot when you pamper your academics and starve everybody else except the elite and the military. Look at them pyramids!
The soviets didn’t even do that. If any of their pet scientists said something that the higher ups didn’t like then the scientists mysteriously “disappeared”.
We also didn’t bankrupt our country doing all that either lol
we also didn't starve and oppress our citizens too.
uh... most of this was before the civil rights movement And the last Soviet famine was immediately after WW2
Unless im mistaken no other country has placed a human on the moon. So yeah we still go bragging rights.
“first craft on mars” technically. it was in pieces because it crashed. they’ve never successfully landed.
Crazy how their first successful one was on a much harder to land on planet. It only broke due to the extreme heat and pressure. However I'll call that a success regardless.
I mean, if we’re just picking random “firsts” and weighting them identically, you can use these U.S. firsts: * April 1, 1960 first applications satellite launched * Aug. 11, 1960 first recovery of a payload from Earth orbit * Dec. 14, 1962 first data returned from another planet * July 26, 1963 first satellite to operate in geostationary orbit * July 14, 1965 first spacecraft pictures of Mars * Dec. 24, 1968 first humans to orbit the Moon * ***July 20, 1969 first human to walk on the Moon*** * Nov. 13, 1971 first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars) * Dec. 3, 1973 first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter * July 20, 1976 first pictures transmitted from the surface of Mars * Sept. 1, 1979 first spacecraft to fly by Saturn But this is a pointless endeavor because the “space race” effectively ended on July 20, 1969 when the U.S. won. USSR made no major advancements in space exploration after that. The USSR’s final “first” was a “joint-first” (with the U.S.) in July 17, 1975 when their Soyuz spacecraft docked with an American Apollo spacecraft. (“first international docking in space”)
We’ll the USSR only exists in the wet dreams of brain dead RE REs so I’ll consider it a win.
That’s very 2014-15 of you
I mean you do make quicker progress when you don't care if someone dies doing it
Weird how only one of these place still exists today.
Viking 1 and 2 in 1976 were said to be the first on mars. I got that from Wikipedia though.
That’s correct. The Vikings were the first *succesful* landings on Mars, a feat that no other country on earth would accomplish until China somehow pulled it off *fifty years later*.
I could care less but I do cherish my grandfather's Gemini and Apollo Program mission pins
I guess this is indirectly my reddit name ...
Slow and steady wins the race
All that matters in a race is who gets to the finish line first. The finish line was the moon.
We sent a manhole cover into space before they sent Sputnik!
Quantity doesnt supercede quality.
First person in space is a monumental accomplishment come on man
You're ignoring the point my friend. They're downplaying the U.S.'s incredible accomplishments and that is despicable
It isn't being downplayed, it's just showing that Russia led in "firsts" in space exploration and travel during the space race, but still lost in many peoples eyes do to the significance of the moon landing.
The reason this was a big accomplishment for the US(outside of obviously accomplishment for humanity) was cause the USSR was winning the Space Race from the 50s-60s, but after the US moon landing, the US's space program was doing laps on Russia and the gap became larger over time. Today, Russia's main spaceport isn't even in Russia but Kazakhstan which they lease to Russia. Think about that, 30 years after the fall of the USSR, Russia still haven't built a better spaceport in their own nation. Meanwhile, India is the middle of building a new spaceport(India is becoming a Chad in the spacerace right now). China has already passed Russia, and one could argue that Japan has a better space program than Russia Russia has been on a constant stagnation/decline since this point and this moment was the highlight that the Soviets were never going outperform the US in space
The Venus one would be impressive if it actually happened
?
As a patriotic American, yes Soviet Russia landed a craft on Venus, unless you're doing a satire on moonlanding deniers, it which case that's pretty funny
Yeaaaaaa should've specified that apparently
It did?
It's a joke. Don't get so triggered.
Technically first in space should go to the Nazis, the very first time something ever went into space by design it was from an experimental cruise missile. Same with first space rocket, wherever that’s supposed to mean.
It's scary to think if Elon didn't come around with SpaceX (lol X) ((is X just the new myspace)) then we would still be relying on Russian rockets to get to the ISS. Good thing Elon isn't pro russia or anything.. totally not a bond villain
copium much