How the Soviet Union Led and Lost 'The Space Race'(forbes.com)
forbes.com
How the Soviet Union Led and Lost 'The Space Race'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this-is-why-the-soviet-union-lost-the-space-race-to-the-usa/#3c6670594192
3 comments
ONE 'space race' not necessarily THE 'space race'.
Interestingly the Russians are still capable of putting men in space, while the US which 'won the space race' has not been capable of doing that for the last decade or so.
Interestingly the Russians are still capable of putting men in space, while the US which 'won the space race' has not been capable of doing that for the last decade or so.
I thought by most definitions they won the Space Race, by being the first to have a habitable space station
Had Korolev been alive, he'd probably both realize the shortcomings of existing systems (chiefly engines on the first stage) and workarounds (one of Korolev's last directives was to enhance cooperation with Chelomei, leading to Proton-Zond circumlunar launches). If not the first, USSR would at least had manned landings, and then the question would shift to comparison of lunar infrastructure; by that time N-1 could be debugged, planned upper stage with hydrogen put in place and Barmingrad (a Moon village project) given go ahead. While expensive, USSR's manned Moon project costed about 6 times less than Project Apollo.
A big takeaway from N-1 problems was that rockets should be tested on the ground first; it costed a fortune, but Energia was tested on the test-stand in full and flew both times successfully. Which makes more troublesome recent ideas to launch SLS without comprehensive testing of launch stages on the ground.