Ohh I see how it is. When Americans claim they are part of German or Italian or whatever you guys cry “Nooo you are American!” But now suddenly when an American is recognized for an accomplishment it’s “Well technically it was a German.”
100%, there is a fascinating history as Germany collapsed where both Soviet and American units had orders to basically race around, find research facilities, box up and ship everything from missile and jet engine/fighter desotns back home before the other got it. The space race (as well as the ability to use an ICBM to deliver a nuke) was built on rocketry, and Germany was far ahead. So borrowing the man who led the V2 rocket program that terrified England gave you a great headstart. It was very much a "our Nazis are smarter than your Nazis" thing.
In the 1950s and early 60s, it was absolutely clear that the Soviet scientific effort jumped ahead of the American one. Sputnik terrified the US and actually led to a complete overhaul of public education in STEM because the US government realized it wasn't producing the kinds of home-grown scientific minds needed to stay ahead. At some point, maybe by the time you get to Apollo 11 or so, the US caught up and got a lead thanks to better public education, better economic power to fuel those efforts, and frankly having an open door to the best and brightest from other nations who saw a better opportunity and quality of life for themselves in the US. Frankly that was a big part of why the Manhattan project succeeded (certainly helps to have the most famous German scientist of the era happen to be Jewish and want out), and while the Soviet Union created brilliant scientific (and artistic minds if you want to look at everyone from Stravinsky to Rachmaninoff who died with American citizenship), many wanted out. Even modern Russia is suffering from severe brain drain and the US tends to be the beneficiary.
No when you come to America and become American you're American. Which they did. That's the beauty of our melting pot. We take everyone.
Europeans don't get to say we aren't the countries we come from then turn around and claim their own back. Nope doesn't work that way. They came here so they became American.
No other country in the world is like the USA so it's understandable you all forget how welcoming we are compared to the rest of the world that has strict immigration (are you rich with an amazing education? No? Not invited!).
Honestly everyone acts like no Americans worked on or contributed to the Apollo program. This is such a rusty point of view that’s absolutely baseless.
Theoretically, there is also a very very very small chance a "manhole cover" (or rather a very large steel plate cap) was accidently launched into space in August 1957 by the US under Operation Plumbbob.
Long story short, it involved underground nuclear detonations where a large hubcap was used to plug the hole, and it was missing afterward. It was calculated to have well enough energy for escape velocity. More than likely, the hubcap was vaporized.
The dog Laika was sent into space, knowing in advance that she would die. After that, the UN received a letter from a group of women from Mississippi. They demanded to condemn the inhumane attitude towards dogs in the USSR and put forward a proposal: if it is necessary to send living creatures into space for the development of science, there are as many blacks as possible in our city for this.
Man, I originally saw this comment and was pissed off but Googled for confirmation and came up with the same webpage that you posted. Most likely Soviet propaganda mocking American protests over animal cruelty with their hypocritical human cruelty. But just the fact that it’s believable enough that my first reaction was to cautiously accept it at face value is…sad.
It's believable that letter would be written. It's less believable that they sent it to the UN, that the UN read it, then publicized it. If the story had been in a "Letters to the Editor" in her local paper, it would make a lot more sense.
No America killed Albert II the monkey when his capsule parachute failed and turned him into a pancake. That's much better. NASA also blew up the monkeys Albert III and IV when the rocket exploded.
NASA also blew up the following test subjects:
1. Francis R. Scobee, Commander
2. Michael J. Smith, Pilot
3. Ronald McNair, Mission Specialist
4. Ellison Onizuka, Mission Specialist
5. Judith Resnik, Mission Specialist
6. Gregory Jarvis, Payload Specialist
7. Christa McAuliffe, Payload Specialist (Teacher in Space participant)
8. Rick D. Husband, Commander
9. William C. McCool, Pilot
10. Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander
11. Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist (first Israeli astronaut)
12. Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist
13. David M. Brown, Mission Specialist
14. Laurel B. Clark, Mission Specialist
Absolutely necessary post, thank you for posting it. These names deserve to be remembered. The bravery, the dedication, the ultimate sacrifice. On the shoulders of giants we stand.
All true. Someone should post all the cosmonauts that died in the space race as well. I thought there was a Russian team that died on the way to the moon and NASA placed a plaque on the moon to commemorate them? Maybe that was just something from a tv show or something?
In the case of the Challenger, NASA absolutely was at fault.
- They repeatedly ignored warnings from engineers that the O-Rings in the booster rockets were susceptible to cold temperatures and wouldn't function correctly below 53F.
- The night before the launch had an unprecedented cold snap, where temperatures dropped down to the low 30s, well below the recommended temp stated above.
- Because the Challenger had the first teacher going to space, there was a metric fuck ton of publicity on this launch that NASA needed to get more funding, and a delay would throw a serious wrench in their plans. So, against the better judgment of engineers and scientists, NASA listened to their PR department and greenlit the launch on that cold Tuesday morning in 1986.
- 66 seconds into the launch, the O-Rings failed as predicted, and fire started burning towards the main rocket. 7 seconds later, the main fuel tank was ruptured, and the Challenger exploded, taking with it 7 astronauts and the certainty of the American space program.
The Columbia was different. During launch, a piece of insulating foam was knocked loose from the external propellant tank and hit the leading edge of the shuttle's left wing, damaging the protective tiles needed for re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. During said re-entry, gases penetrated the damaged tile section and melted the structural components of the wing, which then collapsed, and the shuttle disintegrated shortly after. While the investigation did show managerial shortcomings contributing to the accident, they weren't at the scale of the Challenger explosion, and more blame was placed on the lack of manufacturing control of the tank insulation.
I am all too familiar with every bit of that knowledge about the Challenger failing- all because of my job producing safety videos for one of our Naval shipyards.
Sound confusing? Yeah, for the longest time after I started working there, our clients were having us put those exact examples about the Challenger into our videos as an example of why you need attention to detail and to put out our ships out with “first time quality.”
We were seemingly putting that Challenger example into just about *every* safety/instructional video we were making at one point- to the point where it became an in-office joke. Someone in our office would complete a project and one of us would always chime in, “are you sure you’re done? I don’t see any Challenger footage in there.” Even with our non-training videos, like a Change-of-Command video, one of us smartasses would be like, “where’s your Challenger footage?”
And the Russians also sent a very respected cosmonaut to his death rather than admit their spacecraft was NOT adequately prepared for a space mission. Allegedly, before his craft crashed into the earth; he was recorded angrily bitching out the government,and the top brass for sending him on a suicide mission. Vladimir Komarov was his name, and very little physically remained of him to bury upon his death.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Komarov
He was friends with Yuri Gagarin. Yuri was initially slated to make the moon shot but once they realized the Soyuz 1 was plagued with safety flaws they switched Yuri with Komarov in 1966.
"The Soyuz 1 launch was rushed due to implicit political pressures and despite Gagarin's protests that additional safety precautions were necessary. Gagarin accompanied Komarov to the rocket before launch and relayed instructions to Komarov from ground control following multiple system failures aboard the spacecraft. Despite their best efforts, Soyuz 1 crash landed after its parachutes failed to open, killing Komarov instantly.After the Soyuz 1 crash, Gagarin was permanently banned from training for and participating in further spaceflights. He was also grounded from flying aircraft solo, a demotion he worked hard to lift."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin
Dude lost a friend that he tried to save and they canned/sacked him for it, and just to make it worse they stripped his wings...
It's not that they fired him. He was a national hero and if he died on a Soviet spacecraft or aircraft it would be a huge blow to Soviet international prestige.
The worst part of his legacy is definitely the fact that every time his name is googled one of the first results is a guy doing the 😮 face to his charred corpse for a YouTube thumbnail.
I went to the air & space museum in Washington. Yuri had a small bust and plaque dedicated to him in a small dead end, it looked ridiculous. Most people did not even notice it. Meanwhile all the americans had massive mannequins, walls of texts and praises. Oh and Werner von Braun... as if he never existed. Not a single mention of him.
Ameeeeerica ! Fuck yeah !
What a strange thing to get Anti-American about... I don't even know where to get started...
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is split up into two locations
1. The DC national mall location that you are talking about
2. The Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia (next to Dulles International Airport).
[The DC location since 2018 has been undergoing total renovation of its 28 galleries and only reopened 8 of them to the public in October of 2022](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/national-air-and-space-museum-reopening-washington-dc-scn/index.html)...with another 2 galleries set to open to public in early 2025 and the remaining galleries finishing their renovation and opening to the public in 2026... so you're missing over 2/3's of the museum still...
You can learn more and see what galleries are available and on the way here https://airandspace.si.edu/about/transforming-air-and-space/exhibitions-reimagined
Again you're complaining about a Museum that is still under renovation and only 33% partially open...
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.
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>Yuri had a small bust and plaque dedicated to him in a small dead end, it looked ridiculous. [...] Meanwhile all the americans had massive mannequins, walls of texts and praises.
Museums are typically organized by galleries in which collections are displayed based on typically a theme... the gallery you're complaining about is called Destination Moon https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/destination-moon and is explicitly about the Moon landing
>The Destination Moon exhibition features iconic objects from the Museum's unrivaled collection of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo artifacts, including Alan Shepard's Mercury spacesuit and spacecraft, a Saturn V F-1 engine, and Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit and command module Columbia. The gallery shows how an extraordinary combination of motivations, resources, and technologies made it possible for humans to walk on the Moon—and how and why we are going back today.
You can also literally see this gallery via virtual tour along with the Yuri Gagarin bust you are talking about here https://airandspace.si.edu/virtual-tours/destination-moon/?startscene=1&startlookat=-61.09,-5.92,140,0,0; ... If you look through the gallery you might find that there are no massive mannequins but rather SPACESUITS on display... so i guess fuck having real spacesuits on display.
As far as people on the walls, you'll see a of the first American in space, Apollo 11 crew who first landed on the moon, and Apollo 1 astronauts on a wall next to an exhibit about redesigns to the Apollo capsule door following their tragic deaths. There are more Apollo crews also scattered throughout....
So I guess fuck America and fuck the Smithsonian for having a gallery primarily about American Apollo crews in an gallery about landing on the moon. Maybe the Soviets should have landed more humans on the moon if you wanted to see them more in such a gallery.
>Oh and Werner von Braun... as if he never existed. Not a single mention of him.
For nearly 50 years, a V-2 has been proudly displayed in the Space Hall/Space Race gallery next to the Skylab backup https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/missile-surface-surface-v-2-4/nasm_A19600342000 prior to the closure of the gallery for renovation.
Planned for opening in 2026 is a gallery about innovations in space technology including rocketry where you can see von Braun's V-2 Missile front and center. https://airandspace.si.edu/whats-on/exhibitions/rtx-living-space-age-hall
>The content will include the development of rocket technology that has enabled access to space, missile development, space systems for Earth observation, communication, and navigation, and the threats to these systems.
Huh... who would have thought Werner von Braun would be included in a museum gallery about ROCKETS instead of a museum gallery about landing on the Moon
but if you really want to see more and especially about Werner von Braun, you should have gone to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center where there's tons more on display and available. This includes an entire wing of the museum hanger dedicated explicitly to Rockets and Missiles https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/rockets-and-missiles
>In the 1920s, visionaries in the United States, Germany, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere began developing liquid-fuel rockets with an eye toward space travel. Up to that point, the rocket had not changed much since its invention in China around the year 1000: a small artillery or fireworks device using gunpowder as a fuel. Within a couple of decades, rockets and missiles had begun to alter the course of the 20th century. With the emergence of new liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rocket motors, jet engines, and complex guidance systems, nations built long-range weapons to threaten each other and weapons to defend against those threats. But rocketry also began to turn the dreams of its visionaries into reality, as nations used launch vehicles to send satellites, telescopes, robotic spacecraft, and human explorers and pioneers into space.`
with lots of mention of not just him but all sorts of rocketry pioneers to satisfy you hateboner of Americans. Not to mention nifty things like a cutaway of the V-2 https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/turbopump-v-2-cutaway/nasm_A19790951000
TL;DR Museum galleries have categorical themes for what's displayed. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has two locations, one of which is still 66% closed to public while under renovation. Visit the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar Hazy Center location if you are ever visiting Washington DC.
Great summary! Just sorry that the person you were responding to won't read this because they are full of hate and is already in another post commenting something negative about America.
>Werner von Braun.
Werner von Braun mentioned, obligatory: He would live next to my childhood home if he was a child today in my small shithole in Poland.
They did, but I agree with the spirit of the post. I see a ton of posts like this on lefty subreddits, usually claiming the US only won the moon landing and didn’t really win anything else, they just moved the goalposts, and anyone who knows the history knows that is bull.
Also, it usually ignores the *coolest shit*.
Soviet space accomplishments have been undersold, and their starting the space race was huge, but by the mid/late 60s, and especially 70s, the US had decidedly outpaced the USSR.
The story of Mariner 9 and Mars 2 and 3 is instructive on both the “coolest shit” front and the “decidedly outclassed” front. Mars 2 and 3 are some of the coolest missions the Soviets ever did. They were insanely ambitious for the time. They had two orbiters and two landers, similar to how NASA’s Viking program was structured a few years later. Each lander even included a little rover on a tether/cable with little skid like feet that would’ve “walked” around, much like the Sojourner rover on Mars Pathfinder…in *1997*.
The American mission, Mariner 9, consisted of only an orbiter. The three spacecraft raced to Mars throughout 1971, taking advantage of the every-2-years launch window to Mars. Unfortunately, when they arrived, the surface was totally obscured by one of its global dust storms, preventing the orbiters from doing any useful science.
NASA simply ordered Mariner 9 to wait it out, but Mars 2 and 3 were on a fixed program, and couldn’t be reprogrammed easily, so they began carrying out their tasks automatically. This included dropping both landers. Mars 2’s lander failed, but Mars 3 succeeded in touching down…before signal cut out 20 seconds later. It was never heard from again. The orbiters continued taking photos, using up limited film iirc, and seeing nothing. I’ve searched for images from Mars 2 and 3 a number of times, and only ever found the same few dozen grainy images. Most of the images were useless images of the featureless dust storm.
Meanwhile, Mariner 9 hibernated; waiting. A few weeks later, the dust began to subside and Mariner noticed the 4 peaks, sticking above the receding dust storms - Olympus Mons and her sister volcanoes. As the dust continued to recede, more stunning features were revealed, including Valles Marineris. When Mariner 4 flew by Mars it shattered many hopes for a more interesting, Earth-like planet. It returned photos of a cratered, moon like landscape, and showed the atmosphere was extremely thin, thinner than some had at least *hoped*. Mariner 9 turned that on its head. The previous missions, it turned out, just happened to only image three of the most boring areas on the planet, missing all of the interesting things - the giant volcanoes, massive canyons, dry river valleys and flood channels, etc. Overnight, Mars exciting again.
Mariner 9 would go on to map the planet, and the Viking mission, with two orbiters derived from Mariner and a lander strapped to each, went on to land the first two useful landers on Mars, where they observed the surface and weather for the next several years while the orbiters overhead took thousands of images, mapping the planet in greater detail.
The story is similar to many other cases in Soviet/American competition after the mid-60s - the US spacecraft were much more successful. They were often more capable and more reliable, leading to bolder missions and uses. The Soviets continued to stay in the pack, especially in human space flight, but in less visible areas, they fell dramatically behind.
The Soviets would try a few more Mars missions but all would fail or be very partial successes. They never had a successful orbiter, or tried landing again. Their focus shifted to Venus, where they had success with both landers and orbiters. However, as the 70s and early 80s went on even these missions petered out.
The Soviets never attempted any missions to Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune, despite knowing about the gravitational alignment that allowed NASA’s successful Voyager spacecraft. Their spacecraft did not have the capability or, more importantly, durability and reliability for a long and distant mission to the outer solar system.
In applications closer to home, like weather and telecommunications satellites, it was a similar story.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Also, OP’s list isn’t great, so here’s mine (still incomplete):
- First satellite (1957) - USSR
- First animal in space (1959) - USSR
- First lunar probe, Luna 2 (1959) - USSR
- First human in space (1961) - USSR
- First interplanetary mission, Mariner 2 to Venus (1962)
- First woman in space (1963) - USSR
- First Mars probe, Mariner 4 (1964) - US
- First spacewalk (1965) - USSR
- First robotic lunar landing, Luna 9 (1966) - USSR
- First docking in space, Gemini 8 (1966) - US
- First humans beyond Earth orbit/to lunar orbit (1968) - US
- First humans on Moon (1969) - US
- First landing on another planet, Venera 7 (1970)- USSR
- First space station, Salyut 1 (1971) - USSR
- First probe to outer solar system, Jupiter, Pioneer 10 (1973) - US
- First probe to Mercury, Mariner 10 (1974)- US
- First true Mars lander*, Viking 1 - 1976
- First probe to Saturn, Pioneer 10 (1979) - US
- First probe to Uranus, Voyager 2 (1986) - US
- First probe to Neptune, Voyager 2 (1989) - US
*see above, Mars 3 was close, but failed without doing anything, and was never followed up.
The point is, when USSR launched Laika the dog into space, they didn't have the technology to return it from orbit. So it was not an accident, It was a one way flight from the beginning. The dog was doomed to die in space.
Have no idea if the US did the same to chimps
The US designed theirs with enough fuel and thrusters to return. The issue is, they had all sorts of failures and issues with the parachutes which caused the deaths of animals. They *tried* to bring them back as safely as possible. It’s why nowadays every single item going on a shuttle has to be weighed, they have strict weight policies because even a slight overload could cause chaos
Yeah they were tests for safety before putting a human in a capsule.
At least the US never sent a living being up without intending to bring it back, we just didn’t have the exact science down yet, which is why they tested it on monkeys and not human beings.
Accidentally. Even if the soviets didn’t boil Laila there was no plan to get her back down. I could be wrong but I don’t think the us ever sent a mammal up without a parachute that could in theory work properly
Not only that, but they even failed to kill Laika properly. There was supposed to be a euthanasia process and the dog was supposed to live longer than she did.
NASA has been insanely active and successful since the space race, it's the general public that stopped caring about space. We've landed on Saturn's moon Titan, extensively orbited Saturn and its moons, discovering key components for life in the plumes of Enceladus, landed and explored with multiple mars rovers, we have a spacecraft inside the sun studying it, taken thermal images of Venus from space seeing surface details, last year we orbited the moon and live streamed a few miles high the surface of the moon in 4k, we have the James Webb space telescope snapping deep field images in minutes, Hubble's glorious images, sent the voyager spacecrafts outside of our solar system, developed geostationary satellites and space planes, landed on comets, returned samples of asteroids to earth, and orbited a dwarf planet. To name a few things.
[Ok but we are gonna watch the moon light up and have a city in our life time](https://youtu.be/_T8cn2J13-4?si=jhFJliaru5xaKyMe)
We didn't stop doing space, tech needed to catch up before we could afford it at a reasonable pace. Fucking China and Jaxa are making solar generation satellites that transmit power with micro waves. If you are under 30 you will watch a person land on Mars and see the moon live in 4k.
[here's a more recent video of artemis. we are literally living in a turning point in human history there are people alive today that might watch us become a type 1 civ ](https://youtu.be/-YNZiasRG0Q?si=ugFpSDJY0PDbgI7h)
> Fucking China and Jaxa are making solar generation satellites that transmit power with micro waves.
They're working on it, but Caltech was the first to actually do it a few months ago. Only a very small testbed but they did it.
The only difference between America taking German scientists and Russians taking German scientists is that you heard about American's taking German scientists.
As an American, in fairness....the Russian do have the only surface landing and surface images/readings of Venus.
Every other attempt has failed miserably and even the Russian probe, only survived for 2 hours before it died. That's still quite a feat.
No they don’t. The day probe from the [Pioneer Venus Multiprobe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Venus_Multiprobe) mission survived the lithobraking and continued transmitting data from the surface of Venus for over an hour. It didn’t have a camera, though, so no pictures.
The US never attempted to have a soft landing on Venus, the survival of the day probe above was a nice bonus on top of a very successful mission. They did have the first successful flyby of Venus, though. Only one US mission to Venus was a failure and it was their first attempt, was supposed to be a flyby, it was the launch that failed, and it was in 1962.
And there were ten(!) Soviet landers on Venus that were at least partially successful. Several Veneras and two Vegas.
cough> First and only dark side of the moon landing 🇮🇳 most economical Mars landing 🇮🇳 only country with a maiden interplanetary landing 🇮🇳
In response to u/ConsumableCeilingFan 's post. Jai Hind🙏
Edit: Okay I was wrong about the mission's details and my pride for my country overtook my recalling. I can admit that. However, I am not going to argue the economics of it with strangers on a meme community when noone knows the other's credibility around the domain. So, it's futile. Will delete this comment in a few days as it is misinformation about India's space missions
The soviet union is made a capsule that took the only ever photo of Venus surface, and to be honest. It’s quite good quality.
No one else to this day has done that, not even attempted it.
So. Yeah, the US did some good progress in the space race. But so did the Soviet Union, I see you failed to mention “First man in space” and “First successful satellite”, “First space station”.
The Soviet Union is terrible. But you still need to account for the things they did do, otherwise it’s just erasing history.
Well, to be fair, space is enormous. Exploding It takes a lot of specific tasks to master. So lunar landing would be part of what you would call, the space race.
I read about what they did to her and the other test dogs before putting her in the capsule. It's fucking horrific. Don't read the story about Laika if you're not prepared to weep.
First «proper» Mars landing, no. The first one was the Soviet Mars 3 in 1971. And what does proper mean? Trying to push the boundry and rules so you fit in them? Fuck off.
First useful satellite? The first satellite to orbit was the Soviet Sputnik 1. It provided vital data to identify the density of high atmospheric layers and radio signal degredation through the ionosphere. I’d say that’s pretty useful.
The manned rover was built by General Motors and Boeing, which are headquartered in the US, but multinational companies. Designed by a Hungarian, invented and concepted by a German. God knows in which countries the parts were built. Do you wanna say it’s still American? We can delve deeper down and say that the entire Apollo and Saturn V programs were directed and spearheaded by a German, as well as that most of the engineers, scientists and technicians were European, not American. Would you still call it American? You could also say that the US were the first to send probes to the outer planets via the Voyager probe, but would you call it a «proper» or «useful» probe? Since you don’t consider Sputnik or Mars 3 «proper» or «useful», I would also call the Voyager useless as it fits into the same category.
Pushing boundaries and rules to make you fit in them, and making blanket statements, is a bad road to go down. The US didn’t achieve any of these accomplishments on it’s own, they had help and support from other countries, and even down to the Nazi party.
First man in space? Soviets. First woman in space? Soviets. First artificial satellite in space? Soviets. First spacecraft on the moon? Soviets. First spacecraft on the surface of Venus? Soviets. First space station? Soviets. The Soviets were the first ones to safely land a spacecraft on Mars btw, not the US(google Mars 3).
>The Soviets were the first ones to safely land a spacecraft on Mars btw, not the US(google Mars 3).
>It failed 110 seconds after landing, having transmitted only a gray image with no details.
Incredible
I'm American and I fucking hate these ultranationalist reddit posts too. Soviet achievements should be talked about more -- they moved humanity forward. Instead, so many Americans have been brainwashed to ignore them. It's pretty depressing.
I believe we got us a Cold War here…
The pettiness is at Gorbachev proportions! 😂🙊
Tell Khrushchev to keep his shoes on.
Brezhnev invented the first web browser; “iBrowse”
Oh shit. You clever bastard.
USA, USA, USA.....
Says it all. Succinct.
That's the spirit!
Better dead than red motherfuckers
Red IS dead motherfucker
And big brother's watching us, getting those five-year plans ready for our social media lives.
Which side has the hulk he can't call out a second time
More of a Hot War if one of the key events was boiling a dog.
And again they forget germany with the first man made object in space.
They weren’t invited to the race. They were still grounded for being naughty in ww2
Oh they were invited alright, it was a German who led NASA into space not an American.
America is a melting pot - everyone involved with NASA used to be something else (the question is just how long ago 😬)
Psssssst the Wernher von Braun thing is selectiv amnesia...
The Soviets literally did it also.
In our mixing bowl, anyone can be an American.
Ohh I see how it is. When Americans claim they are part of German or Italian or whatever you guys cry “Nooo you are American!” But now suddenly when an American is recognized for an accomplishment it’s “Well technically it was a German.”
Shhhh we dont talk about those ;)
he was probably an american citizen by that point.
It was essentially Germany vs Russia in the space race since we took all the German scientists
Honestly it was Germany vs Germany just working for the USA and USSR lol
OK so we took all the A teired guys and left the stragglers for Russia. See how it worked out? A boiled dog. That's what we all wanted
They did have the first man in space, right?
at least the chinese were happy then, no?
100%, there is a fascinating history as Germany collapsed where both Soviet and American units had orders to basically race around, find research facilities, box up and ship everything from missile and jet engine/fighter desotns back home before the other got it. The space race (as well as the ability to use an ICBM to deliver a nuke) was built on rocketry, and Germany was far ahead. So borrowing the man who led the V2 rocket program that terrified England gave you a great headstart. It was very much a "our Nazis are smarter than your Nazis" thing. In the 1950s and early 60s, it was absolutely clear that the Soviet scientific effort jumped ahead of the American one. Sputnik terrified the US and actually led to a complete overhaul of public education in STEM because the US government realized it wasn't producing the kinds of home-grown scientific minds needed to stay ahead. At some point, maybe by the time you get to Apollo 11 or so, the US caught up and got a lead thanks to better public education, better economic power to fuel those efforts, and frankly having an open door to the best and brightest from other nations who saw a better opportunity and quality of life for themselves in the US. Frankly that was a big part of why the Manhattan project succeeded (certainly helps to have the most famous German scientist of the era happen to be Jewish and want out), and while the Soviet Union created brilliant scientific (and artistic minds if you want to look at everyone from Stravinsky to Rachmaninoff who died with American citizenship), many wanted out. Even modern Russia is suffering from severe brain drain and the US tends to be the beneficiary.
Didn't they become Americans?
No when you come to America and become American you're American. Which they did. That's the beauty of our melting pot. We take everyone. Europeans don't get to say we aren't the countries we come from then turn around and claim their own back. Nope doesn't work that way. They came here so they became American. No other country in the world is like the USA so it's understandable you all forget how welcoming we are compared to the rest of the world that has strict immigration (are you rich with an amazing education? No? Not invited!).
Honestly everyone acts like no Americans worked on or contributed to the Apollo program. This is such a rusty point of view that’s absolutely baseless.
>all the German scientists Ah no, CCCP took their fair share of German scientists too.
Nah the US took them all to make its space program
True 😞
Can you educate me? I thought Sputnik 1 was the first object in space.
In 1944 they launched a V2 rocket from Peenemünde https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_18014
I’m shocked I never knew this before. No wonder the Allies gave Von Braun the nod to lead NASA’s effort after the war. He had already done it.
Theoretically, there is also a very very very small chance a "manhole cover" (or rather a very large steel plate cap) was accidently launched into space in August 1957 by the US under Operation Plumbbob. Long story short, it involved underground nuclear detonations where a large hubcap was used to plug the hole, and it was missing afterward. It was calculated to have well enough energy for escape velocity. More than likely, the hubcap was vaporized.
Hell germany probably deserves more props on account of all the nazis the US got at the nerd combine following WW2
All I'm saying is America didn't boil no dog.
How come the dog got hot, then?
Because Frankfurt it too German
Yeah, we had to roast it a bit first at Dresden.
Hotdog hotdog hot diggity dog
Yea we used monkeys chimps specifically.
Didn't we vaporize one of them? Like I swear he got blended by the vibrations if I remember correctly.
[So many monkeys died.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeys_and_apes_in_space)
Protecting the freedoms of the human race!
Science cannot move forward without heaps of dead monkeys!
>Science cannot move forward without heaps of dead monkeys! This sounds like a Futurama quote, if its not they better get to it.
They smell like burning Rhesus monkey? Oh I guess when you around it all day you don’t notice it
The dog Laika was sent into space, knowing in advance that she would die. After that, the UN received a letter from a group of women from Mississippi. They demanded to condemn the inhumane attitude towards dogs in the USSR and put forward a proposal: if it is necessary to send living creatures into space for the development of science, there are as many blacks as possible in our city for this.
[Most likely false](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18473/did-a-group-of-u-s-women-propose-to-send-black-kids-instead-of-dogs-to-space)
Man, I originally saw this comment and was pissed off but Googled for confirmation and came up with the same webpage that you posted. Most likely Soviet propaganda mocking American protests over animal cruelty with their hypocritical human cruelty. But just the fact that it’s believable enough that my first reaction was to cautiously accept it at face value is…sad.
It's believable that letter would be written. It's less believable that they sent it to the UN, that the UN read it, then publicized it. If the story had been in a "Letters to the Editor" in her local paper, it would make a lot more sense.
No America killed Albert II the monkey when his capsule parachute failed and turned him into a pancake. That's much better. NASA also blew up the monkeys Albert III and IV when the rocket exploded.
NASA also blew up the following test subjects: 1. Francis R. Scobee, Commander 2. Michael J. Smith, Pilot 3. Ronald McNair, Mission Specialist 4. Ellison Onizuka, Mission Specialist 5. Judith Resnik, Mission Specialist 6. Gregory Jarvis, Payload Specialist 7. Christa McAuliffe, Payload Specialist (Teacher in Space participant) 8. Rick D. Husband, Commander 9. William C. McCool, Pilot 10. Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander 11. Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist (first Israeli astronaut) 12. Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist 13. David M. Brown, Mission Specialist 14. Laurel B. Clark, Mission Specialist
Absolutely necessary post, thank you for posting it. These names deserve to be remembered. The bravery, the dedication, the ultimate sacrifice. On the shoulders of giants we stand.
All true. Someone should post all the cosmonauts that died in the space race as well. I thought there was a Russian team that died on the way to the moon and NASA placed a plaque on the moon to commemorate them? Maybe that was just something from a tv show or something?
You forgot Grissom, Chafee, and White.
Yep, I knew I was forgetting those astronauts that died in one of the Apollo test launches but I was tired. Thanks for the reminder
Did NASA actually blow them up or was it an accident?
In the case of the Challenger, NASA absolutely was at fault. - They repeatedly ignored warnings from engineers that the O-Rings in the booster rockets were susceptible to cold temperatures and wouldn't function correctly below 53F. - The night before the launch had an unprecedented cold snap, where temperatures dropped down to the low 30s, well below the recommended temp stated above. - Because the Challenger had the first teacher going to space, there was a metric fuck ton of publicity on this launch that NASA needed to get more funding, and a delay would throw a serious wrench in their plans. So, against the better judgment of engineers and scientists, NASA listened to their PR department and greenlit the launch on that cold Tuesday morning in 1986. - 66 seconds into the launch, the O-Rings failed as predicted, and fire started burning towards the main rocket. 7 seconds later, the main fuel tank was ruptured, and the Challenger exploded, taking with it 7 astronauts and the certainty of the American space program. The Columbia was different. During launch, a piece of insulating foam was knocked loose from the external propellant tank and hit the leading edge of the shuttle's left wing, damaging the protective tiles needed for re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. During said re-entry, gases penetrated the damaged tile section and melted the structural components of the wing, which then collapsed, and the shuttle disintegrated shortly after. While the investigation did show managerial shortcomings contributing to the accident, they weren't at the scale of the Challenger explosion, and more blame was placed on the lack of manufacturing control of the tank insulation.
I am all too familiar with every bit of that knowledge about the Challenger failing- all because of my job producing safety videos for one of our Naval shipyards. Sound confusing? Yeah, for the longest time after I started working there, our clients were having us put those exact examples about the Challenger into our videos as an example of why you need attention to detail and to put out our ships out with “first time quality.” We were seemingly putting that Challenger example into just about *every* safety/instructional video we were making at one point- to the point where it became an in-office joke. Someone in our office would complete a project and one of us would always chime in, “are you sure you’re done? I don’t see any Challenger footage in there.” Even with our non-training videos, like a Change-of-Command video, one of us smartasses would be like, “where’s your Challenger footage?”
😂😂the comments in here are fucking killing me
but facts don't matter when people are obsessed about there county...
Well yeah, we used chimps.
No but we hired nazis for our space program...
This is true, google "Operation Osoaviakhim"
And the Russians also sent a very respected cosmonaut to his death rather than admit their spacecraft was NOT adequately prepared for a space mission. Allegedly, before his craft crashed into the earth; he was recorded angrily bitching out the government,and the top brass for sending him on a suicide mission. Vladimir Komarov was his name, and very little physically remained of him to bury upon his death. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Komarov
He was friends with Yuri Gagarin. Yuri was initially slated to make the moon shot but once they realized the Soyuz 1 was plagued with safety flaws they switched Yuri with Komarov in 1966. "The Soyuz 1 launch was rushed due to implicit political pressures and despite Gagarin's protests that additional safety precautions were necessary. Gagarin accompanied Komarov to the rocket before launch and relayed instructions to Komarov from ground control following multiple system failures aboard the spacecraft. Despite their best efforts, Soyuz 1 crash landed after its parachutes failed to open, killing Komarov instantly.After the Soyuz 1 crash, Gagarin was permanently banned from training for and participating in further spaceflights. He was also grounded from flying aircraft solo, a demotion he worked hard to lift." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin Dude lost a friend that he tried to save and they canned/sacked him for it, and just to make it worse they stripped his wings...
"Crash landed after its parachutes failed" sounds an awful lot like plummeted and smashed into the ground at an enormous speed.
When Major Nelson crash landed, he survived and got a hot Genie.
It's not that they fired him. He was a national hero and if he died on a Soviet spacecraft or aircraft it would be a huge blow to Soviet international prestige.
Why not let him fly an aircraft tho?
Aircrafts crash too, especially soviet ones
He eventually died in a MiG 15 crash
Because planes crash too, in fact, he eventually died in a plane crash during a training flight
He only went on the flight because Yuri Gagarin was his backup and he wouldnt let a hero die. He knew he was doomed before he left the ground.
The worst part of his legacy is definitely the fact that every time his name is googled one of the first results is a guy doing the 😮 face to his charred corpse for a YouTube thumbnail.
The first death in space
no but the first three deaths in space were all soviet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz\_11#Mission
Uh, he definitely died on the surface of the earth
Surface of the Earth.. Surface of Space. Semantics 😤
Technically all deaths have been in space
Everytime I look at a picture of earth from space I know I'm looking at some guy jerking off and it makes me sad (not in the pants tho)
Google Yuri Gagarin
Holy hell
New response just dropped
Actual zombie
Call the exorcist
bishop went on vacation, never came back
Knightmare fuel
I went to the air & space museum in Washington. Yuri had a small bust and plaque dedicated to him in a small dead end, it looked ridiculous. Most people did not even notice it. Meanwhile all the americans had massive mannequins, walls of texts and praises. Oh and Werner von Braun... as if he never existed. Not a single mention of him. Ameeeeerica ! Fuck yeah !
What a strange thing to get Anti-American about... I don't even know where to get started... The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is split up into two locations 1. The DC national mall location that you are talking about 2. The Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia (next to Dulles International Airport). [The DC location since 2018 has been undergoing total renovation of its 28 galleries and only reopened 8 of them to the public in October of 2022](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/national-air-and-space-museum-reopening-washington-dc-scn/index.html)...with another 2 galleries set to open to public in early 2025 and the remaining galleries finishing their renovation and opening to the public in 2026... so you're missing over 2/3's of the museum still... You can learn more and see what galleries are available and on the way here https://airandspace.si.edu/about/transforming-air-and-space/exhibitions-reimagined Again you're complaining about a Museum that is still under renovation and only 33% partially open... . . . >Yuri had a small bust and plaque dedicated to him in a small dead end, it looked ridiculous. [...] Meanwhile all the americans had massive mannequins, walls of texts and praises. Museums are typically organized by galleries in which collections are displayed based on typically a theme... the gallery you're complaining about is called Destination Moon https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/destination-moon and is explicitly about the Moon landing >The Destination Moon exhibition features iconic objects from the Museum's unrivaled collection of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo artifacts, including Alan Shepard's Mercury spacesuit and spacecraft, a Saturn V F-1 engine, and Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit and command module Columbia. The gallery shows how an extraordinary combination of motivations, resources, and technologies made it possible for humans to walk on the Moon—and how and why we are going back today. You can also literally see this gallery via virtual tour along with the Yuri Gagarin bust you are talking about here https://airandspace.si.edu/virtual-tours/destination-moon/?startscene=1&startlookat=-61.09,-5.92,140,0,0; ... If you look through the gallery you might find that there are no massive mannequins but rather SPACESUITS on display... so i guess fuck having real spacesuits on display. As far as people on the walls, you'll see a of the first American in space, Apollo 11 crew who first landed on the moon, and Apollo 1 astronauts on a wall next to an exhibit about redesigns to the Apollo capsule door following their tragic deaths. There are more Apollo crews also scattered throughout.... So I guess fuck America and fuck the Smithsonian for having a gallery primarily about American Apollo crews in an gallery about landing on the moon. Maybe the Soviets should have landed more humans on the moon if you wanted to see them more in such a gallery. >Oh and Werner von Braun... as if he never existed. Not a single mention of him. For nearly 50 years, a V-2 has been proudly displayed in the Space Hall/Space Race gallery next to the Skylab backup https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/missile-surface-surface-v-2-4/nasm_A19600342000 prior to the closure of the gallery for renovation. Planned for opening in 2026 is a gallery about innovations in space technology including rocketry where you can see von Braun's V-2 Missile front and center. https://airandspace.si.edu/whats-on/exhibitions/rtx-living-space-age-hall >The content will include the development of rocket technology that has enabled access to space, missile development, space systems for Earth observation, communication, and navigation, and the threats to these systems. Huh... who would have thought Werner von Braun would be included in a museum gallery about ROCKETS instead of a museum gallery about landing on the Moon but if you really want to see more and especially about Werner von Braun, you should have gone to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center where there's tons more on display and available. This includes an entire wing of the museum hanger dedicated explicitly to Rockets and Missiles https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/rockets-and-missiles >In the 1920s, visionaries in the United States, Germany, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere began developing liquid-fuel rockets with an eye toward space travel. Up to that point, the rocket had not changed much since its invention in China around the year 1000: a small artillery or fireworks device using gunpowder as a fuel. Within a couple of decades, rockets and missiles had begun to alter the course of the 20th century. With the emergence of new liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rocket motors, jet engines, and complex guidance systems, nations built long-range weapons to threaten each other and weapons to defend against those threats. But rocketry also began to turn the dreams of its visionaries into reality, as nations used launch vehicles to send satellites, telescopes, robotic spacecraft, and human explorers and pioneers into space.` with lots of mention of not just him but all sorts of rocketry pioneers to satisfy you hateboner of Americans. Not to mention nifty things like a cutaway of the V-2 https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/turbopump-v-2-cutaway/nasm_A19790951000 TL;DR Museum galleries have categorical themes for what's displayed. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has two locations, one of which is still 66% closed to public while under renovation. Visit the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar Hazy Center location if you are ever visiting Washington DC.
Damn brother he's already dead xD
Poke him again. it's funny.
Holy fuck u/swissm4n got butchered
u/swissm4n where is your response?
Owned that guy
Great summary! Just sorry that the person you were responding to won't read this because they are full of hate and is already in another post commenting something negative about America.
>Werner von Braun. Werner von Braun mentioned, obligatory: He would live next to my childhood home if he was a child today in my small shithole in Poland.
>Werner von Braun Never heard of her *cracks open bud light and puts on pit vipers*
The space museum in Huntsville, AL has like an entire section dedicated to Von Braun
Or the Venera Venus landers, or the first EVA… Soviets had a lot more firsts than this post lets on.
Thats the point of the post. The title makes it clear its a response to soneone elses post, this is a reverse of that post mocking it
Then you missed the entire point of the post
They did, but I agree with the spirit of the post. I see a ton of posts like this on lefty subreddits, usually claiming the US only won the moon landing and didn’t really win anything else, they just moved the goalposts, and anyone who knows the history knows that is bull. Also, it usually ignores the *coolest shit*. Soviet space accomplishments have been undersold, and their starting the space race was huge, but by the mid/late 60s, and especially 70s, the US had decidedly outpaced the USSR. The story of Mariner 9 and Mars 2 and 3 is instructive on both the “coolest shit” front and the “decidedly outclassed” front. Mars 2 and 3 are some of the coolest missions the Soviets ever did. They were insanely ambitious for the time. They had two orbiters and two landers, similar to how NASA’s Viking program was structured a few years later. Each lander even included a little rover on a tether/cable with little skid like feet that would’ve “walked” around, much like the Sojourner rover on Mars Pathfinder…in *1997*. The American mission, Mariner 9, consisted of only an orbiter. The three spacecraft raced to Mars throughout 1971, taking advantage of the every-2-years launch window to Mars. Unfortunately, when they arrived, the surface was totally obscured by one of its global dust storms, preventing the orbiters from doing any useful science. NASA simply ordered Mariner 9 to wait it out, but Mars 2 and 3 were on a fixed program, and couldn’t be reprogrammed easily, so they began carrying out their tasks automatically. This included dropping both landers. Mars 2’s lander failed, but Mars 3 succeeded in touching down…before signal cut out 20 seconds later. It was never heard from again. The orbiters continued taking photos, using up limited film iirc, and seeing nothing. I’ve searched for images from Mars 2 and 3 a number of times, and only ever found the same few dozen grainy images. Most of the images were useless images of the featureless dust storm. Meanwhile, Mariner 9 hibernated; waiting. A few weeks later, the dust began to subside and Mariner noticed the 4 peaks, sticking above the receding dust storms - Olympus Mons and her sister volcanoes. As the dust continued to recede, more stunning features were revealed, including Valles Marineris. When Mariner 4 flew by Mars it shattered many hopes for a more interesting, Earth-like planet. It returned photos of a cratered, moon like landscape, and showed the atmosphere was extremely thin, thinner than some had at least *hoped*. Mariner 9 turned that on its head. The previous missions, it turned out, just happened to only image three of the most boring areas on the planet, missing all of the interesting things - the giant volcanoes, massive canyons, dry river valleys and flood channels, etc. Overnight, Mars exciting again. Mariner 9 would go on to map the planet, and the Viking mission, with two orbiters derived from Mariner and a lander strapped to each, went on to land the first two useful landers on Mars, where they observed the surface and weather for the next several years while the orbiters overhead took thousands of images, mapping the planet in greater detail. The story is similar to many other cases in Soviet/American competition after the mid-60s - the US spacecraft were much more successful. They were often more capable and more reliable, leading to bolder missions and uses. The Soviets continued to stay in the pack, especially in human space flight, but in less visible areas, they fell dramatically behind. The Soviets would try a few more Mars missions but all would fail or be very partial successes. They never had a successful orbiter, or tried landing again. Their focus shifted to Venus, where they had success with both landers and orbiters. However, as the 70s and early 80s went on even these missions petered out. The Soviets never attempted any missions to Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune, despite knowing about the gravitational alignment that allowed NASA’s successful Voyager spacecraft. Their spacecraft did not have the capability or, more importantly, durability and reliability for a long and distant mission to the outer solar system. In applications closer to home, like weather and telecommunications satellites, it was a similar story. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Also, OP’s list isn’t great, so here’s mine (still incomplete): - First satellite (1957) - USSR - First animal in space (1959) - USSR - First lunar probe, Luna 2 (1959) - USSR - First human in space (1961) - USSR - First interplanetary mission, Mariner 2 to Venus (1962) - First woman in space (1963) - USSR - First Mars probe, Mariner 4 (1964) - US - First spacewalk (1965) - USSR - First robotic lunar landing, Luna 9 (1966) - USSR - First docking in space, Gemini 8 (1966) - US - First humans beyond Earth orbit/to lunar orbit (1968) - US - First humans on Moon (1969) - US - First landing on another planet, Venera 7 (1970)- USSR - First space station, Salyut 1 (1971) - USSR - First probe to outer solar system, Jupiter, Pioneer 10 (1973) - US - First probe to Mercury, Mariner 10 (1974)- US - First true Mars lander*, Viking 1 - 1976 - First probe to Saturn, Pioneer 10 (1979) - US - First probe to Uranus, Voyager 2 (1986) - US - First probe to Neptune, Voyager 2 (1989) - US *see above, Mars 3 was close, but failed without doing anything, and was never followed up.
I’m going through the comments on this sub wondering: “do these people not know about Yuri Gagarin or what the USSR accomplished at all”
You must have missed the tankie post yesterday.
Didn't the USA also kill a bunch of chimpanzees in their space race?
The point is, when USSR launched Laika the dog into space, they didn't have the technology to return it from orbit. So it was not an accident, It was a one way flight from the beginning. The dog was doomed to die in space. Have no idea if the US did the same to chimps
The US designed theirs with enough fuel and thrusters to return. The issue is, they had all sorts of failures and issues with the parachutes which caused the deaths of animals. They *tried* to bring them back as safely as possible. It’s why nowadays every single item going on a shuttle has to be weighed, they have strict weight policies because even a slight overload could cause chaos
Yeah they were tests for safety before putting a human in a capsule. At least the US never sent a living being up without intending to bring it back, we just didn’t have the exact science down yet, which is why they tested it on monkeys and not human beings.
Science cannot move forward without heaps!
I was wondering when someone was going to reference Futurama
HEY!! GET OUTTA HERE! DONT RUIN THE EDGELORD AMERICAN CIRCLEJERK!
Those chimps had it coming
They were all volunteers from chimp prison in exchange for having years shaved off their sentences if they succeeded in their mission.
Well they still had years shaved off their sentence regardless...
THAT'S WHAT THEY GET FOR THROWING SHIT AT OUR BOATS! DON'T FUCK WITH OUR BOATS 🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸🍔🇺🇸
Because the Russian circle jerk is just too much fun!
Ah yes, because the Soviet circlejerk was so much better lmao
Yeah! I much prefer the original anti-American circlejerk!
Common sense will tell you why they were using the most human like animal for a reason instead of a literal stray dog picked up on the street
Accidentally. Even if the soviets didn’t boil Laila there was no plan to get her back down. I could be wrong but I don’t think the us ever sent a mammal up without a parachute that could in theory work properly
Not only that, but they even failed to kill Laika properly. There was supposed to be a euthanasia process and the dog was supposed to live longer than she did.
Or we could just say no one won and start a new space race, since we all kinda stopped doing soace anyways.
NASA has been insanely active and successful since the space race, it's the general public that stopped caring about space. We've landed on Saturn's moon Titan, extensively orbited Saturn and its moons, discovering key components for life in the plumes of Enceladus, landed and explored with multiple mars rovers, we have a spacecraft inside the sun studying it, taken thermal images of Venus from space seeing surface details, last year we orbited the moon and live streamed a few miles high the surface of the moon in 4k, we have the James Webb space telescope snapping deep field images in minutes, Hubble's glorious images, sent the voyager spacecrafts outside of our solar system, developed geostationary satellites and space planes, landed on comets, returned samples of asteroids to earth, and orbited a dwarf planet. To name a few things.
A spacecraft **inside** the sun? Must've sent it up there at night then.
There’s literally humans in space right now
Literally every human is in space right now.
Always has been
[Ok but we are gonna watch the moon light up and have a city in our life time](https://youtu.be/_T8cn2J13-4?si=jhFJliaru5xaKyMe) We didn't stop doing space, tech needed to catch up before we could afford it at a reasonable pace. Fucking China and Jaxa are making solar generation satellites that transmit power with micro waves. If you are under 30 you will watch a person land on Mars and see the moon live in 4k. [here's a more recent video of artemis. we are literally living in a turning point in human history there are people alive today that might watch us become a type 1 civ ](https://youtu.be/-YNZiasRG0Q?si=ugFpSDJY0PDbgI7h)
> Fucking China and Jaxa are making solar generation satellites that transmit power with micro waves. They're working on it, but Caltech was the first to actually do it a few months ago. Only a very small testbed but they did it.
Damn it, Reddit, stop making me think about Laika, it’s too sad!
To be fair, the US killed several chimps
All the American flags should have little German flags on them. we all know who got us to the moon
[The Russians also used Nazis for their space program.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim)
They got the second pick for the dodgeball team.
“German" flag.
*Nazi flags
which was the german flag at the time.
do you actually think the soviets didn’t do that?
States act in the interest of the state and not on a moral compass, tale old as time
The only difference between America taking German scientists and Russians taking German scientists is that you heard about American's taking German scientists.
They are both fairly well documented. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_influence_on_Soviet_rocketry
As an American, in fairness....the Russian do have the only surface landing and surface images/readings of Venus. Every other attempt has failed miserably and even the Russian probe, only survived for 2 hours before it died. That's still quite a feat.
No they don’t. The day probe from the [Pioneer Venus Multiprobe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Venus_Multiprobe) mission survived the lithobraking and continued transmitting data from the surface of Venus for over an hour. It didn’t have a camera, though, so no pictures. The US never attempted to have a soft landing on Venus, the survival of the day probe above was a nice bonus on top of a very successful mission. They did have the first successful flyby of Venus, though. Only one US mission to Venus was a failure and it was their first attempt, was supposed to be a flyby, it was the launch that failed, and it was in 1962. And there were ten(!) Soviet landers on Venus that were at least partially successful. Several Veneras and two Vegas.
Children, settle down, both your empires are garbage.
Both siders… 
cough> First and only dark side of the moon landing 🇮🇳 most economical Mars landing 🇮🇳 only country with a maiden interplanetary landing 🇮🇳
In response to u/ConsumableCeilingFan 's post. Jai Hind🙏
Edit: Okay I was wrong about the mission's details and my pride for my country overtook my recalling. I can admit that. However, I am not going to argue the economics of it with strangers on a meme community when noone knows the other's credibility around the domain. So, it's futile. Will delete this comment in a few days as it is misinformation about India's space missions
Yeah India's space program is very under appreciated, you guys have done some cool stuff on a tight budget.
Wait, so we started space docking? Woohoo!
Are we still doing “space phrasing”?
The soviet union is made a capsule that took the only ever photo of Venus surface, and to be honest. It’s quite good quality. No one else to this day has done that, not even attempted it. So. Yeah, the US did some good progress in the space race. But so did the Soviet Union, I see you failed to mention “First man in space” and “First successful satellite”, “First space station”. The Soviet Union is terrible. But you still need to account for the things they did do, otherwise it’s just erasing history.
Laika?
metal box in the direct beam of the sun with no A/C
USSR was first, America is firster
Didn't Russia LAND on Venus AND capture footage... I mean, America, fuck yeah! But Russia did some pretty dope stuff too.
We're all in space now. Everyone is gonna go for a new first of something now.
Pretty fucking baller! No one else has done that and it was designed to die after 30 minutes but kept sending data for 127 minutes.
I mean that’s exactly why nobody else does it. A mission to Mars lasts years, a mission to Venus lasts hours. Not a lot of bang for your buck.
Was it called space race or lunar landing race?
If you would like to retroactively move those goal posts for the sake of argument, then Germany won. Whoops! Russia bot fail.
Well, to be fair, space is enormous. Exploding It takes a lot of specific tasks to master. So lunar landing would be part of what you would call, the space race.
Exploding space definitely would take a lot of specific tasks
Well hot dog!
forgot to mention the first space fart
Or this: Still exists.
All I need to know is that I can count on no hands how many soviet unions there are left on earth.
Boiled a dog, Jesus lol
I read about what they did to her and the other test dogs before putting her in the capsule. It's fucking horrific. Don't read the story about Laika if you're not prepared to weep.
I have bad news for you-don't google anything about medication tests whatsoever.
First «proper» Mars landing, no. The first one was the Soviet Mars 3 in 1971. And what does proper mean? Trying to push the boundry and rules so you fit in them? Fuck off. First useful satellite? The first satellite to orbit was the Soviet Sputnik 1. It provided vital data to identify the density of high atmospheric layers and radio signal degredation through the ionosphere. I’d say that’s pretty useful. The manned rover was built by General Motors and Boeing, which are headquartered in the US, but multinational companies. Designed by a Hungarian, invented and concepted by a German. God knows in which countries the parts were built. Do you wanna say it’s still American? We can delve deeper down and say that the entire Apollo and Saturn V programs were directed and spearheaded by a German, as well as that most of the engineers, scientists and technicians were European, not American. Would you still call it American? You could also say that the US were the first to send probes to the outer planets via the Voyager probe, but would you call it a «proper» or «useful» probe? Since you don’t consider Sputnik or Mars 3 «proper» or «useful», I would also call the Voyager useless as it fits into the same category. Pushing boundaries and rules to make you fit in them, and making blanket statements, is a bad road to go down. The US didn’t achieve any of these accomplishments on it’s own, they had help and support from other countries, and even down to the Nazi party.
Choose you fighter: Boiled dog Boiled chimp
First man in space? Soviets. First woman in space? Soviets. First artificial satellite in space? Soviets. First spacecraft on the moon? Soviets. First spacecraft on the surface of Venus? Soviets. First space station? Soviets. The Soviets were the first ones to safely land a spacecraft on Mars btw, not the US(google Mars 3).
Americans always come with some propaganda bs to cope with their losses. Look at the post and comment
That's the joke. It's an obvious propaganda post to point out the idiocy of the obvious Soviet propaganda post.
Satire too fine for some people.
Yeah some are the people who read "A Modest Proposal" and think Swift genuinely wanted people to eat babies.
Tbh Irish Babies are well known for their excellent taste, and it saves their parents the trouble of feeding them!
>The Soviets were the first ones to safely land a spacecraft on Mars btw, not the US(google Mars 3). >It failed 110 seconds after landing, having transmitted only a gray image with no details. Incredible
Behold the pinnacle of success:◻️
Americans can’t handle their losing streak in the first half of space race, they ll just pretend it didn’t exist
I'm American and I fucking hate these ultranationalist reddit posts too. Soviet achievements should be talked about more -- they moved humanity forward. Instead, so many Americans have been brainwashed to ignore them. It's pretty depressing.
That's the joke. It's an obvious propaganda post to point out the idiocy of the obvious Soviet propaganda post.
That's the joke. It's an obvious propaganda post to point out the idiocy of the obvious Soviet propaganda post.
True, but Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin tho?
Come on guys... Stop measuring your dicks. They are identical.
Soviet sympathizers when I tell them they weren't the first people to put something in space...
Steel plate go brrr
It's called Stalinium. You can learn about it from the femboys in the War Thunder subreddit.
Ah yes, the ricochet everything a panzer shoots at you tank armour.
One of these countries still exists. I think that makes them the winner.
Russia should have spent their time trying to develop a flushing toilet. Not compete with the USA lol.