What went wrong in the Soviet/Russian space program?
They used to be the leaders of space exploration in the 50's and early 60's, but starting around the late 60's they've been slowly dropping off the race and facing failure after failure. Has Korolev's death really been that destructive?
You also keep hearing about how much the N1 rocket bogged everything down and what a complete failure it had been, but the people involved in it insist everything was going according to plan, that the biggest issues with it were ironed out by 1973, and if only it had another test launch it would have proved itself successful.
the problem with the N1 was they rushed it and didnt test the parts thoroughly prior to trying the complete setup
if they had, they'd have caught all the problems with fuel flow and vibrations
as another user pointed out in a previous thread, depending on how you define "engines", the N1 isn't that much crazier than the gold-standard lifters in use today
Anthony Jackson
I also think a issue was NASA talking the lead. They started buran and I think mir. Lots of R&D don't quote me I am a NASA nerd. Non related but does NASA ares include SLS?
Connor Robinson
The private sector does it now at least.
Jaxson Gutierrez
>What went wrong in the Soviet/Russian space program? It had nothing to do with their scientific team and all to do with their culture and economics.
Ares was canceled, SLS replaces it. The only thing in common is the re-use of Shuttle components and the Orion capsule AFAIK.
Luis Ross
SLS is Ares V. The Ares V design was never really settled, SLS is its final form. The same people working on Constellation carried on working on SLS.
The primary significance of the name change is that now they can pretend that an additional five years and $10+ billion weren't spent.
Daniel Nelson
It was really all economics They didn't have money, nor electronics and shit
Gavin Rivera
>What went wrong in the Soviet/Russian space program? Did they really have any other substantial failures OTHER than the N1 program? Even the clusterfuck that was the initial Soyuz eventually turned into a decent system as it matured. >For example, sending your best to the Gulag. That was definitely a major setback, but even after all that they still came out ahead of the rest of the world for a while.
Ayden Richardson
The big thing was money. America had shit tons and the soviets had very little. It was actually very similar to the last americas cup race
Levi Roberts
Two major reasons.
1. Internal political disputes over engine design and rocket design between Korolev and Valentin Glushko. Then the subsequent death of Korolev early.
2. The rush to finish the project first ahead of America which had better scientific schools, computer systems, and vastly larger amount of resources to throw around.
3. Debatable. Poor engine design choice using cryogenics over hypergolics, because the engine design is more complicated with a combustion chamber.
4. Debateable. Using clustering of many small engines instead of a single larger one created more problems and increased the risk.
3 and 4 are really just a subset of 2. There was nothing 'inherently' wrong with the design that could not have been fixed with more time research and testing. The rocket design of the N1 using clustered cryogenic engines are what will/are used on the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. So you can see that there was nothing 'inherently' wrong with the design.
Jackson Howard
and america cheated
Cameron Taylor
korolev died.
Mason Bennett
Soviets ran out of German prisoners to design rockets.
Julian Cox
Only losers fail to cheat
Justin Morales
>What went wrong in the Soviet/Russian space program? A mixture of deaths, economics and politics.
In a way, it's impressive that they've kept as much of their capabilities as they have. Russia is still one of the major space-faring nations, with almost exclusive manned launch capabilities, yet economically Russia's a nothing held up by natural gas exports.
Carter Sullivan
>What went wrong in the Soviet/Russian space program?
1)they were facing an oponent who was pouring much MUCH more money into it than they were.
The budgets russians ran for their space program were criminally low and they still managed to innovate based on their extreme skills for lateral thinking and engineering.
On the other hand the usa drowned problems in money, there was just no way to compete with this.
2) >Has Korolev's death really been that destructive?
YES this was a turning point in the russian space program. Korolev was pushing for a moon shot using rockets that had already been proven to work, the succesful soyuz and a lander all assembled in orbit. This was, after all the sanest and most intelligent way to approach the mission, launching all of your assembly at once is a shitty one-time-only way of thinking. What the further you go you need a bigger launcher? No, russians already knew the future was modular construction. And seriously, if they had chosen this path there was a very serious chance they had gotten to the moon first.
But of course, some asshole in the soviet leadership must have thought theyd look weak if the americans were testing a big muscular rocket and they were stuck with a puny little rocket assembling the craft in orbit.
And then of course, three failures of the N1 in a row is a blow too hard to recover for any nation, too much money and too much prestige.
Imagine if 3 saturn v rockets would have blown up in a row, how the fuck could they have asked more money from congress
Robert Myers
This
Nah they were facing an opponent who were a bit smarter and took a couple extra scientists with them. Even if America had trillions of dollars to invest, they wouldn't have come far without the Germans.
Anthony Gutierrez
Yes. Korolev's death was the turning point in USSR space program. He was a man with connections and famous friends, and could find a way to get money for all this. After his death priorities were changed: even in that time we already had started noticing huge problems of social-economics area. It's like those imbeciles in North Korea, they have nothing to eat, but they have their own shitty "space program". Space program was too expensive for ussr. Space program and weapons are the only achievements of USSR, the rest areas were ruined. USSR was cancerous.
Cooper Brooks
>He was a man with connections and famous friends, not only that
he had a sane plan for gettin to the moon , assemble the craft in orbit with 3 soyuz launches ( an already tested ultra reliable rocket). and voila, it would have been really easy
hell, i think they could do it any day now if someone payed the check
Jayden Nelson
>Korolev was pushing for a moon shot using rockets that had already been proven to work The proposal was more modest, but it still involved unproven rockets.
Chelomei's proposal of an early solo Lunar flyby using UR-500/Proton was even more modest, and probably would have succeeded had they gone through with it instead of getting greedy and going for a landing outright. But oh well...
Zachary Flores
>But oh well... yeah, oh fucking well... WHY RUSSIANS WHY WHY YOU HAD TO SCREW IT UP
imagine what they could do with a real budget
more, imagine what they could do if they worked together
Luke Wilson
The time's gone. That was USSR, not only Russia, but Russia of course is a successor of USSR. USSR academy of science comprised of jews(this is important), russians, ukrainians, belorussians, it absorbed the best brains from many countries - that was the main reason of quite high level of USSR science school. USSR was a dramatically centralized system, those in Moscow were 1st class citizens, other people were 2nd and 3rd class, of course it was unofficial, but only in Moscow you could get some things which were unavailable in other cities, and the best brains tried to graduate Moscow universities, then get a job in some research labs in Moscow as well, that produced kindof conveyer of brains. After USSR collapsed a lot of them moved to the USA, others are in Western Europe like Geim and Novoselov. Talented people are trying to go abroad, also young talents dropped the areas like physics and math, they are trying to get into IT companies, because of money. Nowadays Russian academy of science is a complete shit. They won't be able to produce anything like that even if they really want. Many great scientists like Sakharov are death, the rest like Alferov, Abricosov, Zakharov are old as fuck and are going to be dead soon. Russia is shit itself, it's dead. China & USA will lead the world to the future discoveries in space.
Adrian Brooks
>USSR academy of science comprised of jews(this is important), why is it important because of stalins antisemitism?
Kevin Mitchell
Anti-semitism? Only Hitler anti-semite. Soviet bear remove facists. No facists here. All other is capitalustic lies.
Matthew Smith
stalin killed more jews than hitler and the christianic church combined
James Carter
Dont listen to , Boris. Glorious leader din du nuffin.
