Surprisingly, for some reason, many argue with the fact that the USSR won the space race. Yes, there are no clear criteria. But obviously, the one who first sent a man into space won! Man in space = the end of the race. The first person on the moon? This, of course, is cool. But, sorry guys, we were the first in space. It's a million times steeper. The Americans lost and their entire lunar program is just an attempt to distract the attention of the whole world from the fact that they are forever and forever the second.
Surprisingly, for some reason, many argue with the fact that the USSR won the space race. Yes, there are no clear criteria. But obviously, the one who first sent a man into space won! Man in space = the end of the race. The first person on the moon? This, of course, is cool. But, sorry guys, we were the first in space. It's a million times steeper. The Americans lost and their entire lunar program is just an attempt to distract the attention of the whole world from the fact that they are forever and forever the second.
I don't know the truth behind this, but I like it. I like it when America loses.
Huh? That's wrong - the launching of living people into outer space before Gagarin is on the same level of conspiracy theories as the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon being done in the Hollywood.
Our flag is on the Moon, the farthest a man has ever gone into space and it'll be on Mars as well. Being in space first means nothing if you don't even leave your mark. Having gone into space is an achievement, but going to the Moon was a giant leap for mankind, there is no comparison.
Our flag is on the Moon, the farthest a man has ever gone into space and it'll be on Mars as well. Being in space first means nothing if you don't even leave your mark. Having gone into space is an achievement, but going to the Moon was a giant leap for mankind, there is no comparison.
And later someone else (China?) will put their flag on Mars, and then there will be "no comparison" with landing on the Luna, rinse, repeat. It is a natural way of things.
I do not wish to belittle the success of US space effort. Still, I leave myself the right to be proud of Soviet achievements.
Personally, I don't think anyone is going to put a flag on Mars any time soon. I think right now interest in space is more towards sustainable life in orbit. Stuff like satellite colonies and orbital fast travel, and China will probably lead in that.
Problem is, that still requires resources from Earth. You're still drawing on the same limited pool of resources. Adding another planet- or even just our moon- into the equation to draw from gives us much more room to grow.
Problem is, that still requires resources from Earth. You're still drawing on the same limited pool of resources. Adding another planet- or even just our moon- into the equation to draw from gives us much more room to grow.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure every nation would love a strip mine on Mars for... whatever it is Mars is made of (magnesium I think), but I think it works the other way around. The tech comes before infrastructure.
We need the ability to sustain life in space before we can field interplanetary facilities of that level, and the ability to get things to and from orbit quickly so we can build platforms too big to launch that would be needed to send out our mining robots and science craft.
Then we build the Planet Cracker.
But if it takes a 60 ton rocket every time we want to get a shipping crate of ore, then there's no way.
Huh? That's wrong - the launching of living people into outer space before Gagarin is on the same level of conspiracy theories as the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon being done in the Hollywood.
...and after doing some research I'll have to agree with you.
I guess it just made too much sense that the Soviet Union would be so cavalier towards individual human life that they would risk screwing up the math and stranding someone in orbit just to be there "first".
Of course, I do not make any excuses for Moon landing conspiracy theories. Pulling something like that off takes way too many complex, interlocking parts, each of which has a good probability of either screwing up or growing a conscience.
ChernyLitvin said:
Surprisingly, for some reason, many argue with the fact that the USSR won the space race. Yes, there are no clear criteria. But obviously, the one who first sent a man into space won! Man in space = the end of the race. The first person on the moon? This, of course, is cool. But, sorry guys, we were the first in space. It's a million times steeper. The Americans lost and their entire lunar program is just an attempt to distract the attention of the whole world from the fact that they are forever and forever the second.
Landing on the moon didn't really get us anywhere. I mean, yeah it showed off to the world but at the end of the day, we were no better off politically, militarily, or economically than before we landed. Now if the moon had a whole metric assload of hydrocarbons (read as: oil) hidden underneath the surface it would have been a different story.
Actually, NASA made a lot of money, so economically may be true. They produced aerospace tech worth billions, and their projects created highly skilled jobs.
Surprisingly, for some reason, many argue with the fact that the USSR won the space race. Yes, there are no clear criteria. But obviously, the one who first sent a man into space won! Man in space = the end of the race. The first person on the moon? This, of course, is cool. But, sorry guys, we were the first in space. It's a million times steeper. The Americans lost and their entire lunar program is just an attempt to distract the attention of the whole world from the fact that they are forever and forever the second.
Because just getting there first doesn't count! It's best out of threefiveseven-- TO THE MOON IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS!
Anyway, yeah, even as an American, I always found the notion that getting to the moon is the only thing that counts was a little ridiculous, but when you ask your teacher in class, you're told no, no, the race wasn't actually on until the thing we could do first came along.
That said, it wasn't until Kennedy gave a speech that America even cared that Sputnik had been launched. The "Space Race" as a whole was just a proxy for showing off how great one nation or the other's ICBM technology was. Nobody would have funded science technology just to "advance humanity as a civilization" - we're not nearly capable of putting down short-sighted goals enough for that! - all that money was spent on NASA for the purpose of building bigger nuke transportation devices!
Of course, that said, if you go back a little earlier to things like "getting a rocket up to space", then it's all the Nazis, not the Soviet Union that did that, and the Soviet Union didn't so much invent space technology as grab Nazi scientists, stick a gun to their head, and tell them to work for the Motherland. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that...
Blindga said:
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure every nation would love a strip mine on Mars for... whatever it is Mars is made of (magnesium I think),
Iron, mostly. Mars is rust red because its surface is basically all rust. The dirt is literally iron ore. That said, it has plenty of other relatively rare ores, like niobium or europeum.
Most people treat landing on the moon as the greatest achievement ever. However, speaking as a life-long astronomy buff, that's about equal to stepping out the door onto the porch.
Because just getting there first doesn't count! It's best out of threefiveseven-- TO THE MOON IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS!
Anyway, yeah, even as an American, I always found the notion that getting to the moon is the only thing that counts was a little ridiculous, but when you ask your teacher in class, you're told no, no, the race wasn't actually on until the thing we could do first came along.
It's not the only thing that matters, but it was the first time in history that a human being every set foot on a stellar body beyond the one we evolved on. It's sort of like the difference between the first person to every figure out how to build a boat and putter around in sight of the coast and the first ones to take a ship and sail to an entirely new land. Both are achievements, but one is a bit grander.
That said, it wasn't until Kennedy gave a speech that America even cared that Sputnik had been launched. The "Space Race" as a whole was just a proxy for showing off how great one nation or the other's ICBM technology was. Nobody would have funded science technology just to "advance humanity as a civilization" - we're not nearly capable of putting down short-sighted goals enough for that! - all that money was spent on NASA for the purpose of building bigger nuke transportation devices!
The US program was well underway ahead of the Soviet launch, they put someone sub-orbital not even a month afterward and orbital less then a year later. All Kennedy did was make people notice said program and subsequently increase it's profile and funding. Actually the US almost certainly easily could have beaten the Russians to at least Sputnik but for a specific choice early on not to utilize re-purposed military launch vehicles under development for purely 'scientific' missions for public relation reasons.
There's realist and then there is stupid cynicism, and the crap about ICBM is the later. NASA was created to coordinate the research aspects of space technology and exploration, that was why it was a civilian agency. It contributed to military research in only fairly indirect ways by advancing the understanding of the underlying science.
If this idiocy was true why would it be funding all sorts of research that has no practical value from it's earliest days? Does understanding how the sun works or what the weather is like on Venus really matter for instance? Not really, it has absolutely no effect on anything and no practical military applications, but those were just two missions NASA was conducting within about two years of inception. NASA was not about advancing military technology, it was about national prestige as reflected by scientific achievement generally when founded, but it quickly became about the science itself and still is.
The reason for that is because there was no damn reason for NASA to be wasting time on military research. The US already had dedicated programs for that under the Air Force, which operates a more extensive space program in house that almost any country not named Russia or China. This was no different back then the Air Force was the one designing the ICBMs, the spy sats, the military communication systems and monitoring the same among the enemy. NASA was created specifically to spin off an agency that would coordinate the exploration and research aspects of space rather then have those occur more or less as a side effect of the existing military research programs as it had been up to that time.
NASA was and is a science agency, there are number of others in the government, it's just the most famous.
Actually the US almost certainly easily could have beaten the Russians to at least Sputnik but for a specific choice early on not to utilize re-purposed military launch vehicles under development for purely 'scientific' missions for public relation reasons.
So you agree with my premise that funding was boosted because of PR and relation to the military...
Tk3997 said:
If this idiocy was true why would it be funding all sorts of research that has no practical value from it's earliest days?
Then say the premise you just agreed with is 'idiocy'. Got it.
"The ONE place that hasn't been CORRUPTED by capitalism!
...
......
SPACE!"
RA3 Soviet March theme plays.
ChaosFox said:
Won the space race, communism still dies. Funny how that works. Won a battle but lost the war.
Communism as an economic system was too utopic to work, to begin with. To even get anyone to fully embrace its ideals, we will have to rewrite human nature right down to its fundamentals.
Like seriously. Everyone being equal when everyone's not born equal and doesn't work jobs of equal effort and complexity? Yeah, nobody's going to buy that deep down inside.
Of course, that said, if you go back a little earlier to things like "getting a rocket up to space", then it's all the Nazis, not the Soviet Union that did that, and the Soviet Union didn't so much invent space technology as grab Nazi scientists, stick a gun to their head, and tell them to work for the Motherland. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that...
Well, it's not like US and the rest of coalition didn't attempt to do the same, though some agrue that they did it to deny expertise to Soviets; see the so-called "Operation Paperclip" and post-WWII "Intellectual reparations", also not shying away from forced, uh, "evacuations" to the west.
As for the Nazi scientists, immediately post-war Soviets basically rebuilt and expanded the A-4 rocket research facilities on the German territory by recruiting about 7000 German scientists, mostly buying them with a hefty sum of money, but sometimes also indeed "persuading" with a gun barrel to the head. Then over the course of the year, around 800 soviet tech specialist were injected in the rebuilt facilities to transfer the expertise; afterwards, in late 1946, the facility has been disbanded, and most of the staff was released to search for other jobs; however, around 200 top German rocket researchers were forcibly relocated to Soviet-based facilities under the premise of working on the newer version of A-4 Rocket. What actually happened is, without them knowing, their blueprints and research were used to train and supply ideas to Soviet's own development team under the lead of Korolev. By the end of 1951, most of the expertise they needed has been extracted that way, and relocated scientists were gradually returned to Germany over the course of next three years. See this article and its two follow-ups for a more detailed description and sources.
Communism as an economic system was too utopic to work, to begin with. To even get anyone to fully embrace its ideals, we will have to rewrite human nature right down to its fundamentals.
Like seriously. Everyone being equal when everyone's not born equal and doesn't work jobs of equal effort and complexity? Yeah, nobody's going to buy that deep down inside.
This. Just this. Need to shake your metaphorical hand. To work properly, communism requires that every person on Earth was an altruist of highest degree, ready to put the well-being of world before his own. To think on such a scale is currently impossible for humans.
Communism as an economic system was too utopic to work, to begin with. To even get anyone to fully embrace its ideals, we will have to rewrite human nature right down to its fundamentals.
Like seriously. Everyone being equal when everyone's not born equal and doesn't work jobs of equal effort and complexity? Yeah, nobody's going to buy that deep down inside.
Technically speaking, USSR's brand of communism as an economic system didn't proclaim universal equality; otherwise, everyone would get the same payment regardless of the job, which was definitely not the case in the Union. Rather, the economic principle declared in the '36 USSR constitution followed the general socialist principle and was, literally, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution ". Now, of course, the rules of actually quantifying the contribution are difficult to establish and easily bendable, so it is hard to make it work despite how compelling it sounds. Besides, the principle at its very core clashes with natural human desire to get rich fast without doing much, which in turn stems from desire of security, which overrides any ideological or altruistic urges if we think according to Maslow's hierarchy.
The only way this could possibly work is granting people feeling of security by other means, namely by the abundance of daily necessities such as proper housing, food, medicine, etc - which, I'm pretty sure, has even been stressed upon in Marx's original works. Of course, this was wholeheartedly ignored, the infamous deficiencies happened time and time again, people got fed up and this ultimately was one of the reasons for the Union's collapse.
Gilgamesh404 said: To work properly, communism requires that every person on Earth was an altruist of highest degree, ready to put the well-being of world before his own. To think on such a scale is currently impossible for humans.
Sounds less like altruism and more mindless-drone-ism. Well, more of it than what may already exist in other economic systems.
Communism as an economic system was too utopic to work, to begin with. To even get anyone to fully embrace its ideals, we will have to rewrite human nature right down to its fundamentals.
Like seriously. Everyone being equal when everyone's not born equal and doesn't work jobs of equal effort and complexity? Yeah, nobody's going to buy that deep down inside.
Is the idea of everyone being equal before the law also a wrong ideal? Regardless of the impossibility of succeeding, the principle of attempting to establish such a legal system isn't any less valid.
I view Communism as applying the same for economic forces. Its less about all people making the same amount of money, but of people at different parts of the workforce having equal ownership of their labor. In short, that a laborer has a right to withhold their work when they choose to, and that the manager doesn't have absolute dominion over their workforce. People forget how bad shit was, especially with the concept of the "company store" which outright made people into servants of the company (they got paid only in company coupons, which could only be redeemed at the company store. Ensuring that they could never better themselves).
Its not like pure, unregulated capitalism is anything like the system we have today.
Surprisingly, for some reason, many argue with the fact that the USSR won the space race. Yes, there are no clear criteria. But obviously, the one who first sent a man into space won! Man in space = the end of the race. The first person on the moon? This, of course, is cool. But, sorry guys, we were the first in space. It's a million times steeper. The Americans lost and their entire lunar program is just an attempt to distract the attention of the whole world from the fact that they are forever and forever the second.
But who lost the Cold War? The space race did a huge number on that Soviet economy.
I think it's worth mentioning that "Communism" wasn't invented by Marx or Lenin.
Communism as a concept is actually basically the default "economic model" in the world. Hunter-gatherer societies have no money and by custom and necessity share food and other essentials to help hunters to fail in hunts one day get to the next, where they may be the one bringing home a kill while the guy who fed them yesterday goes without a catch today. Only "luxuries" such as fine clothes or jewelry or anything to mask body scent were considered 'property' that was owned, while food and necessities were by default shared. People in tight-knit communities that stay in the same tribe all their lives don't need to "settle accounts", they can just owe one another things. It's only when one gets to the stage of having cities where people can be anonymous to one another, and need to settle all accounts in a purchase because it may be the last time two people ever see each other that money is actually necessary and was invented. The Marxists just called this "primitive Communism" as a distinction from what they wanted to accomplish in their own system, which would apply to industrialist societies.
As much as, especially for an American, you might get taught that Communism Is Evil, one of the things pointed out is that, while dealings with strangers are generally Capitalist in nature (with money settling all debts, thus allowing any sort of business-formed relationships to be terminated 'equitably' through simply paying money to make any imbalance in what one has done for another go away), families are still firmly communist in nature (ever been handed a bill from your parents for your clothing and food from when you grew up?) and so are institutions like the military.
And part of the allure/mythos of Communism is that with money came lust for money and corruption and a loss of that communal camaraderie which made it possible/encouraged the abuse of the workers by the big bad wealthy elites, so they need to somehow recapture that essence of no longer needing to actually own stuff or let wealth beget more wealth through finance such that a few hold tremendous power by virtue of wealth, alone.
Star Trek's Federation in particular is basically a communist utopia, which explicitly has no money and just gives out all basic needs for free because enh, food is unlimited and free with replicator tech, anyway. (Nevermind what it takes to build or maintain those things...)
That's not to say it's necessarily possible, but just that people born during the Cold War often don't really even know what communism was supposed to be, other than just "what the Soviets did".
Same as what I thought. Humans can be altruistic, but they are typically only altruistic towards people with whom they have deep emotional connections with. How many people can we actually form such an emotional connection with? No more than 150 to 200 people, give and take. That's about the size of a tribe.
That is why communism can and does work in a tribal society. However, once the community grows larger than the typical population of a tribe, the communist ideal starts to break down as alienation starts to set in. It is at this point where the idea of taking care of each other gives way to 'us vs them'.
Sounds less like altruism and more mindless-drone-ism. Well, more of it than what may already exist in other economic systems.
I haven't meant it like that. The decision to put others before oneself must be conscious and willing. A person voluntarily gives away the results of his labour to the people while knowing that everyone else will do the same. It requires a level of trust and cooperation which is normally unreachable outside of small communities.
Came for ship girl 4-koma Stayed for ideology discussion ...
But yeah, kinda agree that Communism as an idea is noble, but in practice ... Yeah, not so much Especially when people just use it as a political tool to gain control (Just like everything else)
Came for ship girl 4-koma Stayed for ideology discussion ...
But yeah, kinda agree that Communism as an idea is noble, but in practice ... Yeah, not so much Especially when people just use it as a political tool to gain control (Just like everything else)
For communism to work, we either have to rewrite our fundamental nature to be always altruistic all the time or dismantle the very concept of nation and downsize our communities to the size of tribes (so instead of, say, the USA, we are going to end up with something similar to the multitudes of Amerindian Nations that existed before the first European settlers set foot on the continent).
Because just getting there first doesn't count! It's best out of threefiveseven-- TO THE MOON IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS!
Anyway, yeah, even as an American, I always found the notion that getting to the moon is the only thing that counts was a little ridiculous, but when you ask your teacher in class, you're told no, no, the race wasn't actually on until the thing we could do first came along.
There were several things the US was doing first before the Soviets, including first rendezvous (Gemini 6A and 7) and first docking (Gemini 8), both of which were used in the Apollo missions (and the Soviet lunar landing missions, if they had occurred). Also, getting to the moon allowed some profound feats like retrieving parts of Surveyor 3. (At least, I think it's quite profound--returning parts of a probe that was never designed to return to Earth.)
That said, it wasn't until Kennedy gave a speech that America even cared that Sputnik had been launched. The "Space Race" as a whole was just a proxy for showing off how great one nation or the other's ICBM technology was. Nobody would have funded science technology just to "advance humanity as a civilization" - we're not nearly capable of putting down short-sighted goals enough for that! - all that money was spent on NASA for the purpose of building bigger nuke transportation devices!
Missile technology was already ready by the time the Space Race occured, since all the US's orbital spacecraft flew after the corresponding missile (Atlas, Titan) was in service. And ultimately, all manned orbital spacecraft use liquid-fueled engines, due to weight concerns, while modern ICBMs use solid fuels, since they must be stored for a long time. So there wasn't much advancement of ICBMs by the space program, since either the ICBM in question was developed before the corresponding launch vehicle (Atlas, Titan), or the ICBM was an unrelated system (Minuteman, Peacekeeper, Polaris, Poseidon, Trident).
Surprisingly, for some reason, many argue with the fact that the USSR won the space race. Yes, there are no clear criteria. But obviously, the one who first sent a man into space won! Man in space = the end of the race. The first person on the moon? This, of course, is cool. But, sorry guys, we were the first in space. It's a million times steeper. The Americans lost and their entire lunar program is just an attempt to distract the attention of the whole world from the fact that they are forever and forever the second.
It's not a race when the contestants can't agree on the placement of the finish line. That said, I really wish the Soviets had put a man on the Moon first. America would be colonizing Mars by now.
Those episodes are just proof positive of the Motherland's excellence when it comes to space exploration, aren't they?And come to think of it, the ones to put up the world's first space station was the Soviets also, riiight?Riiiight?That's right!
It's Space Exploration Memorial Day!!GAGARIN!And then four years later, the Union successfully sent the world's first human into outer space!The 4th of October, 1957!
Our beloved Soviet Union successfully put up the world's first artificial satellite!Angel day?
10/4 = 'ten' + 'shi' = tenshi = Angel DayAPOLLO KICK!Iowa! Do you happen to know what day it is today?
