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Carrion Luggage #1091599 added June 16, 2025 at 8:18am
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We Come In Peace
Apparently, there's still stuff to learn about the most famous pissing contest in history. From Big Think:
"Secret reason?" Well, now that you're telling us, it's not a secret anymore, is it?
On July 20, 1969, our species achieved a dream older than civilization itself, as human beings set foot on the surface of another world beyond Earth when they walked on the surface of the Moon, some 380,000 km away.
Which, as regular readers might remember, I consider to be not only the most significant thing humans have achieved, but the most significant thing we can ever achieve. Yes, moreso than sliced bread. Slightly moreso than the Skip Intro button.
That doesn't change my categorization of what got us there as a pissing contest.
For my country, at least, it's been downhill ever since. From Space Race to Race to the Bottom in less than 60 years. (For comparison, the time between the Wrights' first controlled, powered, piloted flight and the Moon landing was just a little over 65 years.)
If any nation was going to do it, most thought it was going to be the Soviet Union.
Mostly because a large, centralized government / economy is more suited to massive projects like this than a distributed, lassiez-faire system. But the pissing contest came up because we had to prove that Freedom and Capitalism would always win out over Dictatorship and Communism. So to do so, we had to adopt some of their philosophies (sadly, not the one about workers' rights, which, to be fair, they mostly only paid lip service to, as well).
After the disastrous Apollo 1 fire, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Soviets would be the first to walk on the Moon. Yet they never even came close.
There is a very compelling (to me, at least) show series on AppleTV called For All Mankind that considers an alternate universe where they did, in fact, win the race to the Moon. It is, of course, fiction.
Why not? The answer lies in a name that most people have probably never heard of: Sergei Korolev.
Just a wild guess here, but judging by the name, he was from the USSR.
Long before humanity ever broke the gravitational bonds of Earth, there were a few scientists working to pioneer a new scientific field: theoretical astronautics.
This is one of the fields generally lumped under the category "rocket science."
In the early days, all of these concerns were mulled over by theorists alone. A few pioneers stand out in the history of the early 20th century...
Let's see... American, French, German...
But before any of them came Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who was the first to understand the vital relationship between consumable rocket fuel, mass, thrust, and acceleration.
...and Russian.
You might recognize Tsiolkovsky as the guy who conceptualized the space elevator, which, unlike rocketry, has yet to be put into practice.
Sergey Korolev was Tsiolkovsky’s pioneering experimental counterpart, who dreamed of traveling to Mars and launched, in 1933, the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket and the first hybrid-fueled rocket. In 1938, however, he became a victim of Stalin’s Great Purge.
What is it with dictators and purges? They never end well for anyone.
Once World War II ended, both the USA’s and the USSR’s space programs were boosted by the addition of captured German scientists... Unlike the USA, though, the legacy of Tsiolkovsky gave the Soviets an initial edge.
I'm pretty sure they were also better at keeping secrets.
Of course, as with any technology, rocket science can be used for good or evil. The same tech that (mostly) peacefully explored space allowed for development of ICBMs. The article goes into some detail about this, and Korolev's contribution to it—which could then be adapted to send humans into [echo chamber effect] spaaaaaace.
He was declared fully rehabilitated, and began advocating for using the R-7 to launch a satellite into space, met with utter disinterest from the Communist Party. But when the United States media began discussing the possibilities of investing millions of dollars to launch a satellite, Korolev seized his chance. In less than a month, Sputnik 1 was designed, constructed, and launched.
Hence the beginning of the pissing contest. Also one advantage of not having a (mostly) free media: helps to keep secrets secret.
Less than a month later, Sputnik 2 — six times the mass of Sputnik 1 — was launched, carrying Laika the dog into orbit.
What the article glosses over is that, while they had the tech to send a dog into space, they did not, at the time, have the capacity to bring her back. Poor pup.
On April 12, 1961, Korolev’s modified R-7 launched Yuri Gagarin into space: the first human to break the gravitational bonds of Earth, and also the first human to orbit Earth.
Him, they were able to bring back.
With the 1964 fall of Khrushchev, Korolev was put in sole charge of the crewed space program, with the goal of a lunar landing set to occur in October of 1967, which would mark the 50th anniversary of the October revolution.
There was just one complication: when the October Revolution took place, Russia was still using the Julian calendar, which, over time, had drifted many days off of the Gregorian calendar which most of the rest of the world had adopted. The October Revolution thus took place in November.
But it was not to be: Korolev entered the hospital on January 5, 1966, for what was thought to be routine intestinal surgery. Nine days later, he was dead from what was reported as colon cancer complications, although many to this day suspect foul play.
Well... okay, two complications.
Also, everyone suspects foul play when a prominent Russian dies. It's assumed unless there's overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Without Korolev as the chief designer, everything went downhill quickly for the Soviets. While he was alive, Korolev fended off attempted meddling from a variety of rival rocket designers, including Mikhail Yangel, Vladimir Chhelomei, and Valentin Glushko. But the power vacuum that arose after his demise proved catastrophic.
Why does that sound familiar?
The names don't, though. I hadn't heard of them any more than I'd heard of Korolev. Partly, this is because the Soviets kept them secret.
The first flight under Korolev’s successor had ended in the worst disaster imaginable: the first in-flight fatality of any space program conducted by any space agency on Earth. This would prove not to be a one-off event, either, as further setbacks suddenly became the norm. Gagarin, the first human in space, was tragically killed in a test flight in 1968. Mishin developed a drinking problem, coincident with multiple N-1 rocket failures and explosions that followed the Soviet Space program throughout 1969.
Look, let's be fair, here: first of all, Gagarin's death, while tragic, was (if we weren't lied to about it) during a routine training flight of a MiG, not a rocket test flight. Second, I strongly doubt that having a drinking problem would slow a Russian down.
But the death of Korolev, and the mishaps under his successors, are the real reason why the Soviets lost their lead in the space race, and never achieved the goal of landing humans on the Moon.
And yet, if it weren't for the Russians, the US would have wiffled and waffled for many more years before launching someone to the Moon and, very likely, a third party (India? China? France? Probably France) would have gotten there first. (Suddenly, I have an idea for my own alt-history livre qui parle des français sur la Lune. Obviously, it would have to involve a mixed-gender crew and the various positions and techniques they'd invent in 1/6 G.) However we felt about the USSR and feel about the Russian government now, their accomplishments, and the precedents they set, were instrumental in us finally putting boots on the Moon.
A stunt? Sure. Pissing contest? Absolutely. But one that provided scientific and technological discoveries and breakthroughs. For all of humankind. Even the French, whose actual contribution to the Space Race was putting the first and only cat into orbit (unlike Laika, she came back).
For humankind, sure, but not so much for dogs. |
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