Who Won the Space Race?

 

Soviet propaganda poster during the Space Race

Today, most Westerners would tend to agree that the United States won the Space Race in 1969 when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, etc landed on the moon. However, is this really this one sided? When it comes to the Soviet achievements in space, most Westerners tend to ignore them and think that landing on the moon was the main goal on both sides and think that landing on the moon. This however wasn’t true. While the Soviet Academician Sergei Korolev relentlessly lobbied and pushed the Soviet government to give official approval and fund this. However, the Soviet leadership was very reluctant as they had other goals in mind. In the 1960s, there was a massive threat of a nuclear war breaking out between the countries of the Eastern Bloc and the West during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was also revealed that during this time, the United States had about 20 times more missiles than the Soviets did at the time. As a result, the Soviets increased defense spending as opposed to spending on space exploration and this reflected the fact that landing on the moon was not a huge priority for the Soviet government. This meant that there was no race: only the United States had the goal of landing on the moon in the 1960s(if there is no competitor, how can it be a race?). Despite the fact that space exploration became less of a priority for the Soviets during the 1960s, the Soviets were still able to make many advances in the field of space exploration. Here is a list of some of their achievements over from the 1950s up till the collapse:

• First multistage rocket (1947)
• Creating the staged combustion (1949)
• First spaceport, Baikonur Cosmodrome (1957)
• First orbiting satellite, Sputnik 1 (1957)
• First living being in orbit, the dog Laika on Sputnik 2 (1957)
• First man-made object to leave the Earth’s orbit, Luna 1 (1959)
• First telemetry communication to and from off the ground, Luna 1 (1959)
• First object to pass near the moon, and the first object in solar orbit Luna 1 (1959)
• First satellite hit the moon, Luna 2 (1959)
• First images of the dark side of the moon, Luna 3 (1959)
• First satellite to be launched to Mars, Marsnik 1 (1960)
• First rocket boots (1960)
• Creating space food (1961)
• First satellite to Venus, Venera 1 (1961)
• First person to enter orbit around the Earth, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1 (1961)
• First person to spend one day in orbit, Gherman Titov, Vostok 2 (1961)
• First double flight, manned Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 (1962)
• First probe on Mars, Mars 1 (1962) made ​​the first pictures of Mars from space
• First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 6 (1963)
• First spacewalk EVA, by Aleksei Leonov, Voskhod 2 (1965)
• First probe to hit another planet Venus, Venera 3 (1965)
• First probe landing on the moon and transmitted from there, Luna 9 (1966)
• First probe into lunar orbit, Luna 10 (1966)
• Creation of the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft model (1967), which is the only way that NASA and ESA send astronauts into space
• First space bathroom (1967)
• First meeting and unmanned docking, Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188 (1967) until 2006 this feat was not mimicked by the USA
• Close coupling and exchange of crew in orbit, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 (1969)
• First extraterrestrial samples returned by Luna 16 (1970)
• First robot on a celestial body, Lunokhod 1 (1970)
• First probe to Venus, Venera 7 (1970)
• First data received from a probe on another planet (Venus), Venera 7 (1970)
• First space station, Salyut 1 (1971)
• First satellite to orbit Mars and make a descent, Mars 2 (1971)
• Second robot on a celestial body, Lunokhod 2 (1973) and with the Lunokhod 1 is the only automated mobile laboratories that have explored the Moon guided by remote control
• First satellite to orbit Venus and send data back to Earth Venera 9 (1975)
• Creation of the coupling mechanism and docking of spacecraft, Androgynous Peripheral Attach System (1975)
• Creating space shuttle Buran (1976), which can carry 30 tons (USA model only 25), return flights with load of 20 tons (USA only 15), with a support rate of 6.5 (compared to 5.5 of the USA model), its auxiliary maneuvering system rockets and use oxygen and kerosene fuel instead of solid (like the USA) and gives better performance. Besides the Buran shuttle could make unmanned missions (USA can’t), with ejection seats (the USA model does not have) considered the safest and most effective of the history and design more effective and resilient thermal tiles that USA version
• Creating the world’s most powerful rocket: Energy (1976), capable of carrying 100 tons
• First Spaceship supply unmanned, Progress (1978)
• First radio telescope (1979)
• First woman to walk in space , Svetlana Savitskaja in Salyut 7 (1984)
• First shuttle in orbit to Earth independently, Buran (1984)
• First multi module space station: Salyut 7 and Kosmos 1686 (TKS-4) (1985)
• First crew to visit two space stations, Mir and Salyut 7 (1986) aboard Soyuz T-15
• First permanent space station to orbit Earth, Mir (1986)
• First crew to spend over a year on Mir, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov (1987)

This is of course not to downplay American achievements in space exploration such as creating the first communication satellite, first GPS, etc. The main point of the article however is to point out the not well-known achievements of the Soviet space program.