You make a good point about the US getting the lion's share of good German scientists after WW2. They did prove to be a gold mine for NASA, and a few other notorious government agencies.
Werner von Braun made a point of wanting to surrender to the USA, and not Russia. He abandoned his workshop, and took most of the people that worked there to surrender to the US. Russia got very few scientists, and got very few captured V-2's. The team that brought most Soviet Space successes was lead by the Russian Korolyev and designed their rockets from scratch, and did not use the German Scientists, in fact they were repatriated after a short time. Also, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote "The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices" which was published in 1903, in which he calculated escape velocity, and proposed multi-stage hydrogen/oxygen propelled rockets. His work inspired Werner von Braun, and was also read by the American rocket engineers. So the little Russia got from Werner von Braun, was a development of Russian ideas in the first place.
Well, yes, it did actually! Both sides stopped running after that. Did you not notice that the predicted moon base has never happened, and in a couple of decades or so there will likely be no one left alive who has stood on the moon? It was precisely because the Soviets were ahead and fancied their chances, but never even made second place, that their performance looked so dismal.
Soviets Lose the Cold war because America could defeat this iron Curtain around them with its policy of opening and democracy that soviet didn't have and need in the same time as much as the whole human in the world need also
Maybe Stalin shouldn't have starved his own people to death in 1930s, some of them could've been very smart and productive. Maybe the Soviets shouldn't have stifled scientific and cultural progress on behalf of greed. Russia could be better off even today, had their government fed its own people before looking to Chinese market. Or at least not torturing their own army forces could've done substantial good... Those guys who lost their limbs to their comrades could've been productive citizens.
And Mir, which set all space endurance records, was 'dismal' was it? That was the Soviet Union stopping was it? No, it was them spending their cash more wisely than a manned Moon mission, whose value was merely public relations, and devalued by the USA getting there first. Remember, the driving force behind the US Moon shot was to revive public confidence in the military, because the US had a 'missile gap' and lesser acheivements than the Soviet Union. The US were playing catch up from the start, and the Moon missions merely showed they had caught up, but they never surpassed the Soviet Union, if they had, they'd have had a space station, ....
I don't know were you came up with that? but by the time of the Moon Shots, we had left the Soviets in the Dust as far as missile technology. http://www.space.com/news/sputnik42_991005.html http://www.xs4all.nl/~bruno/2007/sputnik.htm
Are you denying that there was a perceived 'missile gap' at the time? Or that the launch of Sputnik made US citizens uneasy that the Soviet Union was more advanced in technology? Do you think the USA, or Russia, has the most advanced missile technology now? Or that the Soviet Union had, and still has a working ABM system? Are you also forgetting the list of Soviet first is space so quickly? I listed them in this thread. Are you also forgetting that the USA had it's fair share of failures in rocketry too? And also that the USA got Werner von Braun, so the failures of the V2 should be reckoned against US totals? In rocketry, things go wrong, still do, that's a fact of rocketry, not nationality. I'm neutral on this, hence not blinded by patriotism.
No patriotism, we covered our failures as well as our sucess's, something the Russians didn't do. A perceived missile gap isn't a real missile gap. Now I have posted parts of a interview with Korolev, and he states that there were multiple failures of the Launch vehicle, remember the Russian only announced their success's, and buried their failures, Hell they airbrushed out the Cosmonaut from the pictures, when they died.
The "missile gap" thing was also due to differences in military philosophy. The US always preferred to have a majority of its nuclear triad represented by bombers rather than ICBMs or SLBMs, even after the missile gap was long gone. Bombers are more flexible because they can be retasked or recalled in flight, and the US military is all about flexibility. Also, SAC had a vastly superior jet bomber force in the than the PVO did, in the same time period, which affected the decision to stick with them after we started waving our missile cocks at each other. Part of the reason the Soviets stuck with a majority ICBM force was because they had the US beat in the ICBM race early on, and it was and part of it was because an ICBM force has inherently less men in the loop than a bomber force does. There were tons of differences between NATO and WP doctrine, but centralization of command and control was one of the most ubiquitous, and it was reflected as much in arsenal composition as anywhere else.
There was a cold war, do you really think they were going to publicise that information in a foreign country? Did the USA broadcast it's failures to the USSR? Thing is, there was a missile gap, and it was thought to be even bigger than it was, and that worried the US populace. The Moon shot was a PR catch-up campaign, designed to restore faith in US technology. That's how far the USA were pushed to catch up; The Moon! Yes, and the CIA claimed more Cosmonauts had died than was actually true, by taking pictures of crash dummies ejected during re-entry, and landing by parachute, stating they were DOA when they were just dummies. Also, anyone dishonoured, failing tests, or medicals, or being disciplined were expelled from flight training and airbrushed out of the pictures, this happened far more often than people died. Fact is, the USA killed people, but were making such a broohaha out of the guys having 'The Right Stuff' covering up the cock-ups was impossible. The jingoism backfired a little. The biggest human cost of the Soviet rocket program was in ground technicians, when two rockets exploded on their pads, not in Cosmonauts, btw. You also seem reluctant to have the human cost of the German V2 rocket program added to the US space program via Werner von Braun. Why is that? Operation Paperclip significantly denied technology and expertise to the Russians, and benefited the USA.
We had T.V. coverage of every satellite launch, and manned mission live as they happened, and there was same day coverage in the news papers. Every failure or our satellite program, every success. The Soviets never even announced their success until they were success, and they never ever showed a failure. And they had many a failure. There always was a gap in numbers, but as far as technology, we had the edge with in a few years of Sputnik There were more than two fail to launch problems in the Soviet program, reference the interviews with Korolev http://www.xs4all.nl/~bruno/2007/sputnik.htm Why are you so eager to add it to the U.S. program, the V-2 was a all German effort, and we benefited from their failures. After the war we used the developed V-2 as a stepping stone to our program. The Russians used the same V-2 and many of Von Brauns associates, as a stepping stone to their space program, so shouldn't those lost lives also be added to their program? Remember the Soviets got their fair share of German Scientist to.
And what about the repeated failures of the test launches of the Vanguard rockets? They weren't televised or publicised. Well, there was a cold war going on, and the 'Freedom of the Press' not present in communist Russia. This means little when it comes to rocketry, it's a risky business, press coverage clearly does not guarantee a more successful outcome. That's just not true, the list of Soviet firsts carries on for years after Sputnik, and even after the USA landed on the Moon. Mir, for instance, set endurance records. I didn't say there were just two, just that the two largest losses of life were launchpad technicians. Pay attention. Because, as you say it yourself; But, No, Operation Paperclip denied the Russians much of the Nazi technology, and Werner von Braun deliberately surrendered to US forces. There were two teams working on the Russian rocket program, one with captured German V-2's and the other on an all Russian design. The design that went into production was the all Russian one, and the German scientists were repatriated to Germany in a matter of years after WWII. Russia gained little from the Nazis, whereas the USA got Werner von Braun himself! Far fewer than the USA, they did't get Werner von Braun, and they repatriated all of them quickly. Sorry, but that puts the human development cost of the V-2 on the USA's tally.
Just to clear this up, the "missile gap" wasn't a gap in numbers. That ended up being an illusion. Like the "bomber gap" a few years before, and the "submarine gap" of the late 1970s, the alleged Soviet advantage was used to publicly justify allocating R&D dollars to a particular program area within the United States budget. Come to think of it, the same thing happened with the MiG-25, too. What it was was a gap in technology. During the time period, a sizeable portion of the US strategic missile force was made up by IRBMs stationed in Turkey and West Germany. The Soviets had no such territory in close proximity to the United States, so their counterforce had to consist of ICBMs. As a result, the Soviets gained a considerable lead early on in the launch vehicle arena, which transferred over into their space program and ended up working out quite well for them.
Lets see, It was in the New York Times.... Vanguard Rocket Burns on Beach; Failure to Launch www.nytimes.com/partners/aol/special/sputnik/sput-20.html - Similar pages It was in Times...................... Vanguard Failure IV - TIME ... off its fifth Vanguard rocket at Cape Canaveral one night last week, ... It was the fourth failure in five attempts to launch a Vanguard satellite. ... www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,868472... - 34k - Similar pages There are 57,000 news articles in: NewspaperARCHIVE.com – Search Old Newspapers Online Shortly following the Sputnik launch in 1957, America tried and failed to launch two Vanguard rockets, in a hastened continuation of the original Naval ... newspaperarchive.com/TopicsFullArticles.aspx?c=s... - 27k - Similar pages Newsreels 1957-1958 1957/12/09 Satellite A Bust. Rocket Blows Up In First U.S. Try (1) Vanguard explodes during launch of Explorer satellite (2) British train accident due to ... history.sandiego.edu/gen/newsreels/62.html - 17k - Similar pages 1957/12/09 Satellite A Bust. Rocket Blows Up In First U.S. Try (1) Vanguard explodes during launch of Explorer satellite (2) British train accident due to London fog (3) Amsterdam aquarium has sea horse, coral fish, lobster, eel (4) town in Georgia is leveled by gas explosion, town of Villarica (5) new Dutch ramjet helicopter demonstrated, rotor tips flame at night, looking like flying saucer (6) "Air Force Gets A New Theme Song" - men's chorus sings U.S. Air Force Blue song under pictures of jets [provided by DOD] (partial newsreel) SOURCE: 200 Universal 30-100, National Archives, College Park MD 1958/02/06 Navy's Satellite. Vanguard Fails in Second Launching (1) (poor sound) Navy Vanguard Satellite Fails in Second Launching at night at Cape Canaveral, "cameras record a pinwheel of fire" (2) "Ike Still Has Hope For New Summit Talks" - Ike 2nd press conference of the year, has voice problem (3) Atomic weapons come (4) The End to Korea - Honest John missile and 280mm atomic cannon (5) 10th anniversary of Gandhi assassination in India - Nehru at shrine, at spinning wheel (6) "Austria Wins World Ski Contest" (partial newsreel) SOURCE: 200 Universal 31-11, National Archives, College Park MD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You forget that the Russians had a operation to, it was called Operation "Osoaviakhim" and it swept up....2,200 specialists in the fields of aviation, nuclear technology, rocketry, electronics, radar technology and chemistry.
