Apollo-Soyuz Mission: When the Space Race Ended (2020)

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/apollo-soyuz-mission-when-the-space-race-ended

by diodorus • 5 years ago

31 33 5 years ago

discovermagazine.com

slg2• 5 years ago

Did someone just finish season 2 of For All Mankind?

wyldfire2• 5 years ago

The submitter, maybe. But the article was written before season two aired.

slg2• 5 years ago

That was my point. This is a roughly year old article about a relatively minor space mission that mostly served a symbolic mission. The question becomes why is this being posted now? The answer is probably that For All Mankind rekindled interest in this mission over the last couple months and even if the submitter didn't see the show, it is possible that whoever shared this with them did.

Belphemur• 5 years ago

As an avid watcher of the show, I really thought it was just an "invention" of the show.

I'm really happy to learn it actually happened! This is amazing!

We would need more event like this these days ...

jnsie• 5 years ago

I did! Just last night. Was excited to see this post!

f00zz• 5 years ago

That handshake starts the opening sequence in the (otherwise awful) movie "Valerian": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6oTziHKM_c

d_silin• 5 years ago

...that movie is not that awful! It definitely had entertainment value for me.

KineticLensman• 5 years ago

It definitely had entertainment value for me.

It definitely has nutty energy. I think if you survive the lengthy virtual reality sequence near the beginning it has some bits that are okay. I was actually quite impressed by Rihanna playing the shapeshifting Glamopod entertainer.

And interesting to see a French rather than a Hollywood sci-fi film.

ggambetta• 5 years ago

I was hoping it would be a decent spiritual sequel to The Fifth Element... I was severely disappointed :(

kilroy123• 5 years ago

It's watchable, but yes, not great.

guscost• 5 years ago

This framing makes it sound a little like the space race ended in a tie.

flohofwoe2• 5 years ago

It kind of did? The Russians clearly had many more "firsts", but the Americans had the first man on the moon, so I'd say even though the Russians clearly had won by the numbers, the Americans didn't too bad either. Maybe not quite enough for a tie, but pretty close.

ghaff3• 5 years ago

The Soviets were ahead with respect to earth orbit [ADDED: for earth orbit manned flight, as well as other probes]. But their counterpart to the Saturn V, the N1, was basically a disaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)

In fact, as I recall S1, For All Mankind is basically premised on the notion that the N1 worked and therefore, the Soviets kept their early lead and landed on the moon first.

marcodiego• 5 years ago

I wonder if "the space race" would still be called the same today if soviets got to the moon first.

wyldfire2• 5 years ago

If you're wondering that, you might enjoy "For All Mankind" mentioned in other threads here as likely inspiration for this post.

willwashburn• 5 years ago

It was crazy how the same time this was happening there was a space shuttle battle going on over on the dark side of the moon because the Americans were bringing nukes and the Soviet’s were also launching a spec ops raid on the American lunar base to recover a potential defector. That was one crazy day y’all.

vlovich123• 5 years ago

What is this a reference to?

Neekerer• 5 years ago

The TV show "For All Mankind"

jgrahamc• 5 years ago

There are many threads on reddit filled with comments like that. This doesn't really work here on HN and I was sad to find this as the top comment. I have no clue what you are referring to.

LatteLazy• 5 years ago

The space race seems weird to me. Russia won most of it (first satellite, first peraon in space etc). Then the US rushed to catch up, but Russia had basically stopped competing already. They had no interest in the moon and did a bunch of science based missions instead.

Its like having an Olympics where Russia won half the events and went home early and the US arrived late and won other events. But they didn't really compete directly ever...

benmller313• 5 years ago

That isn't quite how I understood this to have gone. It seems like the Russians very much did want to go to the moon, and would have beaten the American's there if they had succeeded in getting their version of the Saturn V off the ground in one piece.

inglor_cz2• 5 years ago

Oh, the N1 rocket is an interesting story.

Originally a design by Korolev, it had to be built by another team because Korolev died. It was so big that it needed over 160 railway wagons to be transported to Baikonur in piecemeal fashion (Baikonur is inland - no water transport available). It had an ungodly number of engines for its age, but a very subpar computer system (KORD) for monitoring them, which was a recipe for disaster. The budgets were so tight that the assembled first stage was never statically fired (the engines were ablatively cooled, so a static fire would probably require a separate set of engines).

And yet the engineers tried their best.

inglor_cz2• 5 years ago

Russia seems to be stuck even today. Roskosmos still launches Soyuzes, but their technological progress has stalled. The newer Angara vehicle only launched three times since 2014. They lost almost their entire share of the private satellite launch market, which used to be formidable mere 15 years ago. And the new Vostochny cosmodrome seems to be a black hole for shoveling money in.

Apollo-Soyuz Mission: When the Space Race Ended (2020)

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