>>107129650
>>107130991
It's funny because the whole Soviet space program was seeing the US plan something and doing the more slapdash approach to be a first, with no regard to how it would benefit the next mission step:
>US wants to launch a satelitte
>Rush your own satelitte, it's not ready for launch (Sputnik 3), launch a box with a battery and a radio transmission instead. Explorer 1 had actual scientific payload. (Useful launching systems)
>Soviets send animals in space just to die, Americans sent a trained chimp and brought it back alive. (Proper life-support)
>Soviets launch a bunch of iterative designs that fail, US designs have a larger sucess rate.
>Americans want to put man in space, design a proper capsule and splash down system. Soviets made the guy jump and parachute down then lie about the landing for 3 years.
>First spacewalk was good, I'll give them that.
>Soviets never managed to do a soft landing, they basically smashed probes into the moon with airbags. US design soft landed on the first try.
>Venera suffered from the same iterative design issues.
>First space station was plagued with problems and also resulted in the first deaths above the Karman line (actual space), as they squeezed cosmonauts in a smal capsule, couldn't use pressure suits. Capsule decompressed and they died before reentry.
>Dunno about the Soviet Mars program.
You know why the soviets didn't manage to land on the moon