On the spaceflight note, it’s rather sad that the Soviets harassed and imprisoned Yuri Kondratyuk since his work was vital in the moon landing and orbital mechanics in general.

If his work in space flight was supported and not repeatedly crushed by authorities, the USSR might’ve landed on the moon first. Instead, he was imprisoned by the NVKD for some of his engineering designs (for “sabotage” of not using nails, which is a dumb thing on its own).

And eventually, he gave all his aerospace notes to a friend to smuggle them out of the country because he feared the govt would accuse him of treason like they had Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (the guy who made Sputnik 1).

The Soviets could have won the space race, if it weren’t for the “authoritarianism” you’re trying to make light of

[–] KimBongUn420@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The Soviets could have won the space race

[–] AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

A) that’s actually good meme haha

B) the space race ended when the US landed on the moon, if you run a 5k and get to 4.9k ahead of everyone but then don’t cross the finish line, you’ve still lost the race

Anyway the point of my comment wasn’t “the US beat the Soviets because they’re authoritarian” it was “the Soviets had everything they needed to absolutely dominate space travel but their authoritarianism hindered their scientific progress significantly”

[–] KimBongUn420@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 month ago

B) the space race ended when the US landed on the moon, if you run a 5k and get to 4.9k ahead of everyone but then don’t cross the finish line, you’ve still lost the race

Im not sure how to explain to you that if youre the one declaring what the goal is, you essentially declare yourself the winner. If I declare that the first person to be in space is the winner of the space race, the UDSSR won? It's what the meme is hinting at

the Soviets had everything they needed to absolutely dominate space travel but their authoritarianism hindered their scientific progress significantly

A) every single state in this planet is authoritarian. What matters is the class character. Read this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

B) habe you considered that the reason the Soviet had everything they needed to absolutely dominate space travel was due to the system they had?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 month ago

You're placing far too much importance on the potential excessive actions taken by a state under constant infiltration and siege against a scientist. As we showed, the soviet space program, without said scientist, took numerous firsts over the US. The soviets weren't incompetent and needed a super-scientist to save them, they had an extremely competent team that took them to space before the US while being a semi-feudal backwater 50 years prior. If anything, the fact that they took so many firsts despite their dramatic hinderances, including recovering from World War II, is an excellent showcase of the effectiveness of soviet science.

[–] chloroken@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh hey it's that weird undergrad who keeps lying about being being involved in research (and who keeps calling himself an engineer while still in school). Now you're here vomiting up garbage about how bad the USSR was? When aren't you cringe as fuck?

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