Continual advancements?mag check wrote:No, I believe that is a real photo of the wright brothers first powered flight, and it was not just made to look like a flight. The continual advancements to aircraft since that day would also suggest that that event actually did happen. (unlike the stagnation of space travel)
Like how we no longer have Mach 3 aircraft in operation? Like how modern airliners travel about 100 MPH slower than ones from 40 years ago? Like how we no longer have a supersonic commercial aircraft like we did in the 70s 80s and 90s?
How do you define advancements? Sure we don't go to the moon anymore, but since then we've sent probes beyond our solar system, spent years in orbit, made satellite navigation and communication a reality for the every day joe, and peered to the edge of space and beginning of time.
When the data became public after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, we find the real story behind the Soviet triumphs.Dash-Ate wrote:The first thing that I discovered was that the Soviet Union, right up until the time that we allegedly landed the first Apollo spacecraft on the Moon, was solidly kicking our ass in the space race. It wasn’t even close. The world wouldn’t see another mismatch of this magnitude until decades later when Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini came along. The Soviets launched the first orbiting satellite, sent the first animal into space, sent the first man into space, performed the first space walk, sent the first three-man crew into space, was the first nation to have two spacecraft in orbit simultaneously, performed the first docking maneuver in space, and (allegedly) landed the first unmanned probe on the Moon.
The Soviets did launch the first satellite, but it reentered the only 3 months later and did nothing to further science other that proving a satellite could be orbited. The US Explorer 1 discovered the Van Allen radiation belts (you think they would have kept that a secret
) and remained in orbit for 12 years!The first Vostok was nearly lost due to incomplete separation of the equipment and reentry modules. The design of the re entry module was inferior to the Americans and would have never been suitable for a high energy reentry. They also couldn't land Vostok softly without injuring the occupant so Gagarin and others had to parachute out before landing. They also lacked a global communications network, so there was communications blackout when the ship was on the other side of the earth.
Voskhod, which launched the first three man crew, was simply a Vostok with three seats arranged 90 degrees to the way they were in Vostok. The cosmonauts didn't have space suits because there was no room! They didn't change the instrument panels and switches from the Vostok so the cosmonauts had to turn their heads sideways to read them!
The second Voskhod needed an external airlock for the spacewalk as the Vostok-type equipment was air cooled and would have overheated in a vacuum. Aleksei Leonov, the cosmonaut that did the spacewalk, had a poorly designed suit that ballooned in space and restricted movement. He had to let out some air (!) before he could enter the spacecraft. To top it off, they overshot their reentry point and spent the night in the Ural Mountains surrounded by wolves before they were recovered.
Compare this to the contemporary Gemini spacecraft that could be depressurized and pressurized, allowed both astronauts to have space suits, allowed them to have full control of not only the attitude of their spacecraft, but the orbit as well, stay up for two weeks at a time, and powered by fuel cells instead of batteries or solar panels.
Other than some 'firsts' that were achieved at great risk to the cosmonauts, the Soviets were losing the space race by 1965. Only after the end of Skylab and the American vacancy from space from 1975-1981 were the Soviets again in the lead.
But they never went to the moon...
