All Questions
Tagged with history soviet-union
29
questions
19
votes
8
answers
10k
views
What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
I know that Saturn V's payload was 140 tons, about 20 times that of Soyuz. The Soviets did not have a functioning rocket with similar characteristics. But why? They had a head start in the space race ...
- 364
27
votes
2
answers
4k
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Gagarin not ejecting from capsule
I'm currently reading a dutch book about the earlier days of manned spaceflight (Ruimtevaart B. van der Klaauw). Published in 1962
In a chapter about Vostok 1 the book reads as following
Translated ...
- 1,134
4
votes
0
answers
96
views
Venera 13/14 Design specifications
Does anyone know where I could find design specifications, plan sets, or other documentation for the Venera 13 or Venera 14 spacecraft? These are Soviet spacecrafts from the 1980s.
I suppose if ...
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10
votes
1
answer
434
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Was Fidel Castro ever in a Soviet spacecraft?
I was looking at a Roscosmos news item Russian monitoring tools track the stage of the rocket that launched the module of the Chinese station about the reentering Long March 5B
This situation will ...
- 149k
8
votes
1
answer
476
views
What was the first Soviet spacecraft that could recharge its battery it each orbit? Where were the photovoltaic cells made?
Sputnik 1 (/ˈspʌtnɪk, ˈspʊtnɪk/; "Satellite-1", or "PS-1", Простейший Спутник-1 or Prosteyshiy Sputnik-1, "Elementary Satellite 1") was the first artificial Earth ...
- 149k
3
votes
1
answer
208
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Is a cheap English translation available of Tsiolkovsky's "Outside the Earth"?
Anyone know where to pick up a copy of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's science fiction book titled "Outside the Earth" (alternately titled: "Beyond the Planet Earth" and "Beyond ...
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5
votes
1
answer
154
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How many Soviet space missions have had at least one tortoise?
Science Alert's These Are 7 of The Strangest Experiments Humans Have Ever Done in Space talks about two tortoises that flew aboard Zond-5 spacecraft on 2 September 1968, then later goes on to say:
We'...
- 149k
2
votes
1
answer
348
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What was the first successful demonstration of a fuel cell in space?
Hydrogen fuel cells (together with batteries) were used for electrical power in the Apollo program, where it was recombined with oxygen on board to produce electricity.
Doing chemistry in practical ...
- 149k
38
votes
5
answers
7k
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Did Sputnik 1 tell us more than "beep"? What science was improved by information gained from its orbiting the Earth?
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite launched by humans to orbit the Earth.
This answer begins:
Sputnik had just one single job: Prove its existence by sending a simple "beep" ...
- 149k
3
votes
1
answer
206
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How did the first manned flight re-entry happened?
How was Yuri Gagarin brought back to the Earth?
Did he do entry himself, by ground control, or by software?
- 435
1
vote
0
answers
84
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Missing Launch Vehicle
Early Soviet era launch vehicles had a variety of designations, e.g. the well known Vostok launcher and its derivations have been known as the R7, 8K72, Semyorka, SS-6, Sapwood, A-1 and SL-3 .
I'm ...
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1
vote
2
answers
255
views
Why were two simultaneous command transmissions interpreted by Kosmos 57 as an order to begin the descent?
This answer to Encryption in radio system points to the Wikipedia article Kosmos 57 which says:
The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed on its third orbit around Earth. Two ground control stations, ...
- 149k
33
votes
1
answer
6k
views
How did the U.S.S.R manage to rotate the N-1 from horizontal to vertical?
The title says it all - but I heard that NASA considered horizontal integration for the Saturn V couldn't be considered, as lifting the rocket to a vertical position would require an immense ...
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35
votes
4
answers
7k
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How did the USSR track Gagarin's Vostok-1 orbital flight? Was tracking capability an issue in the choice of orbit?
For the USA's Mercury flights, a number of tracking stations were installed around the globe. John Glenn's first orbital flight was tracked with them, plus a number of ships.
(Tracking stations used ...
- 14.5k
4
votes
0
answers
64
views
Is there any work in English that gives a systematic treatment of Soviet/Russian rocket engines?
There seems to be some piecemeal information online such as RussianSpaceWeb.com, and of course, Sutton's History of LPRE gives an anthropological treatment of Soviet/Russian rocket engine lineup ...
- 1,348
3
votes
1
answer
265
views
Does the depiction of water blobs in the Salut-7 movie reflect an actual event?
In the beginning of the very cool Veritassium video The Bizarre Behavior of Rotating Bodies, Explained, the host Derek Muller says:
In 1985, cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov was tasked with saving ...
- 149k
4
votes
0
answers
124
views
Were Soviet missions to Skylab ever considered?
The question How was Skylab's orbit inclination chosen? gave some rationale as to why Skylab was in such a high inclination (close to today's ISS at 51.6).
Was there ever consideration (during and ...
- 1,053
5
votes
0
answers
440
views
What radio frequencies were used by the Soviet space program circa 1961? ("Lost Cosmonaut" recording)
The recent Joe Scott video The Mysterious "Lost Cosmonaut" Recording | Random Thursday describes radio recording said to have been made by the Judica Cordiglia brothers from Italy in the early 1960's.
...
- 149k
20
votes
1
answer
4k
views
How was the cosmonaut of the Soviet moon mission supposed to get back in the return vehicle?
In the Soviet Moon mission, for which the ill fated N-1 launcher was built, we know that the cosmonaut responsible for landing on the moon was to transfer from the equivalent of the command module to ...
- 559
25
votes
1
answer
8k
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What "fuel more powerful than anything the West (had) in stock" put Laika in orbit aboard Sputnik 2?
The BBC World Service Radio Witness History podcast Laika, the first dog in space contains a short audio clips from some vintage 1950's British news. At 02:30 in a ...
- 149k
4
votes
2
answers
245
views
Luna 15 - Any official confirmation of objectives?
Russia's Luna 15 crashed into the lunar surface shortly after Apollo 11 landed.
It's widely considered a failed sample return mission, but did Russia ever officially announce that sample return was ...
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23
votes
4
answers
6k
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Was the Soviet N1 really capable of sending 9.6 GB/s of telemetry?
On the Wikipedia page for Soviet N1, it says of the control system:
The telemetry system relayed data back at an estimated rate of 9.6
gigabytes per second on 320,000 channels on 14 frequencies. ...
- 815
9
votes
1
answer
923
views
Did the Soviet Union put an unmanned satellite in "very low orbit"above the Kármán line which used aerodynamic attitude control?
This interesting, archived page https://www.webcitation.org/618QHms8h?url=http://www.fai.org/astronautics/100km.asp which I found in this answer, says:
Later in the same decade (or very early in ...
- 149k
7
votes
3
answers
3k
views
In what ways did the Soviet Union "observe the Apollo Moon landings closely"?
@DarkDust's comment says:
If the USSR had had just a tiny amount of doubt whether the landings were faked, they would have used that for propaganda. Loudly! They observed the landings closely and ...
- 149k
12
votes
1
answer
843
views
Was the R-7 the first two stage rocket of the Soviet Union?
The first US two stage rocket was bumper, a combination of a german V2 liquid fuel rocket with an US second stage.
The Soviet Union had the R-1 and R-2 based on the V-2.
In this list, the R-7 is ...
- 49.2k
3
votes
1
answer
190
views
Did TASS officially name the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 1950's instead of 1961?
Just read this wiki article on Tyura-tam, the actual location of the Cosmodrome. It says:
In the mid 1950s, the Soviet Union announced that space activities were being conducted from the Baykonur ...
- 4,596
6
votes
1
answer
492
views
What budgetary and technical impact did the N1 program's failure have on the Soviet Union's space program?
After the failure of the N1 program, what impact did this have on the budget for the space program of the Soviet Union?
What technical impacts did it have? For example, did other missions suffer ...
- 539
25
votes
2
answers
4k
views
What caused the N1 to become a failure?
What were key factors that made the N1 the recipe for disaster it became for the USSR? Especially when the USSR was the Space King at the time?
- 539
4
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Is there any truth to the claims of cosmonauts lost in space?
I've heard that during the space race era, many of the Soviet cosmonauts were lost in space. Or at least, such were the claims of some. So I wonder, is there any truth in these claims, or was that ...
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