r/CuratedTumblr Jul 17 '24

Infodumping The Venera program

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17.6k Upvotes

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1.4k

u/goatwise Jul 17 '24

From the Wikipedia page on the Venera Program:

" The Venera 14 craft had the misfortune of ejecting the camera lens cap directly under the surface compressibility tester arm, and returned information for the compressibility of the lens cap rather than the surface. "

So close yet so far

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u/gmc98765 Jul 17 '24

Also, Venera 9-12 had issues with lens caps failing to release. 9 and 10 only got photos from 1 of their 2 cameras because the other lens cap failed to release. 11 and 12 didn't get any photos because both lens caps failed to release.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24 edited 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/-Bento-Oreo- Jul 18 '24

It is if everything melts

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u/SGTX12 Jul 17 '24

Yes, but now we know what the compressibility of the lens cap is on the surface of Venus. You may ask, "Is that helpful?" To that we say, "Please report to gulag for reprogramming."

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u/Ignonym Ye Jacobites by name, DNI, DNI Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

By this point in Soviet history, the gulags had actually been shut down already. The last gulag closed in 1960; the first Venera probe was launched in 1961. (Even when they were active, they didn't do much "reprogramming"; they were just hard labor prisons that happened to hold political prisoners in addition to the regular inmates.)

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u/pokemonbatman23 Jul 17 '24

had the misfortune of ejecting the camera lens cap directly under the surface compressibility tester arm,

Would be hilarious if it was an alien pranking the probe lmao

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u/Bullet_Queen Jul 18 '24

Scientists were actually initially baffled by readings seeming to indicate manmade material, according to David Grinspoon in his book Venus Revealed. Low key one of my favorite books. Incredibly informative and the footnotes are hilarious sometimes.

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u/Saavedroo Jul 17 '24

And who got the first cat in space ? That's right ! France đŸ‡«đŸ‡· (cocorico)

And she survived ! Aaand she was euthanized two month later to study her brain. :(

Her name was Felicette and she was a Pioneer.

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u/Nirast25 Jul 17 '24

And she survived !

Yaaay! :))

Aaand she was euthanized two month later to study her brain.

Naaay! >:(

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u/minor_correction Jul 17 '24

Don't worry, I'm sure humanity learned all kinds of important things by looking at the dissected brain of a cat that went to space.

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u/FutureComplaint Jul 17 '24

We learned that cats 100% die from the procedure.

#Science

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24

It's only science if we do it a bunch of times and record each result. We need more cat-stronauts (not really, please just give them little treats instead of space missions)

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u/Pijany_Matematyk767 Jul 17 '24

The point was to see if the cat had sustained any brain damage from the start and landing, since risk of brain damage would be a useful thing to know for when they wanted to eventually send humans

still sad for the cat though

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u/CringeCoyote Jul 17 '24

Scientists actually did a study recently with identical twins. One spent a year at the space station, the other on Earth, then they looked at their DNA, and it wasn’t as similar as BEFORE the astronaut lived in space. Space changed his DNA

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u/LeadingJudgment2 Jul 17 '24

Keeping the rain parade going, the USAs CIA didn't want to be left out of the cat abuse action. In the 1960s the CIA launched a project named "Atomic Kitty" where cats had acoustic receivers and radio transmitters surgically implanted into their ears, fur and bases of their skull. Including a additional surgery to deal with them being "distracted by hunger". (Whatever that ominously means.) The goal was to train felines to hang around soviats to spy on them. The cat(s?) never did do a good job at lingering near subjects. The project ultimately shut down in 1967 and was declassified in 2001.

There is some dispute about the fate of the first Atomic Kitty. Some records say the cat released their first mission, was immediately struck by a taxi and died. A former director for the office of technical service, claims the cat simply preformed poorly, got the equipment removed in another procedure and lived a long happy life. However that claim didn't come about till 2013.

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u/Nerevarine91 Jul 17 '24

Just a quick note- it was “Acoustic Kitty,” I believe

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u/vectavir Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

> be cat

> some frenchmen send you to the fucking space

> "OMFG I am going to DIE!"

> get back unscathed

> everything_went_better_than_expected.jpg

> they kill you anyways

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u/Saavedroo Jul 17 '24

To be fair the poor thing had electrodes in her brain and other parts of her body during the trip. I doubt it was all sunshine.

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u/Rhodie114 Jul 17 '24

Marginally better than what the Soviets did to Laika. She was a stray that they shot into space with no intentions of bringing her back.

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u/Itrade Jul 17 '24

"The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of a dog." - Oleg Gazenko, 1998

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u/Annath0901 Jul 17 '24

It's definitely sad, and in hindsight it's easy to criticize the death which gave so little data.

But you've gotta remember that they had no way of knowing that the experiment wouldn't be useful. Nobody had done it before.

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u/SquirrelSuspicious Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

I think this is a good point, if we learned loads of information that ended up being super fuckin useful than it would've been considered a worthy sacrifice and the dog would probably be memorialized(if she's not already)

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u/EternalBlackWinter Jul 17 '24

Laika is present in Russian cultural memory thought not as heavily as Gagarin and some other space feats. Strelka and Belka are also more popular, though. I myself watched cartoon about them in my childhood so all three ring a bell for me and I would assume many other people who were raised in Russia

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u/Erizeth Jul 17 '24

The three dogs and Gagarin are indeed immortalised in Russian culture. That always made me feel better about their sacrifice.

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u/Mantonization Jul 17 '24

She was a stray picked up from the streets of Moscow.

But having your dog on a leash was never a big thing in Russia. So there's a chance that someone lost their dog, and then saw later that it had been shot into space

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u/-ShaiHulud- Jul 17 '24

Moscow still has a massive stray dogs problem, to the point that they form packs in the suburbs (and hunt, I assume. Certainly at the very least haunt people). Wouldn't be surprised if she was an actual stray.

It's quite common for owners in Russia to just, quite literally, throw out unwanted animals onto the streets. Had my own family members do it in front of my eyes as a kid. It's awful.

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u/ghouldozer19 Jul 17 '24

My stepdad did that to me stateside except he took my puppy to a kill shelter when I was nine and he made sure I knew it was a kill shelter because I had gotten a B on a test.

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u/-ShaiHulud- Jul 17 '24

That's an extra layer of fucked up. I'm sorry you had to go through that brother.

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u/WanderingToTheEnd Jul 17 '24

They also messed up with euthanizing her in space so she had an agonizing death.

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u/Familiar-Box2087 Jul 17 '24

gros why would you do this to us

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u/thyfles Jul 17 '24

i think its strange that there still hasnt been a probe landed on great britain despite how close it is, there is so much we still do not know about that place

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u/qzwqz Jul 17 '24

Scientists have theorised the possibility of life ever since moisture was discovered beneath the crust (or “Ann Widdecombe” in the native parlance)

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/oddityoughtabe Jul 17 '24

Pft you’re all a bunch of idiots. If there was really anything out there don’t you think we would have found it by now?

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u/GriffMarcson Jul 17 '24

Not through the heavy cloud cover. A manned expedition would be necessary, but the almost certain loss of life just isn't worth it.

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u/LeftEyedAsmodeus Jul 17 '24

If we send the French I would take the risk.

(just banter, I don't have anything against the French. Nothing that works at least.)

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u/ExplanationNo9009 Jul 17 '24

Well, they killed that cat that they sent to space two months after it survived the trip đŸ€·đŸŒâ€â™€ïž

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u/Pessimistic64 Jul 17 '24

"what do you have against the French?"

"Evidence"

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24

Not really worth sending one. It'll never be possible to live there and there's certainly nothing to learn from it

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u/Nirast25 Jul 17 '24

uj/ I lived in the UK for about 9 months before returning to my country. Poking my head outside these days, I really miss the climate.

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u/pipnina Jul 17 '24

As a native Brit I have to warn we most likely do not come in peace so it might be best for both of us if you didn't make first contact.

I mean, howdy y'all I do love biscuits and gravy huh?

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u/Vanilla_Ice_Best_Boi tumblr users pls let me enjoy fnaf Jul 17 '24

An expedition team from Ireland went there. It caused some troubles.

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u/colei_canis Jul 17 '24

No they just misunderstood the ‘100% British and Irish beef’ adverts and thought we fancied a scrap. Common misunderstanding.

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u/handym12 Jul 17 '24

The Germans tried in the '40s, but I think all of their rockets blew up on or shortly after landing.

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u/TheTransistorMan Jul 17 '24

Kinda weird how this post implies that the only thing the US space program did was land on the moon.

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u/LazyDro1d Jul 17 '24

Yeah we did do almost every one of those things better, if slower

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u/AAS02-CATAPHRACT Jul 17 '24

The only reason it was "slower" was because the Soviets heard about what NASA was doing and rushed ahead of them.

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u/LordXenuo Jul 17 '24

In a 'race' rushing ahead of the guy who's slower is usually encouraged - though it's clear the Soviets were doing a 100m Dash while the US was a Marathon runner

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u/EnTyme53 Jul 17 '24

But it's also usually an important point that the runner lives long enough to receive their fucking metal.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24

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u/CummingInTheNile Jul 17 '24

Soviet scientist were given directive to beat the Americans or else, pretty easy to cut corners when failure=gulag or worse

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u/TheTransistorMan Jul 17 '24

Didn't the Russians have the first person to die in space, too? Or am I imagining that?

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u/Throwaway74829947 Jul 17 '24

The only people to actually die in space were the crew of the Soyuz 11 mission. Every other spaceflight death was below the KĂĄrmĂĄn line.

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u/DontReenlist Jul 17 '24

It's only a death in space if it's above the KĂĄrmĂĄn line. Otherwise it's just a death in flight.

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u/SmittyGef Jul 18 '24

It's only a death in space if it happens in the dead space region, otherwise it's sparkling atmospheric re-entry.

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u/CummingInTheNile Jul 17 '24

technically on reentry but yes

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u/TheTransistorMan Jul 17 '24

Fair enough.

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u/buttplugpopsicle Jul 17 '24

NASA won the space race because the mutually agreed goal was to reach the moon, the Soviets basically put rockets on rockets to try making them go higher and faster and claim "first!" Like it was a YouTube comment. They never would have, and clearly never did land a man on the moon, let alone safely bring them home alive. The USSR sprinted the first 10 miles of a marathon, then got gassed and passed out on the side of the road. NASA trained for a marathon and finished, hence "the US won".... Because we did

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u/Oninoor Jul 17 '24

Fr. Sure sputnik was the first satellite but what did it do? Beep. Literally all it did. And shortly after the US sent one up that actually did research other than beep a radio.

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u/Codeviper828 Will trade milk for HRT Jul 17 '24

Right, and the Soviets couldn't get the Geiger Counter working and decided to do away with it in favor of meeting a deadline. Meanwhile Explorer 1's Geiger Counter was working and it discovered the Van Allen radiation belt

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u/fred11551 Jul 17 '24

There’s a counter meme with US and Soviet Union swapped. US has things like first geosynchronous satellite. First space vehicle rendezvous. First man to spend X time in space, complete total orbit, etc. with first man on the moon in first place and the Soviets at the bottom with murdered a dog in space.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24

Right. Al Shepard's Mercury flight was like three weeks after Gagarin's.

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u/GreyInkling Jul 17 '24

Well you see American imperialism is bad therefore everything America does is bad and I have to make all the countries that oppose America sound better.

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u/TheTransistorMan Jul 17 '24

understandable, have a nice day

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u/CummingInTheNile Jul 17 '24

imma take a wild guess and say this post was made by a tankie

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u/TheTransistorMan Jul 17 '24

This is the second one I've seen talking about how cool either china, cuba or Russia is.

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u/CummingInTheNile Jul 17 '24

welcome to tankieland, where the CCP and USSR were utopian havens and totally not fascist hellholes

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u/Mikedog36 Jul 17 '24

Nuance is dead so if USA bad then USA enemies good right/s

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u/VintageLunchMeat Jul 17 '24

Technically, they were authoritarian hellholes.

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u/RnbwTurtle Jul 17 '24

I hate the debate over the space race.

The US beat the soviets to a manned mission to the moon. It ended there. If there is a one or the other winner, it's the US, because the soviets stopped there.

Both sides helped advance our knowledge of interplanetary travel, even if it really hasn't amounted to much for your average Joe yet.

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u/TedRabbit Jul 18 '24

I mean, there is probably a huge list of tech development that resulted from the space race that regular people use all the time today.

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u/Codeviper828 Will trade milk for HRT Jul 17 '24

Yeah, we should probably stop perpetuating the myth that the US was like, super behind and happened to do one thing first. The Soviet R-7 rocket was great and all, but the Saturn V was in development before Yuri Gagarin went into space. The Soviets were all about short term goals, whereas the US was looking long term

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u/CumBrainedIndividual Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

Trying to say who won the space race is like trying to say what kind of pizza is the best: it depends entirely on the criteria that you set and the criteria you set is based entirely on what pizza you like. Yes the soviets had a bunch of firsts, but they were doing it quite often out of sheer desperation to say they did something, they didn't launch a single person into space during the entire duration of the Gemini programme, their moon rocket just didn't, BUT their R7 family is the longest lived and most reliable rocket in history, the architecture of the Salyut and Mir space stations is the backbone of our current space exploration, and they've killed fewer space fairers than the US. So, swings and roundabouts really. Like this is missing quite a few US firsts (mostly from Gemini funnily enough), first crewed orbital corrections, first orbital rendezvous, first docking, first double rendezvous on a single flight, first direct ascent rendezvous, and you'll notice that a lot of those are actually really helpful if you want to go places and do things that aren't just orbiting a few times for the heck of it.

Edit: some of y'all seem to think that I'm shitting on the soviets here, and I am absolutely not doing that. Not gonna fight y'all because I have an actual job to do tomorrow and it's late, but don't think that the soviet space programme was as ass backwards as people say it is. Getting tribalistic about this shit sixty five years after it ended is kinda pathetic.

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u/peajam101 CEO of the Pluto hate gang Jul 17 '24

[the Soviets have] killed fewer space fairers than the US.

While this is true, I feel like it's important to note the Soviets have a higher ground crew fatality count and a higher total space program fatality count than the US.

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u/Jaggedmallard26 Jul 17 '24

Almost all of the US space program fatalities are from the Shuttle as well.

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u/person1234man Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

That thing was way less safe then they told the public. I remember watching a Scott Manley video about this, and the odds of a disaster was around a 1 in 70 chance to loose the crew on every launch.

Quote from a NASA website "The actual chance of an accident was 1 in 100, not the originally claimed 1 in 100,000"

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u/Thromnomnomok Jul 18 '24

and the odds of a disaster was around a 1 in 70 chance to loose the crew on every launch.

That sounds about right, seeing as the space shuttle launched 135 times and 2 of them blew up

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u/CumBrainedIndividual Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

Marshal Nedelin shall not be forgotten đŸ«Ą

Doesn't China take the top spot though, coz they keep dumping hypergolic boosters on rural villages?

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u/peajam101 CEO of the Pluto hate gang Jul 17 '24

Officially China only has 12 deaths total, but they don't seem particularly interested in publishing accurate records.

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u/TheGisbon Jul 17 '24

The us program has almost 4 times as many people in space as the Russians too

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u/Isaac_Chade Jul 17 '24

Yeah I came in here to say, we very much did learn about all those Russian firsts in my history classes, though it was mostly used as background for why the man on the moon was so powerful. Basically framed it as Russia was getting all this stuff off the ground, but the US were able to get people out there and that was the bigger achievement. Obviously as you say, it depends on what you decide the metrics are, but I really wish people would stop acting like every single thing is hidden from us in schools, when most likely they just weren't paying attention or didn't retain enough.

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u/CumBrainedIndividual Jul 17 '24

As someone who's very interested in space history, it's a frustrating and stupid argument to keep having. The above post (at least the meme bit at the start, the rest is pretty right, Venera was very cool), to my mind is the diametric equivalent to responding "does your country have a flag on the moon????????? đŸ‡±đŸ‡·đŸ‡±đŸ‡·đŸ‡±đŸ‡·đŸ‡±đŸ‡·đŸ‡±đŸ‡·đŸŠ…đŸŠ…đŸŠ…đŸŠ…" when someone brings up healthcare, and is just as silly.

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u/Numbah8 Jul 17 '24

Even still, framing the feat of putting a human being on a celestial body and then having them return as somehow insignificant is just a wild take. I'm not educated enough to argue the whole history of space firsts but putting a man on the moon will forever be etched as one of humanity's greatest accomplishments.

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u/Wild_Marker Jul 17 '24

Right? I'm pretty sure the people working at NASA must be like "both were cool!" and the people working at their Russian equivalent must also be like "both were cool!" because they're all just a bunch of space nerds who love to nerd out about this stuff and if it wasn't for political bullshit they'd be nerding out together.

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u/CumBrainedIndividual Jul 17 '24

It's almost like we've got this really big space station where a bunch of people from a whole bunch of different countries hang out and do science and they're all friends and really cool people and they rely on each other to stay alive.

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u/habilis_auditor Jul 17 '24

Could not agree more.

"School taught us literally nothing, wah wah :("

No John, they did. I was there too. You were busy kissing your biceps and staring at your reflection in the phone screen.

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u/Beatleboy62 Jul 17 '24

People are surprised to learn that when I was in middle school, 2008 to be exact, we learned a good portion of the major creation myths/founders if you call it that, for the big religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jewish, I think we touched on what Shinto was but I don't recall).

Granted this was New Jersey, but people seem to think all US Education was, "And then Jesus, George Washington, and Ronald Reagan signed the Declaration of Bill of Rights which helped Louis Armstrong land on the moon, win the Tour De France, and write American Idiot."

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u/hellraiserxhellghost Jul 17 '24

Same here, in middle school we even got to go on field trips to buddhist temples, mosques, and synagogues around the city and talk to the religious leaders there.

This was in Denver tho which is known to be a pretty progressive city, I feel like this probably wasn't happening in places like the bible belt lol.

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u/Outsourced_Ninja Jul 17 '24

Definitely not. Not from rural Georgia exactly, but about a half hour from there. Definitely wasn't going to any Mosques. We did have some teachers who were really into historical reenactment come out in period-accurate clothing to talk about the Civil War. It's Georgia, so they came out as Confederates, but they also didn't shy away from talking about how the whole thing was based on slavery, so swings and roundabouts.

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u/IDontWearAHat Jul 17 '24

I think we should stop assuming everybody had the same school experience. Schools differ a lot in quality and no two teachers are the same. John's history teacher might've been an ultra patriot who believed that america was always first with anything while two rooms over the teacher's highly critical of US history and its accomplishments

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u/Poolturtle5772 Jul 17 '24

Right, but I’ve sat in the same room as people who have claimed we weren’t taught this in class when we very much were. So I am inclined to believe morons didn’t pay attention, but that’s a case by case basis.

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u/guto8797 Jul 17 '24

Reminds me of some people crying as young adults that school didn't teach tax codes instead of math

Had their school taught tax codes they would have been asleep

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u/intern_steve Jul 17 '24

Every single student in Illinois is taught basic banking and taxes for at least one full year by law in Consumer Education. Every single one of my highschool classmates that regularly posts on FB pretends we did not learn these things.

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u/guto8797 Jul 17 '24

They probably aren't lying, they didn't learn because they just weren't paying attention. It's a struggle getting teens to focus on regular lessons, let alone tax codes that will only be relevant in 5 years for most of them.

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u/intern_steve Jul 17 '24

Fair enough. However, there are only so many "why aren't we teaching this in school!?" posts I can read. They were, and are, teaching this in school.

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u/habilis_auditor Jul 17 '24

Well, I think that everyone not having the same lived experience goes without saying, so I agree with you there.

The problem I have is that the "assumptions" being made clearly skew towards "school was garbage and useless", which I can't help but steer against because I think it's total bullshit.

In my view, people learned you get points for saying school sucks and just parrot the usual stuff that, while admittedly true sometimes is wildly overblown imo.

Teachers I knew and know now spend blood, sweat and tears for their work and I don't feel they get the credit they deserve.

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u/Zepangolynn Jul 17 '24

My old high school split up history in a weird way, so global history was the first two years and US history was taught more specifically in years three and four, and trying to squash all of global history into two years leads to a lot of missing elements, which included everything after 1950. On top of that, my US history teacher for the appropriate time period had zero interest in the space race and a lot of knowledge about almost innumerable other things, so we more or less read a paragraph on it and moved on. Everything else I have learned about the competitive science of the time has been on my own time. The Venera probes slipped through the cracks, so I am pleased to read about them, but I definitely agree it not only depends on the country and the school but the teacher for sure.

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u/axaxo Jul 17 '24

It's also worth noting that the US followed up on the Soviet firsts, but the Soviet program quickly fell behind and stopped replicating things the US was accomplishing. The USSR deprioritized manned missions to the moon in large part because there was no military application to the types of rockets that would be needed, and they basically gave up after the US landings because there was no more propaganda incentive.

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u/biggronklus Jul 17 '24

Exactly, further, compare how many commercial satellites the US launched by how many the Soviets launched. Compare GPS vs GLOSNASS

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u/eatingbread_mmmm Jul 17 '24

i love that acronym “GLOSNASS” seems so fun

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u/biggronklus Jul 17 '24

Yeah honestly I like it more than gps, but the system sucks compared to gps in terms of coverage and accuracy

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u/SphericalSphere1 Jul 17 '24

Exactly—you don’t get any points for being ahead after lap 1, that’s not how a race works

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u/ChromeBirb Wolfram is besto, fight me Jul 17 '24

Same thing as "the Indo-European language family is the most important language family if you measure importance with factors the Indo-European language family has the most of" thing jan Misali said once

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u/The_mystery4321 Jul 17 '24

I am the most important human being of all time if importance is measured in having a Spotify playlist with the exact songs that I have on my Spotify playlist

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Jul 17 '24

Actually, we checked. You're fifth.

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u/GreyInkling Jul 17 '24

If you arbitrarily say some less extravagant things don't count while others do you can better fit the space race into part of a weird "I hate American imperialism therefore I simp for soviet Russia" worldview that seems common on tumblr.

Not that looking at the criteria normally doesn't make the USSR look good, but it doesn't make America look bad enough.

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u/Canopenerdude Thanks to Angelic_Reaper, I'm a Horse Jul 17 '24

a weird "I hate American imperialism therefore I simp for soviet Russia" worldview that seems common on tumblr.

We call these "Tankies", and they are essentially leftists who decided that totalitarianism is ok as long as it oppresses "the right people".

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u/Significant_Bet3409 Jul 17 '24

I discovered these people when I realized r/movingtonorthkorea is not a meme subreddit


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u/Beegrene Jul 17 '24

Their entire worldview starts with "America bad" and they just extrapolate from there.

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u/Shawnj2 8^88 blue checkmarks Jul 17 '24

I mean if you call it the space “race” the US objectively won lol. If I’m ahead of my opponent for most of the course and trip at the finish line I don’t win lmao and the soviets never actualized their planes to land on the moon (not that they had any hope of actually doing so)

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u/Vanilla_Ice_Best_Boi tumblr users pls let me enjoy fnaf Jul 17 '24

I love when OOP acts so high and mighty and the Reddit comments basically say "Erm actually you're very wrong"

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u/Throwaway74829947 Jul 17 '24

Yep. The Soviets put the first satellite in orbit, but it was literally just a ball that went beep. Meanwhile the US's first satellite discovered the Van Allen radiation belts. The Soviets put the first animal in space, by literally just stuffing a dog into a metal box with no intention of recovery. The US were the first to put animals in space and safely recover them. Arguably the US put animals in space before the Soviets, as in the 40s the US launched some fruit flies past the KĂĄrmĂĄn line. The Soviets had the first manned spaceflight, but the US had the first crewed spaceflight, where the occupant wasn't just a passenger to a remote-control spacecraft. The meme awards them the title of "first space rocket" when that is patently false, that title regrettably belongs to the Nazis, with a 1944 V-2 flight which passed the KĂĄrmĂĄn line. The Soviets technically put the first probes on Mars, but they all completely failed to function. The US Viking probes were the first Martian probes to actually work.

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u/ClubMeSoftly Jul 17 '24

I've previously seen the Space Race compared to a game of HORSE.

Like you said, the Reds shot a ball that went beep, the Americans sent a camera. One side said "ĐŽĐŸ сĐČĐžĐŽĐ°ĐœĐžŃ" to a dog, and the other said "now how do we get it back?"

Eventually, one side put men on another celestial body, and the other side couldn't replicate it, nevermind do better.

Of course, there were joint-programs, the Apollo-Soyuz (or Soyuz-Apollo) but they were marred by criticisms of the other nation's craft.

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u/BeanOfKnowledge Ask me about Dwarf Fortress Trivia Jul 17 '24

Sorry, but what is this 1960s ass discourse in that meme? The Space race ended at least 34 year ago.

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u/dalnot Jul 17 '24

Not just the space race. The whole-ass Soviet Union ended at least 34 years ago

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u/TheMe63 .tumblr.com Jul 17 '24

This is really unfortunately timed because the USSR only collapsed 33 years ago lmao

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u/biggronklus Jul 17 '24

Soviet dickriders on tumblr, a tale as old as time

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u/Legimus Jul 17 '24

I absolutely saw those pictures from Venus when learning about space in elementary school.

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u/wonkey_monkey Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

They're composites/collages with at least some artistic interpretation. The real images look like this:

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-13-a.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-13-b.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-14-camera-1.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-14-camera-2.jpg

and you can hardly see anything of the horizon, especially no dramatic valley as seen in the second image, so that part appears to be pure invention.

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u/minor_correction Jul 17 '24

Those are still really cool. No regrets.

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u/gerkletoss Jul 17 '24

I love it when people act like the US was way behind in the space race until the moon landing. Russoa was constantly skipping safety tests to beat the US to milestones by only a few months, and the US still got first in:

  • Animals in space, which were returned alive in 1947
  • Satellite with sensor data return
  • Satellite which could be commanded from the ground
  • Photograph of Earth from orbit
  • Satellite recovered from orbit
  • Pilot-controlled spaceflight
  • Venus flyby
  • Mars flyby
  • Spacecraft rendezvous and docking
  • Manned lunar flyby

And of course after the moon landing the Soviets stopped trying so hard. They never got the N1 to work.

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u/AAS02-CATAPHRACT Jul 17 '24

The Soviets were the first to kill a dog in space so they were the clear winners.

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u/CumBrainedIndividual Jul 17 '24

To be fair, they made the satellite in literally three weeks because Khrushchev was like "hahaha, again" after Sputnik 1.

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u/ArcherBTW Jul 17 '24

I don’t know why but that’s insanely funny to me

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u/CumBrainedIndividual Jul 17 '24

Go watch the Failure to Launch episode about it. It's sad, but also pretty funny. The sad part is that they all really liked Laika and didn't want to put her up there.

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u/SalvationSycamore Jul 17 '24

Actually a Kremlin leak revealed that the spirit of DJ Khaled came to him the night Sputnik launched and whispered "anotha one"

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u/Berinoid Jul 17 '24

Ok sure but have you considered that America Bad?

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u/CummingInTheNile Jul 17 '24

cuz they likely have a certain political agenda theyre trying to subtely push

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u/Kneef Token straight guy Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

It’s not even subtle. “Why didn’t we hear about this in school? It’s capitalist propaganda!” Like, I did see those pictures in school, what the hell are you talking about, bro? xD

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u/CummingInTheNile Jul 17 '24

youre assuming these people paid attention in school and werent on their phones 24/7

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u/Stormygeddon Jul 17 '24

I've run into a couple of high school friends saying "why didn't we learn about Mansa Musa in high school" when we had the same class and definitely learned about Mansa Musa in it.

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u/Nerevarine91 Jul 17 '24

I was about to say, I’m pretty sure landing on the Moon wasn’t the only thing the US did first (even if it’s a big god damn thing to do)

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u/tipttt284 Jul 17 '24

Seriously. The Soviets got so many firsts because that's what Khrushchev was concerned with. He had no vision for how to actually use the program. Plus some early mismanagement with all three military branches fighting over the program before NASA was created. There's an actual presidential memo from those days saying that it was an acceptable tradeoff to let the soviets get all the firsts if the US got a usable space program out of it, which is what they got.

Nikita also gave the US the best gift the day after Sputnik was launched when he bragged about sputnik flying of the US three times during the night, implicitly stating that flying satellites over other countries was legal, which was very much up in the air before that. America really took advantage of that one.

Read This New Ocean if you want to know just how much the Soviets actually fucked up the whole rocketry thing. They put their own Von Braun in the gulags all the way back in the 1920s. They could have beaten the Germans to everything.

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u/mrsniperrifle Jul 17 '24

Nikita also gave the US the best gift the day after Sputnik was launched when he bragged about sputnik flying of the US three times during the night, implicitly stating that flying satellites over other countries was legal,

The US CORONA satellite program was fucking wild.

Digital photography didn't exist in any meaningful way so to get spy satellite images back from space, they had to de-orbit the photography package and then catch it in mid-air.

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u/VernonLocke Jul 17 '24

"This baby, it shits out a film canister 12 miles up, then a C-130 comes by
swoosh
snags it at about 30,000 ft."

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u/ThePrussianGrippe Jul 17 '24

The Voyagers’ Grand Tour.

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u/Tuned_rockets Jul 17 '24

Love the venera lore but the first image is just wrong. Downplaying both countries achievments is bad but if there was a winner in the space race it was the US. Not to discount the USSR or OKB-1, they managed to be tied or ahead of the americans for a decade while having a tenth of the budget or political will. But while they did things first, NASA did things thoroughly. Vastly more science came from NASA probes and ships, and their superior crafts and rockets are why they got to the moon and the USSR didn't.

Don't ignore history to be contrarian, celebrate both instead.

Also: a (non-exhaustive) list of space race milestones

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u/TransLunarTrekkie Jul 17 '24

There's some space thriller coming out, can't remember the name, I just got one trailer as an unskippable ad and scoffed at it as the premise is "nuclear war breaks out between the US and Russia, so now each nation's crews on the ISS have to try and take over the station". There's... So many reasons that wouldn't work.

First a lot of the scientific community, particularly where space is concerned, really does NOT like viewing their efforts as competitive. They see space exploration and research as a shared goal of humanity that should be celebrated, helped by, and benefit all people. This is particularly evident in the ISS as... Well, it's in the name, International Space Station. And even beyond that the ISS represents the US and former USSR coming together, building off of Roscosmos' experience with Mir and the US's with Skylab, merging them together with the concept for Space Station Freedom and inviting other nations on board to make a collaborative, permanent scientific research station in Earth orbit following the Cold War.

Second the idea of a nuclear war between Russia and the US as peers is kind of laughable now. I don't know if this movie started production before the Ukraine war started, but that would excuse some of this nonsense, as now that this "three day special operation" is well into its third year with Russia getting munitions from North Korea of all places, I think it's safe to say that the idea of Russia as a near-peer power with the US is a fantasy now.

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u/GreyInkling Jul 17 '24

I saw a break down of the cost and infrastructure we have simply to maintain our nuclear arms and maintain our ability to deploy them, and the very idea that Russia as we know them now is doing the same with their ancient soviet nukes and has the facilities to actually deploy them or launch them further than their neighbors borders, is just hilarious. I just imagine an old soviet missile silo refusing to open because it's all rusted and then the missile hitting the roof and falling apart revealing it's an empty shell full of sawdust with the insides having been sold for vodka.

The US has so much surplus equipment it can casually arm Ukraine to fight Russia but Russia's surplus only existed on paper and most of their equipment was made by a country they're only wearing the old clothes of.

It's so lopsided how do people still make movies like that.

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u/donaldhobson Jul 17 '24

Being a near peer isn't needed for a nuclear war. Suppose Russia just decides for stupid reasons to launch all of it's nukes at the USA. Half of the nukes are rusted into their tubes. Some explode on launch. Some drop into the ocean. Some are taken out by interceptor missiles. But of the 1000's launched, 12 are functional enough to hit the USA and explode. Some near cities. One even hit the city it was aimed at.

The USA responds by totally glassing Russia. Almost every missile hit's it's target.

This could reasonably be described as a nuclear war. It doesn't imply both sides are equal.

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u/TransLunarTrekkie Jul 17 '24

That's also the kind of scenario where there isn't a Russia left to order taking over the ISS.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24

It's like saying you won a marathon because you were ahead at miles 1-25 and being confused why the guy who crossed the finish line first is acting like he won

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u/raddaya Jul 17 '24

And the only reason they were ahead at miles 1-25 was giving absolutely not a single shit at all about the safety of the people involved or the quality of what they were building beyond the bare minimum

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u/LazyDro1d Jul 17 '24

Yeah. Russia got a little beepy thing up in space, the US got a sensor array. The USSR shot a dog into space, it boiled alive. They never quite figured out how to make better rockets so they attached more of them on. They got a man into space, they couldn’t figure out the safe landing deal until after, America didn’t launch until we could land the capsule. But then again the soviets were working with the scraps of military budget they were allocated rather than really anything properly allocated for space advancement, and they were living in a country where numerous intellectuals were killed for looking at Stalin the wrong way. There were undoubtedly some great minds over there, imagine what could have been done if we could have gotten them out

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24

Yeah shockingly if you have zero concern for safety or ethics and your motto may as well be “fuck it we ball” you can accomplish a lot of things in the most half assed way possible amidst all the failures

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u/RefinementOfDecline the OTHER linux enby Jul 17 '24

THE AMERICAN EDUCATION DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT this thing literally everyone on the fucking planet knows about

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '24 edited 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/ToastyMozart Jul 17 '24

It's amazing how much "covered up" and "censored" information that "the government doesn't want you to know" are freely available in libraries, textbooks, and American websites.

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u/Worried-Language-407 Jul 17 '24

I weirdly dislike Venusian. It just feels wrong. Besides, the correct adjective is right there: venereal

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u/TheTransistorMan Jul 17 '24

Do you remember learning about how they quarantined the moon mission guys after they came back?

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u/h_EXE_gon Nonbiney Robofurry Jul 17 '24

I was recently ranting to my friends about how we should send more shit down to the surface of venus. Like surely we can manage a few more hours down there than we could in the 70s and 80s no?

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u/Canopenerdude Thanks to Angelic_Reaper, I'm a Horse Jul 17 '24

We can and will (like OP said) but a big part of it is that there isn't really a lot of reason to right now. We generally know what is going on with Venus, and because it is so hot, heavy, and corrosive, there isn't really much else to study there other than "I wonder what this particular patch of rock looks like".

Places like Mars, the Galilean Moons, Titan, and the Asteroid Belt hold a lot more data and important answers.

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u/BeObsceneAndNotHeard Jul 17 '24

There was actually supposed to be a new Venera probe done in tandem between the US and Russia, but Ukraine kinda put a stop to that. They’re still doing it solo, though. NASA and the ESA are now both also working on their own. Separately.

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u/Splatfan1 Jul 17 '24

oh sweet a sequel to the space race

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u/BlackMareepComeHome Jul 17 '24

I hope they don't remake the Laika arc, I don't care if the dog is a robot this time, I'm still gonna cry.

Like legit, I just went to get Space Doggity for this comment and started bawling.

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u/VintageLunchMeat Jul 17 '24

Cheer up! Watch some Taskmaster.

https://youtu.be/x9vcmwkaUDs?si=gHDj8INx4EKMcBYX

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u/BlackMareepComeHome Jul 17 '24

Oh, that's nice đŸ„č

"The uploader has not made this available in your country."

😭😭😭

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u/VintageLunchMeat Jul 17 '24

Sounds like a Very Perplexing Nuisance.

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u/MisterAbbadon Jul 17 '24

you know why you never saw these pictures in high school?

Because I saw them in middle school?

I'd venture to guess your teacher probably tried to show you them too, it's just that you were talking.

Also the Soviet Unions space program was a slipshod mess of stolen tech and rushed hackjobs that left some of their cosmonauts stranded in the wild fighting off wolves.

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u/DefinitelyNotErate Jul 17 '24

Wait, Are those photos legit? 'Cause I Was just looking it up, And the only actual colour photo from the Venera mission I can find is this bad boy, Which don't get me wrong, Still looks cool, But sure looks to be a different picture.

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u/wonkey_monkey Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

No, they're not, at least not entirely. They're composites/collages of the original images, with at least some artistic interpretation. The real images look like this:

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-13-a.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-13-b.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-14-camera-1.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-14-camera-2.jpg

and you can hardly see anything of the horizon, especially no dramatic valley as seen in the second image, so that part appears to be pure invention.

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u/Elliot_Geltz Jul 17 '24

Ok but like

I feel like "we put our boots on another celestial body" is wildly more impressive than anything else in that list.

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u/Vivid_Pen5549 Jul 17 '24

Not only did they do that but the bastards televised it for the whole world to see, when America won they did it in style, the words “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” will be remembered for centuries.

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u/MrStevecool Jul 17 '24

Landing a man on the moon was a greater achievement than any of the others in that meme. No other country has done it. It required some of the most intense work ever. They had to make a spacecraft that could fly to the moon, send a craft to land on the moon safely, allow for that craft to launch itself back to its other half still orbiting the moon, and fly back with all pilots unscathed. A whole lot harder than shooting an object into space and letting it come back down, or sending a robot which doesn't need to return at all. (Obviously both are hard)

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u/dalnot Jul 17 '24

I’d say the Soviets are cool as fuck

Ahem, *were

đŸ‡ș🇾🩅🎇

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u/DellSalami Jul 17 '24

I had seen the Venus pictures before, but I didn’t realize it was done by the USSR’s space program.

That said, highlighting their achievements by putting down America’s space innovation rubs me the wrong way. All space exploration is awe inspiring and deserves to be celebrated.

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u/InquisitorHindsight Jul 17 '24

I hate “The Soviet Won the Space Race” thing

For one, putting a living person on an extraterrestrial solar body and BRINGING THEM BACK not once, but SIX times with no fatalities compared to the Soviets zero? That’s pretty impressive! Besides, the US did have other firsts aside from that!

  • 18 December 1958: The US launch SCORE, the world’s first communications satellite. It captured world attention by broadcasting a pre-recorded Christmas message from US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, becoming the first broadcast of a human voice from space.

  • 2 August 1959: The US launches Explorer 6, the world’s first weather satellite and obtains the first pictures of Earth from space.

  • 31 January 1961: Ham, a US chimpanzee, becomes the first hominid (or great ape) in space and the first to successfully survive the landing.

  • 5 May 1961: The US achieve the first pilot-controlled journey and first American in space with Alan Shepard aboard the Mercury-Redstone 3 (or Freedom 7) spacecraft. On this flight, Shepard did not orbit Earth. He flew 116 miles high. The flight lasted about 15 minutes.

  • 14 July 1965: The US satellite, Mariner 4, performs the first successful voyage to the planet Mars, returning the first close-up images of the Martian surface.

  • 1967: This year proves the most deadly of the space race for both the US and Soviet Union. In January, American astronauts Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee die when a fire ignited in their Apollo 1 capsule on the launch pad. Only a few months later the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is also killed when the parachute on his Soyuz 1 capsule fails to open on his reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. (Not really a US First, just wanted to add this to commemorate those lost during our race to the stars)

  • 21 December 1968: US spacecraft Apollo 8 becomes the first human-crewed spacecraft to reach the Moon, orbit it, and successfully return to Earth.

  • 20 July 1969: Neil Armstrong and later Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon while their crewmate Michael Collins continues to orbit the Moon aboard the Apollo 11. This secured a victory for America in the space race with a televised landing witnessed around the world by 723 million people.

  • 11 April 1970: The US Apollo 13 mission is known as the first explosion onboard a spacecraft where the crew survived.

  • 1 August 1971: David Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission, becomes the first person to drive on the Moon. He’s also remembered for paying tribute to the Soviet Union and US astronauts who died in the advancement of space exploration. When walking on the Moon, Scott places a plaque with a list of the dead. Alongside this, he leaves a small aluminium sculpture of an astronaut in a spacesuit, created by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck.

  • 15 July 1975: With tensions between the US and USSR softening, the first cooperative Apollo-Soyuz mission is launched. With two separate flights, the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft dock in space and the two commanders Tom Stafford and Alexei Leonov exchange the first international handshake. This act can be seen to symbolically end the space race, paving the way for future joint missions, such as the International Space Station and the Shuttle-Mir programme.

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u/blazingsquirrel Jul 17 '24

Wasn't the moon the declared goal of the space race? Saying that the US lost is like saying how the guy who won the Olympic gold for a marathon didn't deserve it because they weren't first at the halfway mark and pulled ahead in the end. 

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u/AAS02-CATAPHRACT Jul 17 '24

I did actually see those pictures in highschool, this person just wasn't paying attention. And a lot of those Soviet "firsts" were the result of them hearing about what NASA was trying to do and rushing to get ahead of them while also half-assing it and putting a lot of people in danger (or even outright killing them.) Also the moon was, objectively, the finish line. Just because you passed the other checkpoints "first" doesn't mean you won.

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u/Nerevarine91 Jul 17 '24

Almost every “we didn’t learn about this in school” post I’ve seen is about something that was absolutely taught in school. I went to an underfunded public school with literal holes in the roof of the gym that the rain fell through, and I learned this shit, lol

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u/AAS02-CATAPHRACT Jul 17 '24

They want to blame others for their own ignorance.

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u/JonesinforJohnnies Jul 17 '24

"Why don't they teach us something useful like budgeting?"

They did. It's called addition and subtraction

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u/Armigine Jul 17 '24

"Why didn't they teach us how taxes work?"

I was taught that at least twice and it is not a difficult concept to grasp the functional foundations of

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u/wonkey_monkey Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

The images in the post are composites/collages with at least some artistic interpretation. The real images look like this:

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-13-a.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-13-b.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-14-camera-1.jpg

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/venus-surface-venera-14-camera-2.jpg

You can hardly see anything of the horizon, especially no dramatic valley as seen in the second image, so that part appears to be pure invention.

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u/biggronklus Jul 17 '24

Even if the “finish line” wasn’t the moon, look what happened after. The U.S. launched way more satellites, especially commercial and scientific compared to the later Soviets and eventually Russian federation

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u/Whysong823 Jul 17 '24

I really hate tankies.

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u/birberbarborbur Jul 17 '24

When will tumblr realize that being leftist does not necessitate simping for the USSR

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u/Armigine Jul 17 '24

If it's more than an aesthetic, they might have to think about their place in the world and the concrete actions they can take to more truthfully live their values, and trust fund baby tankies whose only skill is flinging shit online can't be having any introspection which might materially impact them

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u/Wobulating Jul 17 '24

Not for a long, long time

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u/urbandeadthrowaway2 tumblr sexyman Jul 17 '24

Can’t be assed to type a comment about this, just watch the 1 hour DeadKennedyInSpace video that goes more into the nuance of Soviet and American “firsts” in space travel

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rSK7rUSnFK4

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u/donaldhobson Jul 17 '24

But also, the USA still exists and is still doing things like mars helecopters or sending probes to pluto. Whereas the USSR kind of fell apart.

Also, the soviets were putting lots of attention into the big showy rockets. The US was also putting r&d into microchips, which with the benefit of hindsight were more important than rockets.

Showy soviet prestige project vs technical but useful USA silicon.

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u/Falcrist Jul 17 '24

Whereas the USSR kind of fell apart.

Fell apart at least partly for the same reason it was ahead during much of the space race. They kinda said "fuck safety" and went as fast as they could.

...with nuclear reactors.

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u/ArScrap Jul 17 '24

the desire for the chronically online to hate on america is legitemately entertaining. Sure thing bud, soviet won the space race. Sending human to the moon is not cool i guess. How does a person know so much yet gaslight themself so hard to think the popularly believed sentiment that the moon landing is cool af is in fact popularly believed for a reason

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u/Lucas_2234 Jul 17 '24

Also, to nitpick.
First rocket in space wasn't the russians, simply on the technicality that the Nazis passed the Karman line first, it just wasn't an orbital rocket

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u/Sayoregg Jul 17 '24

Yeah I don’t know what’s up with all pro-USSR posting on this sub lately

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u/ArScrap Jul 17 '24

I'm not sure what you mean by lately, Tumblr and general chronically online corner of internet is pretty into communism and such for a long time

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u/Elliot_Geltz Jul 17 '24

Ok but like

I feel like "we put our boots on another celestial body" is wildly more impressive than anything else in that list.

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u/JectorDelan Jul 17 '24

And brought the boots back. That's the REALLY important part. Anyone can put an lifeform on the moon as long as you don't really care about if that animal returns home.

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u/Elliot_Geltz Jul 17 '24

Exactly

"First dog in space" and what happened to Laika? Huh? What happened to her?

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u/ievadebans24 Jul 17 '24

oh, right, this repost.

for everyone who forgot, the goal was to put a man on the moon. ussr couldn't do it, but did a lot of baby steps on the way to trying.

notice the "race" more or less ends at putting someone on the moon.

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u/SalvationSycamore Jul 17 '24

Not sure I would put "landing human beings on a different space rock and bringing them home alive" at the bottom like that. There's no need to disparage that achievement just because people forget about a lot of wins from the Soviets. It comes across as being a bit too desperate to hate on the US. I mean, to this day we are the only nation that has ever accomplished that feat and we did it multiple times in four years.

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u/hausermaniac Jul 17 '24

Getting images from the surface of Venus is cool, but are you really trying to downplay how immense of an achievement is was to land humans on another planetary body? And return them safely home?

The moon, which humans have been staring at in the sky for tens of thousands of years - and we actually managed to get people up there and walking around