For All Mankind

[Mabus]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/fam/fams1e01.php

I've heard a lot of people praising this show, but I never got around watching it. Seems like an interesting concept, though I imagine A LOT of butterflies are needed for the Soviets to quickly become space competent, and Korolev not dying would have to be only one of them.

[TGLS]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/fam/fams1e01.php

I've heard a lot of people praising this show, but I never got around watching it. Seems like an interesting concept, though I imagine A LOT of butterflies are needed for the Soviets to quickly become space competent, and Korolev not dying would have to be only one of them.

Well, the Nedellin Catastrophe too, though I'd probably push it back to "Korolev doesn't get stuck in the Gulag based on Glushko's testimony, Glushko and Korolev get along better, and so the N1 isn't such a disaster."

[Durandal_1707]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/fam/fams1e01.php

I've heard a lot of people praising this show, but I never got around watching it. Seems like an interesting concept, though I imagine A LOT of butterflies are needed for the Soviets to quickly become space competent, and Korolev not dying would have to be only one of them.

Space competent? The Soviets were quite a ways ahead of the US before the latter pulled ahead with the moon landing.

[clearspira]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/fam/fams1e01.php

I've heard a lot of people praising this show, but I never got around watching it. Seems like an interesting concept, though I imagine A LOT of butterflies are needed for the Soviets to quickly become space competent, and Korolev not dying would have to be only one of them.

Space competent? The Soviets were quite a ways ahead of the US before the latter pulled ahead with the moon landing.

[Durandal_1707]

lol, indeed.

[TGLS]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/fam/fams1e01.php

I've heard a lot of people praising this show, but I never got around watching it. Seems like an interesting concept, though I imagine A LOT of butterflies are needed for the Soviets to quickly become space competent, and Korolev not dying would have to be only one of them.

Space competent? The Soviets were quite a ways ahead of the US before the latter pulled ahead with the moon landing.

Yeah, they were pretty far ahead, then they started falling further and further behind. Let's look at the problems

Centrally Unplanned
So Sergei Korolev not dying is called out as the divergence point. You might think that he's some kind of genius rocket designer who could help the Soviets build a rocket to land on the moon. However, while he was a rocket designer, that's not where his true talent lied. While he was an engineer, he was good at the political game that was necessary to excel in the Soviet space programs.

Yes, space programs. Unlike the Americans, who organized all their space efforts into one centrally controlled bureaucracy (NASA), the Soviets at the time had multiple rocket design bureaus who all competed for funding from Soviet leadership. These design bureaus had very little reason to work with each other, which meant that the organizational diversity didn't result in design bureaus specializing, but multiple wasted efforts.

I have three rockets and no money
Compounding problems, the Soviet Union was poorer than the United States. Sure, it was the second largest economy in the world, but it still had less than half the GDP throughout the period and a larger population. The fact they were able to compete against the United States for so long despite these disadvantages is a testament to the oppression and extractive ability of the Soviet system.

They also saved money where they could. Soviet rocket design bureaus made designs that were targeted at both the military and space exploration. That's not to say that the Americans didn't do this too, both the Atlas and Titan rocket families had variants for that were designed for dropping nuclear bombs. On the other hand, the Saturn rocket never had to keep an eye on, "how many bombs can this drop?", while one of the largest Soviet rockets, the Proton, was originally designed to drop the massive Tsar Bomba. Even the N1 had military uses suggested for it. Oh yeah, speaking of that...

N(o)1 (thought this through)
OK, so the N1 rocket was the rocket that Korolev proposed to drive the Soviet space program to the moon. Originally planning to assemble a rocket in Earth orbit, this was changed to one rocket in a configuration similar to the American Apollo missions. As this was a huge program that was key to Soviet ambitions in space, everyone was on side and working together.

Just kidding, Korolev and the top Soviet rocket engineer Valentin Glushko began fighting over whether to use Hypergolic fuels or Kerosene. While Korolev and Glushko both have valid points regarding toxicity vs. safety, personal conflicts and Korolev holding Glushko responsible for sending him to the gulag played a role. Anyway, Glushko refused to work with Korolev and Korolev proceeded anyway.

Without key rocket engineers, Korolev was instead forced to use many small rocket engines to power the N1 instead of fewer large engines. Now to give some context, the Saturn V rocket used 11 rocket engines, and the Falcon Heavy uses 28 rocket engines. The N1 rocket was to use 30 rocket engines, on its first stage alone, and a total of 44 engines for the whole lunar mission. Is it doable? Sure. Is it doable on a short budget with more primitive electronics? Well with a dedicated budget and competent leader, maybe.

Anyway, Korolev was not able to get the full backing of the Soviet leadership who instead pursued a circumlunar plan proposed by his rival and then a landing powered by the N1 rocket. Shortly afterward, Korolev died, and his deputy, Vasily Mishin was put in charge. Mishin lacked Korolev's influence and savoir faire, and the N1 program was repeatedly delayed. After it exploded four times between 1969 and 1972 (thankfully no one was hurt), Mishin was replaced by Glushko and the rocket was cancelled.

And now to shit on the careers of people smarter than me
OK, so the Soviet Union created this big impression of winning the space race for a while, until the Americans finally landed on the moon... But how far ahead were they really?

Sputnik was definitely a big accomplishment. Laika, not so much. I mean, if you can put a satellite in space, a dog that isn't coming back alive, I don't think that's a huge accomplishment. The moon probes were definitely a big accomplishment, though that was driven primarily by the fact they had better rockets at the beginning of the space race. Gagarin in space, another big one. As to Tereshkova, that was a social accomplishment, not a technical one.

Getting three men in space on Voskhod 1 was an accomplishment of arrogance. Voskhod was basically Gagarin's craft with more people crammed in; literally, with three crew they lacked room for spacesuits. Voskhod 2 was an accomplishment, though Leonov's space suit ballooned and he nearly died. It's no small wonder that further Voskhod missions were cancelled.

After that, Soviet accomplishments fall off for a while before their interplanetary probes start showing results, which to be fair, the Americans duplicated successfully. Actually, let's look at the accomplishments we've discussed and how far behind the Americans were:
- Orbital Satellite: USSR: October 1957, USA: February 1958 (four months)
- Animal in Space: USSR: November 1957, USA: December 1958 (one year, one month)
- Man in Space: USSR: April 1961, USA: May 1961 (one month)
- Man in Orbit: USSR: April 1961, USA: February 1962 (ten months)
- Multi-man flight: USSR: October 1964, USA: March 1965 (five months)
- Spacewalk: USSR: March 1965, USA: USA: June 1965 (three months)
- Lunar Flyby: USSR: January 1959, USA: March 1959 (two months)
- Lunar Impactor: USSR: September 1959, USA: July 1964 (three years, three months)
- Soft Landing: USSR: February 1966, USA: June 1966 (four months)

Of course, that leaves out things where the US was actually more successful at:
- Orbital Rendezvous: USA: December 1965, USSR: October 1967 (one year, ten months)
- Orbital Docking: USA: March 1966, USSR: October 1967 (one year, seven months)
- Manned Lunar Flyby: USA: December 1968, USSR: No
- Manned Lunar Landing: USA: July 1969, USSR: No
- Lunar Sample Return: USA: July 1969, USSR: September 1970 (one year, one month)

You look at all this, and you see the Soviets doing everything they possibly can to beat the Americans, narrowly winning, until they're completely overtaken and proceed to pretend they were never racing to begin with.

[Mabus]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/fam/fams1e01.php

I've heard a lot of people praising this show, but I never got around watching it. Seems like an interesting concept, though I imagine A LOT of butterflies are needed for the Soviets to quickly become space competent, and Korolev not dying would have to be only one of them.

Space competent? The Soviets were quite a ways ahead of the US before the latter pulled ahead with the moon landing.

Well yeah, the Soviets had massive success at the beginning, but due to a variety of factors, ranging from bloating their military budget, to typical Soviet bureaucracy, they eventually lagged very far behind USA when it comes to exploring space. Yuri Gagarin might have been the first man in space, but he only lived 7 more years after that achievement before dying in a plane crash during training.

[Madner Kami]

N(o)1 (thought this through)
OK, so the N1 rocket was the rocket that Korolev proposed to drive the Soviet space program to the moon. Originally planning to assemble a rocket in Earth orbit, this was changed to one rocket in a configuration similar to the American Apollo missions. As this was a huge program that was key to Soviet ambitions in space, everyone was on side and working together.

Just kidding, Korolev and the top Soviet rocket engineer Valentin Glushko began fighting over whether to use Hypergolic fuels or Kerosene. While Korolev and Glushko both have valid points regarding toxicity vs. safety, personal conflicts and Korolev holding Glushko responsible for sending him to the gulag played a role. Anyway, Glushko refused to work with Korolev and Korolev proceeded anyway.

Funny you mention it, because people focus too much on individuals, rather than achievements and a more "global" outlook on issues. If I would have had a say about the series' premise, I'd have made the divergence there. It's the N1 and the inability to coordinate a massive number of failure points in the most central system of a rocket, that stopped the soviet space program exactly where it stopped. They had an immense micromanagement problem in a crucial system, but had a political and, argueably, technological focus and outlook on solving issues through macromanagement. It's a mistake the Soviets keep repeating until the end in many regards.

[Orel]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/fam/fams1e01.php

I've heard a lot of people praising this show, but I never got around watching it. Seems like an interesting concept, though I imagine A LOT of butterflies are needed for the Soviets to quickly become space competent, and Korolev not dying would have to be only one of them.

Space competent? The Soviets were quite a ways ahead of the US before the latter pulled ahead with the moon landing.

firsts

A good many of those "firsts" were firsts of no technical value (like the first woman in space--good propaganda value, and something which it's truly embarrassing the US didn't get around to doing for another few decades, but also not something that required any modification to the spacecraft; it's worth noting that the Soviet Union would only ever put one other woman in orbit after Tereshkova, and Savitskaya didn't go up for another 20 years), or were actually failures (Mars 3 broke within seconds of landing on the surface and never transmitted useful scientific data; when the American probes got there, they actually worked). It also ignores a good many US firsts in unmanned spaceflight, particularly the practical applications thereof--the first communications satellite, the first weather satellite, the first military spy satellite, first rocket propelled by liquid hydrogen, and the first spacecraft sent to the outer solar system (to this day, no other country has sent a spacecraft beyond Mars).

This is just something that bugs me--for all that people accuse the US of claiming one big win as a total victory, memes like this really downplay the systemic superiority of the US program in a variety of fields.

Anyway, I'm interested to see what Chuck has to say about this show. I enjoyed season 1 myself, though it really started to jump the shark in season 2 (and when I heard North Korea went to Mars in season 3, I checked out), and I think it suffers from having some weird writing focuses. In particular, the politics of black liberation get totally ignored in the first two seasons--you'd think "first black astronaut" would be something worth talking about, but apparently not (and we don't even get the Soviet answer to that--no Interkosmos!?). Also, Ron Moore really wants the audience to know that he's into MILFs. Not judging, but it's a pattern in his writing. The politics they also set up in the background also just don't make any sense at all (Mexico going Red and somehow this not resulting in war).

[Thebestoftherest]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/fam/fams1e01.php

I've heard a lot of people praising this show, but I never got around watching it. Seems like an interesting concept, though I imagine A LOT of butterflies are needed for the Soviets to quickly become space competent, and Korolev not dying would have to be only one of them.

Space competent? The Soviets were quite a ways ahead of the US before the latter pulled ahead with the moon landing.

I think the space race might be more of a marathon so coming in first is short term victory.