The space race (32 photos) Bashny.Net

There is a well-known paradox - if you are inside a spaceship flying at nearly the speed of light, time slows down for you. Such a ship should be only 25 years to reach the edge of the visible universe, though remaining on the ground for two decades stretch in 14 billion years.

Same with technical progress. Progress is a shock wave that sweeps away everything in its path like a tsunami - if today people thought of to get on the skin, then tomorrow he will jump in a spacesuit on the moon - what a difference something?

But within this wave, on board the "progress" will always seem like we're crawling like turtles. Hand on heart - who among us believes USSR best country in the world in its history makes it impossible?

Gagarin, satellite, lunar rover - hackneyed cliches. Like T-shirts with Che Guevara. Space has become a boring routine - is now in orbit are always dozens of people and they do not have anyone to business. But the conquest of space - perhaps the most exciting journey in the history of mankind. Exciting, if you know the true story, not a propaganda picture on TV.



think after 300 years of the Soviet Union will look like ancient Rome or the French Empire under Louis - idealistic society obsessed with progress and mega construction projects, lost under the weight of their own intelligence and then the agreed descendants.

What is to be remembered in the history of the Soviet Union?

Total in the twentieth century there were three mega projects: the creation of the atomic bomb, the space race and the computer revolution. Cosmos we won in net - the collapse of the US space shuttle program ended in 2011, and "all space" transferred to Russian. Russian language - the only official language of the cosmos, it is now required to know any leaving our planet (oh sorry Men in Black took off too early).

Moreover, all of space technology in our world now - I throw we sell missiles and ships of fifty years ago, and France are building a new launch site in Kourou, which is a full copy of Baikonur. All the plans for the development of the external world is building land with an eye to Moscow.

As the Russian managed to privatize the whole universe? It's a long story, a fascinating but confusing - sit in a chair and wear space suits, our flight will take place successively in five orbits.

Space - is the backbone of the twentieth century. Its essence and secret. On this mission will not be easy. We take a look behind the scenes of history, politics, art and the world as you know it. In short, you have already realized that batthert Now get everything.

The first cosmic speed: Space tourism



All of the past forty years, the reality says no, no, no program of space exploration. It turned out that no economic benefit is not there, the flights themselves are very expensive and dangerous to life and what goes well (communications satellites, astronomy extraterrestrial) do not require the presence of humans in space and are the result of the development of electronics and not of Aeronautics. That is, the "rocket" is the ax, primitive tools. This dead-end and more progress there is nothing to think of. There is no much difference between the Chinese and fireworks rocket for the flight to the moon. This primitive though functional weapon.

Therefore, the whole ideology, all the projects, the entire drive space extravaganza gone into the past. By inertia space theme is always interesting, but the peak of 50-70-ies passed. All fiction works written on the subject.

It remains only to tourism and it shows in all of space fiction - the hero of 2001 Space Odyssey is clearly a tourist. A heroine of the film like a stranger visiting the pyramids of ancient Egypt. About Star Trek or Star Troopers do not speak.

There is only one snag here. Remember they do not want to let the first tourists into space? I think here the fact that all galaxies in outer space receive special status and enter into certain private club, whose members do not complain to life. And then someone wants to buy a membership in it ... just as some moneybags decided to buy a membership in the club of those who have climbed Everest. But the rules and regulations of the fact that they would have to change - for the future of space tourism only more nothing to do there. But stand in a row with Gagarin ... not many people understand what it means.



Yuri Gagarin - the greatest man in history, his name will be remembered even when the rest will be forgotten, because it is the first person left the ground. To estimate the phrase Imagine that our civilization will die, but it can remain on the memory of one man, whose name it would be?

This is a monument erected in honor of Columbus 600 years after his journey.



No less majestic buildings are in all the countries of the New World. Columbus have major historical and epic character type of the ancient Zeus or Jesus Christ. But who is he compared to the first astronaut? But that's not the point. The fact that the above Gagarin jump impossible. This is the last hero of humanity. No significant first flight into space, nothing at all. Even Neil Armstrong stands in the pantheon of the world is infinitely lower than Yuri, despite the enormous efforts of American propaganda.

Therein lies the meaning of space tourism, space appeal - you can not go to the New World on the same ship with Columbus and then safe to say I was there. We can not once again the first to climb Mount Everest and reach the North Pole, or sink to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, this is no longer anything exceptional. Space is so far from everything we have seen and we know that the flight to the stars probably always be a mystical event. During the flight to the Gagarin did not feel sorry for any money.

But in space, money does not matter. That is why Roskosmos space being a monopolist just spits on the opportunity to earn billions on tourism and blocks the development of the West for the same reasons as the applicants in the space tourists. And without Roscosmos idea of ​​tourism to remain at the very naive craft failed travelers.

It turns out the man in space once, but can be cold vacuum for war?

Escape velocity: SDI program and Star Wars

Starting with the famous Fulton speech Churchill began the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union half a century spent on the arms race. A kind of war of attrition, when the two countries produced thousands of tanks, aircraft and missiles. who do not even fired - they simply wrote off the reserve, which would make room for new models. So fifty years, until one of the players not overstrain.



This is a key moment in the history of space on this I will focus on it more.

Churchill in Fulton suggested the Americans to divide and rule the world of three - the US, Britain and the Soviet Union. America is determined to be the mistress of the sea, and not calculated its strength. For such a decision from the state was the atomic bomb, hundreds of aircraft carriers and Navy jet aircraft gives complete dominance in the air. Like world domination is guaranteed ...

Only here in the Korean War of the fifties was all clear - instead of forwarding easy walks American troops were surprised to find Koreans ultramodern fighter jets MIG-15 - made in the USSR but with English engines. Rate British perfidy - the British were in the southern part of Korea, alongside the Americans, but to shoot at them from a British arms and let the Korean arms.

Americans are hard-nosed guys, with each new turn of the Cold War, they were exposed to the ring more expensive toys and each time the USSR maliciously copied and improved the submitted samples. You have built a fleet of bombers capable of reaching Moscow? Khrushchev it maliciously declares that we do intercontinental missiles like sausages. The missiles capable of hitting all the cities in America faster than you refuel its aircraft.



Americans wiped and 5 June 1961 launched a program Chrome Dome - on which the air on the borders of the Soviet Union have always been strategic bombers with nuclear bombs. However, the B-52 was not the best vehicles for long duty and began to fall. Eyeballs loaded with atomic bombs.

For seven years, the program has fallen five aircraft, the last case was the final program.

In 1968, aboard one of the cars there was a fire - the third pilot put it under the seat three soft foam cushions that have blocked ventilation heating and ignited. The crew ejected and the plane crashed on the ice near Greenland. On board were four hydrogen bombs megaton each half - found two, one crashed into the air and threw seven kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, and the fourth is still looking for treasure hunters in Greenland rocks.

And these Americans bombs scattered around the world dozens - that's where the help for global terrorism. Chrome dome then had to turn international pressure.

But in general, this example is illustrative - in the same vein to develop all the rest of their military programs, and of course the American space program. Not because American engineers bad or cowardly pilots - they are the best in the world, just for the important task that is not enough, they need over quality - lie not in the field of logic, or education, and at the heart of the national character.

By the beginning of 1980th in America has matured a great idea to transfer the cold war from the earth into space. After watching the Star Wars President Reagan announced the launch of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Its essence is shockingly simple - build a fleet of hundreds of heavy-duty combat lasers that will shoot down ballistic missiles at takeoff.

The idea is very sensible way, because to intercept such missiles as the SS-18 can only be on the rise, after ten minutes of flight of its warhead is divided into 200 parts is constantly maneuvering and evading interception - knock them is not real. The laser - Shuttle fleet of shuttles that serve lasers and may also carry a supply of nuclear missiles on board. Despite the scale of Hollywood it was a swan song and the last spurt of states - led to the complete defeat.

The fact that the socialist economy is a feature of its absolute concentration and unlimited. Simply put the entire Soviet Union was one firm, and its economy had no special restrictions that could afford to any programs like building hundreds of nuclear submarines, a huge army, or ocean-going fleet - all without the mobilization and martial law.



Let me explain with an example. Under Khrushchev once attended to housing for the workers and for a decade the majority of residents of the country got their own apartment. Certainly it was inferior hruscheby, but at that time they were a luxury, even for Europe. The scale is impressive - it was built 300 million square meters of housing. By meters for each inhabitant of the country.

So Khrushchev - a temporary housing for workers in which they were to live until 1980, when it's communism. "Temporary housing" is a tin houses for migrant workers building the skyscrapers of Moscow City. Now imagine the scale of tin houses in the country councils and will be able to imagine that these workers skyscraper built. With such economy-wide "shuttle" - one tooth. USSR built a fleet of nuclear submarines and did not notice it. And one such boat is the average European country.



Already in 1987, energy booster into orbit combat laser "Polyus" - he was immediately drowned in the ocean that would not escalate the conflict - the Soviet Union then led the propaganda slogan "no weapons in space," etc. The following year, his only flight Buran does, and does it in a completely automatic mode without a crew.

The unmanned mode - not just a triumph of engineering are not attainable by anyone so far, and an unambiguous signal to the states. After all, in 1984 the Soviet laser radar "highlight" shuttle flying past their guidance system - the shuttle lost contact with the ground, unplug all the electronics, and the crew "felt acute discomfort." Ie even keeping goal brought down "space bomber", what to speak of the consequences of military salvo?

Surprisingly, it turned out that in space there is nothing to catch the Americans - the Soviet Union a few years developed his canoe and easily be able to produce it in series, not to mention the laser weapons.



In 1989, the US delegation arrived in the Soviet Union to examine all these accomplishments personally and came to the conclusion that it is time to end the Cold War. In return for this US Fulton accept the offer and rejected the idea of ​​world domination. Less than 40 years!

But now without the British colonial empire and the Soviet bloc, this political system looks quite funny - at 95% of America's military power but it can not capture even the Middle East. About rising China and the EU do not speak. On the Americans to wipe their feet even North Korea - all this is the result of the space race.

The third cosmic speed: As we made America

Space is largely a product of propaganda. All these satellites and flights were the ultimate aim in the TV picture. Remember that television has become a symbol? Yeah broadcast from the moon.



That is why the real character of television - Neil Armstrong.

The world's first artificial satellite - which may be cleaner and romance than this monument to humanity? All enthusiasts, researchers, mad scientist and a tireless designers generations to put their lives on the altar of the cosmos. But the most terrible dreams that they come true.

If Russian were able to bring a satellite into orbit, then America is vulnerable to a sudden nuclear attack from the sky. This simple conclusion had far-reaching consequences.



The fear was so strong that in the first days of October 1957 a particularly hot heads the Pentagon proposed a "closed skies", that is to throw in the orbital height of tons of scrap metal balls from bearings, nails, steel wool, which would result in the cessation of all space launches.

But President Eisenhower wisely - did not lock into orbit, or copy the Soviet space technology, he copied the Soviet system itself.

Soviet-style single space was created Ministry of NASA, which finally led behind the scenes gloomy German genius Wernher von Braun - he was recruited in early 1943, but it was too inconsistent to be trusted American space program SSovtsu the most famous in the world.



In addition to creating NASA had conducted another little-known, but the key to the history of America's reform - reform of education. National Defense Education Act copied the Soviet system of higher education, its meaning has been in the creation of a single Ministry of Education to select talented students from across the country in the technical colleges - since its current form and gained notoriety Massachusetts and California Technical University, Stanford, Harvard and many other universities. Yes, these institutions have existed before, but until 1958 it was more private shops are not able to solve major problems.

All were united by a single "military-industrial-academic complex" and decided clearly their objectives - to develop rocket engines or guidance system. That's why American universities are still with such piety belong to the Moscow State University, Moscow University ever given as an example, any news of him caught with his mouth open, and in all sorts of ratings hundred world's best universities, he invariably a respectable 50th place - it's just their alma mater and the entire American education system is rooted in this building on the Sparrow Hills.



Simply put this reform, and started a real space race.

The fourth space: Were the Americans on the moon?

Just above I have noticed that it was the aim of the race propaganda effect - somehow believe that success in space is the first evidence of the "correctness" of a state system.

Now this may seem crazy, but crazy is not able to send a probe to Venus, and to walk on the moon. This idea does have two robust grain on the ground, I'll discuss later, and the second - just a national character.



Do not think that the question of any metaphysics, everything here is very simple - in fact born Russian cosmonauts. We have nine months of the year living on the moon and go to the suits. Hence the ultimate rationality, critical realism, even if you want. We are all strictly logical and to the point, not because we are so smart, such a condition - forgot to put on his hat and died. As a result, in Russia there are no fools - they have lived exactly one year before the winter. All of this has implications at the global level - Russian have composure, wit and endless stress tolerance.



Watch this video from the space station.















Literally.