Mr. Clarke, where were you living in the 1950s and 1960s?

Mostly Thailand

Plus 12 months in the UK in 1966 (with a brief visit to the US). Too young to rember the 50's though.

Cheers

Jon

Therefore, with all due respect, you are not qualified to judge the nature of US media coverage of the space program in the 1950s and 1960s. I was here. You weren't.

Hi die Nullte

Yes and no. You are probably correct with respect to coverage within the US. Although since, like me, it appears that you are relying on memory, it would be useful to have some documentary support.

However, US media did not stop at the US border. Our family subscribed to National Geographic, Reader's Digest, we had regular access to magazines like Time, Newsweek, Life etc., we listened extensively to Voice of America during the Apollo 8-12 period to get updates and live broadcasts. The local english language newspaper also reprinted wireline reports from US news services and also editorials. Some of this material I still have, other are available through the local library.

This raises a further question as to whether there were differences in angle on Apollo between different media, newspapers, weekly, monthlies, radio, TV? May there even have been differences between material aimed at the domestic as opposed to overseas market? While I understand there is an extensive literature on how successive US governments managed (or tried to manage) PR during the Vietnam war, I am not aware of any comparible studies on PR management during Apollo. Might be a nice thesis for someone.

Cheers

Jon

As a child i always believed that the Russians were the winners in space because of one teachers point of view. I was told this when i was just 9yrs old. I did'nt really develop my interest in astronomy and space until i was 31 so i have spent most of my life believing that the russians won, what i am trying to say is that science especially astronomy does not get much attention in First schools so we get told anything and only those of us that want to research it more find out the truth, i could bang on forever about the lack of science education among the under 10s but i won't!!!! Hopefully it will get better.........not that i'm bitter!! ](*,)

I grew up in England in the early 1970's (born in 66) so remember Apollo16,17 (just about, launch and splashdown mainly).

Even as a 7 year old, I seem to recall thinking the US had better technology, but the USSR threw more of it up into space. This was specifically brough home by the size of Skylab and the point that when Apollo Soyuz linked, it was in a low Apollo orbit and a high Soyuz orbit. Also IIRC, the Soyuz pretty much sat there in orbit whilst Apollo manoevred and docked. I wonder if that was neccesity or a negotiated deal....

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Although practically all of the space race was about stunts for national prestige, I believe that in the long term, the Russians did more to contribute to manned spaceflight then the US, and I believe that future spacecraft will benefit somewhat more from the Russian Salyut-Almaz-Mir experience then from the American Apollo-Shuttle worlds - the ISS is a great example.

That's because the Russian experience in long term manned spaceflight and building space stations will be of more value to future planetary missions.

The United States should never have entered the space race the way it did. Kennedy and Apollo in the end may have done more to contribute to the eventual mediocrity of space flight then to its advancement.

The USA should have set the goal of building a permanent earth-to-moon transit system in order to extract commercial benefit from it, just the way it did when it built the Panama cannal.

Man should have landed on the moon by 1990 and then they would not leave, and lunar mining would benefit earth directly (platinum and other rare materials) and would have been a major part of sending humans further into the solar system. And space travel would pay itself, at least partially, so it wouldnt depend on politicians anymore.

I've heard, though I can't verify, that this was a source of embarrassment for the Soviets. The Apollo had a much greater RCS propellant load thus did the bulk of the maneuvering.

I believe both programs have done much to advance space technology. Yes, the Soviet/Russian contribution has been significant, but Apollo forced engineers to find solutions to problems that the Soviets did not have to consider. Those solutions have important applications in any future space program. Also, one cannot ignore the many spin-offs that have come from Apollo technology and have benefited us in many ways.

I've heard, though I can't verify, that this was a source of embarrassment for the Soviets.

Yes, but not seriously.

The Apollo had a much greater RCS propellant load thus did the bulk of the maneuvering.

It did, and the Soviet crew joked about it, mockingly warning the American crew not to slam that powerful CSM into their ship too hard.

The most sensitive technical issue was the sexual overtones of the U.S. docking system. The Soviets had no intention of equipping their spacecraft with "feminine" parts (in Soviet parlance, vessels are personified in the masculine). And so the androgynous docking system was developed and is the standard today. In the long run it was a good thing.

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I believe both programs have done much to advance space technology. Yes, the Soviet/Russian contribution has been significant, but Apollo forced engineers to find solutions to problems that the Soviets did not have to consider.

I think the most honest assessment of the space programs to date is that they have leap-frogged in 6-10 year cycles. We simply cannot write off the Soviet achievements, and anything I've said that implies that must be understood in that light. Post-Apollo, the Soviets concentrated on space stations while the U.S. built the space shuttle. The Soviet understanding of human factors in long-duration space habitation turned out to be useful information that we did not have.

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Damn! That was the thing I liked most about Apollo.

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In the lull after the Challenger explosion, I managed to get in on a pretty extensive tour of the JSC and meet various engineers and researchers involved in the US space station development. Their answer was that the Russian time on the MIR was of little use to them in planning for long term space living because of the poor quality of the physiology experiments resulting in almost no usable data. Although these people seemed to be miffed at the requirement to work with the Russians anyway and did not speak favorable of Russian engineering.

While the Russian program has performed some very good work. The contribution to the future is only as good as the human capital that developed and the ability to pass that capital along to the next generation. Does anyone have any knowledge on how much of the science in the Russian program has been published?

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I don't think there was a lot (although there was some) data exchange on biomedical issues during the post Challenger period (I assume this is 86-88 ). I would suspect a degree of sour grapes and NIH would be involved. Mir of course just was cranking up at that stage, and the major missions were still in the furture. Even later, at least from reading between the lines in the books "Dragonfly" (something of a curate's egg) there seems to have been an extraordinary reluctance from some in NASA to work with the Russians during the Shuttle-Mir program. The data was collected somewhat differently to how NASA should have done, but i don't think this precludes getting useful information from it.


My understanding is a lot of the data is accessible, as either reports or publications. Certainly at IBMP in Moscow there is considerable interest in working with overseas partners and the complete heritage of 40+ years of data to draw on. This is not always the case with NASA, Apparently much of the psychological data from the Apollo era (including Skylab has been lost or is no longer available.

Cheers

Jon

My opinion on the importance of the Russian program is that of the book "Leaving Earth" by Robert Zimmermann, considered by many the best book on the history of long-term space-flight and space-stations. The book tells a lot about the science on the missions as well as providing extensive bibliography.

We can't really criticise the Russian Space program at the moment. All their stuff seems to be working properly, whereas the US stuff all seems to be broken.

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Spirit, Opportunity, MGS, Mars Odyssey, Cassini, Spitzer, Chandra, SOHO, FUSE, GALEX, Genesis, TRACE, Stardust, and a bunch of Earth-observing missions that don't pop to the front of my brain.

(You're the one who left off appropriate qualifiers! If you want to debate STS versus Soyuz architecture, just say so...)

Um, yes. NASA is on a high at the moment, and I don't mean to critisise, but it seems that if we're talking about long duration human spaceflight, Russia has the bulk of the experience. Their suits work, their cargo and personel system works, in fact, without the Russians, there would be no space station at the moment. It shows that their philosophy of keep it simple and don't put all your eggs into one shuttle seems to be paying off. I suppose it's a tortoise and hare situation.

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[nitpicky correction] Sadly, Genesis needs to be removed from this list [/nitpickly correction]

As a Utah resident, I'm just glad it was on-target, if somewhat unrestrained.

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