[AlboSU (OP)]

GO!!!
This phrase was said by the first cosmonaut on Earth - Yuri Gagarin. (Yuri Gagarin)
He was the first astronaut on Earth. He was Russian! ...
Now Russia is becoming a strong country, gas pipelines, a vaccine against COVID-19, an army.
Is this very reminiscent of the communist Soviet Union?
How do you think?
Now we have total control in our country. I am interested in the opinion of foreigners.
 
<links etc removed>
You are removed as well for the plugs

[Petrochemicals]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Stalin

[evan_au]

I had the pleasure of visiting St Petersburg in 2019 - seeing (at least part of) the Hermitage art museum was on my "bucket list".
- The Lakhta Center was a surprisingly visible tower...
- St Petersburg/Stalingrad has seen significant rebuilding after the siege of World War 2.
- As has the previous East Germany, after the fall of the Berlin Wall
- So clearly, times have changed since the Cold War.

First cosmonaut on Earth - Yuri Gagarin

I think the main significance is that he was the first cosmonaut back on Earth.
I am sure there were a lot of cosmonauts still on Earth, at the time...

[Zer0]

@AlboSU

Hello Comrade!
🙋

Putin is a Tough man...
Xi Jinping is even Tougher..
But Democracy is the Toughest!

P.S. - Regards & Respect.
🙏

[charles1948]

Yuri Gagarin was the first Soviet cosmonaut to successfully come down in one piece.

Weren't there rumours of earlier cosmonauts, coming down in several?

[Kryptid]

Yuri Gagarin was the first Soviet cosmonaut to successfully come down in one piece.

Weren't there rumours of earlier cosmonauts, coming down in several?

I've heard those rumors, but I think the evidence for it is a little flimsy.

[charles1948]

Yuri Gagarin was the first Soviet cosmonaut to successfully come down in one piece.

Weren't there rumours of earlier cosmonauts, coming down in several?

I've heard those rumors, but I think the evidence for it is a little flimsy.

As you say, the evidence is flimsy, mostly based on supposed recordings of Russian voices picked up from space by CIA listening-stations in Turkey and other sites near Soviet borders, before the Vostok-1 flight.

Personally, I'm inclined to dismiss them.  Although it does seem just a little bit suspicious that the very first manned orbital flight conducted by the Soviets, was a complete success, without any previous failures.  Given the subsequent  record of failures by the Soviets during their Soyuz and Salyut programmes, one's bound to wonder.

I'm also bound to wonder, whether the Germans, during their V-2 programme in the 1940's, didn't perhaps put someone aboard one of their V-2 rockets.  The warhead of the rocket could be replaced by a small capsule, with a minimal oxygen supply.  Sufficient to sustain a human occupant of the capsule, during the rocket's brief ascent into space.  The V-2 could ascend beyond 50-60 miles, vertically, which these days is regarded as approximately the lower boundary of "Space".

Thus anyone aboard the V-2 would qualify as the first "Man in Space".  There are no records of any such manned V-2 flights.  But the idea must have occurred to von Braun, and the other scientists and engineers working on the project,

So I'd be a little surprised if an experiment on these lines wasn't carried out!

[Petrochemicals]

Yuri Gagarin was the first Soviet cosmonaut to successfully come down in one piece.

Weren't there rumours of earlier cosmonauts, coming down in several?

Would the west not be able to deduce an unsuccessful launch? Icbms launches and sputnics tended to cause an awful panic!

[charles1948]

Yuri Gagarin was the first Soviet cosmonaut to successfully come down in one piece.

Weren't there rumours of earlier cosmonauts, coming down in several?

Would the west not be able to deduce an unsuccessful launch? Icbms launches and sputnics tended to cause an awful panic!

Unsuccessful launches may have been detected in the West. But the West probably decided not to publicise them, for fear of provoking the Soviets too much.  The embarrassed Soviets might have reacted by launching a nuclear attack on the West.

Similar fears have been adduced, by conspiracy-theorists, as an answer to the obvious question:

If the US Apollo moon-landings were faked, that must have been detected by Soviet scientists.  So why didn't the USSR  publicise the fakery?  And by doing so cause huge embarrassment to the USA?

Answer - because the Soviets feared that might result in a nuclear attack by the USA.

Put like that, it sounds absurd.  But  when you look at history, haven't wars sometimes been started for reasons just as absurd?

[Kryptid]

If the US Apollo moon-landings were faked

They weren't.

[charles1948]

If the US Apollo moon-landings were faked

They weren't.

If they weren't, why aren't they happening anymore?   The manned Apollo landings took place in the 1960/70's.  Half a century has passed since then.

And in all that time, not a single manned spacecraft has gone there again. I mean, doesn't that look a bit suspicious.

[Kryptid]

If they weren't, why aren't they happening anymore? 

Politics, most probably.

I mean, doesn't that look a bit suspicious.

Only to a conspiracy theorist.

[Janus]

If the US Apollo moon-landings were faked

They weren't.

If they weren't, why aren't they happening anymore?   The manned Apollo landings took place in the 1960/70's.  Half a century has passed since then.

And in all that time, not a single manned spacecraft has gone there again. I mean, doesn't that look a bit suspicious.

The program was cut when the government decided to switch resources to developing the Shuttle (this is the same reason they cut funding of development of NERVA style nuclear rockets.)  They felt having  a "space truck" was more useful.
Also, the Apollo missions had already done what they were meant to do.  Further trips to the Moon of that type wouldn't have accomplished much more, and a more permanent presence on the Moon ( the next logical step) was considered too spendy for Congress' pocket book.
Now if the Russians hadn't given up on their Lunar aspirations, and had tried to establish a presence on the Moon, things would have been different. 

[charles1948]

@ Janus#12:
 I agree with you, that things might have gone differently if the Soviets had succeeded in landing on the Moon.

They might then have established a permanent Soviet moon-station, to which the Americans would have been forced to respond, for reasons of national prestige, by setting up a US moon-station.

These rival moon-stations would probably have been essentially military in nature.  I don't know whether that would've been a good thing.

[Petrochemicals]

If they weren't, why aren't they happening anymore?   The manned Apollo landings took place in the 1960/70's.  Half a century has passed since then.

Because the USA has got all of the icbm technology it needs, do you really believe in a cold war the respective governments would spend such ammounts rather than having an extra 1000 planes 5000 tanks and 100000 troops. The large hadron collier is because of military hesitancy. Who gets there first  has a massive military advantage, see nuclear bombs and ww2. The first nuclear reactors where (and still are not) a source of cheap electricity.

[Xavion Taylor]

A great man and astronaut, my idol.

[evan_au]

do you really believe in a cold war the respective governments would spend such ammounts (on Moon landings) rather than having an extra 1000 planes 5000 tanks and 100000 troops.

The Cold War was a psychological war, as much as anything.
- The enemy's population can't see an extra 5,000 tanks, but the periodic beeping transmission of Sputnik 1 circling over the USA caused a severe psychological shock in the US public.
- Sputnik 1 also caused a shock to the US military. They knew that a rocket which could deliver a small payload into a circular orbit was capable of delivering a much larger payload to any destination on Earth.
- There was little military advantage to having a rocket that was large enough to deliver astronauts to the Moon. It is impossible to hide, takes a long time to fuel, and is very exposed. But it had massive psychological power (what do they say about small politicians and big rockets?...)
- Because the Cold War was about convincing your population that they were socially, politically and technologically superior to the the "other side".

things might have gone differently if the Soviets had succeeded in landing on the Moon.

That is the premise of a TV series called "For All Mankind", which assumes that:
1) The Russians beat the USA to the Moon by a couple of weeks
2) The Space Race never stopped.

They have tried to make the costumes and the sets realistic for the time, and include relevant news broadcasts from the era.
I am watching it on Apple TV, but it may be available on various platforms in different countries...

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series)

[Zer0]

Someone's ended up Adding a Numeric Tag to this Topic.

P.S. - Weird.

Edit - @AlboSU
Privet Comrade!
🙏
Do you Know anything about this?

[alancalverd]

Because the Cold War was about convincing your population that they were socially, politically and technologically superior to the the "other side".

I think it failed on that count. That was the Axis philosophy and by 1945 most people had decided it was bad for everyone's health.

The Cold War, and subsequent proxy wars and unjustified invasions, derive from a historically robust Machiavellian/Orwellian process: it is about convincing people that they should continue to pay taxes to keep narcissists in government and support the manufacturers of weapons and uniforms. These parasites had profited throughout history from hot wars, but actual escalation to a modern hot war would have been shortlived and destroyed the economies of both sides, so there was never any real intention to fight, just invent an enemy to keep the peasants frightened.