Talk:Space Race/Archive 3

Archived conversations and general comment
I tried to make some move of cleaning this article up back in 2007. In the 3 years since then I've left wikipedia as a user, and I just visited the page again to see how it has been going. I just archived the previous conversation to make this talk page a bit easier to read and 'clear the air' a bit for everyone.

In the past 3 years since I've given up looking after this article, it's quality has plunged to something shocking. For such an important subject with regards to the US-USSR in the 1960's it's pretty bad. This is an article on the Space Race between the US and USSR from 1950-1970, NOT the current possible space exploration achievements by other countries. It says that in the introduction, so anyone wanting to contribute extra information on China, India etc. Should create their own pages on that. With that in mind, The Recent Events section needs to be severely shortened or deleted. References are a must throughout the rest of the article as well. Grammar, Spelling and Sentence Structure need to be improved vastly too.

Someone needs to have a bit more vigilance with this page and be more proactive in the removal of unnessessary information. I don't have the time; I'm at univeristy now. It's really sad to see such an important topic in science and Technology languish. MichaelHenley (Talk-Contribs) 05:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * All I can say is, amen brother! And this isn't the only space-related article where this type of thing has happened to (see Space accidents and incidents.
 * The Recent Events (beyond the first two paragraphs) and Commercial Space Race sections are totally out of scope. And calling commercial ventures a new "race" seems a little like original research.
 * I would recommend a split of the remaining paragraphs of Recent Events out into a separate article, just because it seems like a lot of work to throw away. What to call it, though? JustinTime55 (talk) 16:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Good question. I've been checking in regularly on the page since I last posted, and good on you for the hard work you've been doing. :) Maybe it'd be best to just Create a new page called 'Modern Day Space Race' or some such, and if anyone has any issues, they can just rename it - and if the page is deleted and someone really wants the text from that section on wikipedia, they can just search through the revision history and use the code from there. So you could cut it out anyways, and post a link to the revision before you altered it here.
 * One problem you might find is having people restore the content - When I originally tried to work on the page, I entered a revert war with an anonymous user with a changing IP located somewhere in Japan. Whoever it was wanted their text included... If that happens again, you might have to apply for page protection. Trying to contact them is out of the question because the IP keeps changing. MichaelHenley (Talk-Contribs) 13:08, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Idea to improve List of Firsts (aka Timeline) table
I think the table would better show the status of the "race" if the USSR and US achievements were put in parallel columns. I propose changing column 3 to "USSR" and column 4 to "US", and then moving the mission names to the appropriate column, keeping the US agency name (per "List of Firsts" thread above) there after the mission, in parenthesis. Comments, please? Would anyone be upset if I went ahead and did it? JustinTime55 (talk) 20:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Hearing no objections, I made this format change. JustinTime55 (talk) 20:07, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, another table issue: it doesn't make any sense to put the Soyuz 1 death on this table; that's not really an achievement, is it? And it's not necessary since it's listed in the Deaths subsection. (Also, in the sense of a race it's not fair, since the U.S. "achieved" the first directly space mission-related casualties with the Apollo 1 fire three months earlier.) JustinTime55 (talk) 20:55, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Gemini did surpass Voshkhod 2
Please do not remove the word "passed", Driftwoodzebulin. The article (I believe) is less than perfectly structured, with "Other successes -- Earth orbit rendezvous" section so far down after "Humans in space", so perhaps you thought I meant to infer that the US beat the USSR and won the race at that time; I did not.

Though the Soviets started out ahead, the Gemini program achieved accomplishments which exceeded what the Soviets had done up to that time, and there were no Soviet manned flights during that time; therefore there is no objective way to say the US did not pass. I don't know to what sources you are referring. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:30, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

First piloted space flight
For the record, the very first pilot-controlled space flight was Alan Shepard's Freedom 7. He exercised manual control of the attitude thrusters and fired his retro-rockets himself. Yuri Gagarin controlled nothing on Vostok 1 (read the article.) It was entirely automated or controlled from the ground. On the very first man-in-space flight, Gagarin was 100% test subject and 0% pilot. Capability for manual attitude control existed on the Vostok craft, but it wasn't used until Vostok 2. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:16, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh my. Teh drama!
 * For the record, this flight happened almost a month after test subject's flight.--46.109.54.96 (talk) 13:04, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Yet another drive-by edit based on ignorance
In Cold War origins, I added: "... in 1947 Joseph Stalin decided to counter by devolping ...(ICBMs)" with citation from a Kenneth Gatland (late of the British Interplanetary Society) book, a reputable source. An anonymous editor apparently thought the year was wrong and changed it to 1957. 1947 is correct; according to Gatland, Stalin made the decision to develop ICBM's soon after WWII. If you read further in the article, you see that Korolyev (Russia's counterpart to von Braun and Maxime Faget) started developing the R-7 in 1953, which happens to be the same year Stalin died. Let's be careful out there. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:00, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Too many people think the history of something starts with the first time they are made aware of it through the news media. The "space race" did not start "with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1 artificial satellite on 4 October 1957"; the US and USSR had planned from at least 1955 to launch earth satellites for the International Geophysical Year. US Office of Naval Research considered artificial satelites in the early 1950s; Fred Singer designed a Minimal Orbital Unmanned Satellite ("Mouse") during 1951-1952. Arthur C. Clarke proposed the geostationary communications satellite in private paper 1945 and book 1951. And Clarke and Singer were not the first. There is a long history of proposals and planning for space exploration that preceded the Sputnik, Vanguard and Explorer satellites of the 1957 IGY. 76.7.116.68 (talk) 12:08, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"Recent events" belong in History of spaceflight
I have found the perfect place for the information that is out of scope of the historical Space Race; there is already an article History of spaceflight. Note I have tagged the section; I am going to allow a reasonable time for discussion, and in the absence of any reasonable objections I will move the material in about a week. JustinTime55 (talk) 19:55, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have just moved the "Recent events" section out into History of spaceflight, which covers US and Russian space programs after the Space Race, plus all subsequent programs of all nations. Please add all such information to that article and not here, from now on. Thank you. JustinTime55 (talk) 19:54, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Inappropriate "Deaths" additions
The addition of the N1 explosion to the Deaths section is inappropriate, mainly because there were no deaths. It also therefore makes no sense to call it a "diaster" (check the definition of the word.) The N1 rocket article is linked instream ("USSR secretly accepts") and the failure is mentioned in "Race to the Moon continues". JustinTime55 (talk) 15:45, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Voskhod 2 edit
To Abebenjoe: Why do you keep reverting this edit? "Too much information was removed" doesn't make any sense; it can only possibly refer to the phrase "launched by the Soviet Union". This is clear from the context of the section about Voskhod; there is no way anyone is going to be confused and think the US launched this flight, also given the context of this period in history, long before astronauts/cosmonauts were launched on other countries' spacecraft. Also, my edit makes it consistent with the previous paragraph about Voskhod 1, which does not say "launched by the Soviet Union" either. Please tell us all what you're thinking when you keep restoring "by the Soviet Union." JustinTime55 (talk) 19:42, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * First off, this article is poorly constructed, and it is easy to get confused with it, so it is not just this section. I just rewrote some of this section to make it clearer, but in reality, this whole article needs a massive rewrite, including inline citations, which this section, and the whole article for that matter, is sorely lacking.Abebenjoe (talk) 23:43, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Major revisions 17 July 2010
I was looking over the major revisions that User:Mhazard9 made today, and although in some cases they improved some aspects of the article, they also introduced new errors, both factually and stylistically. I suggest that this major rewrite be done in an user sandbox page, like User:Abebenjoe/Sandbox2, where the article can be fine-tuned and then migrated to the main article.--Abebenjoe (talk) 02:48, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

How to improve this article
Three major problems with this article: organization, writing style and significant lack of reliable inline citations. This is one of the articles on my todo list, and in the wake of the most recent attempt to rewrite this article, I'll move it up to near the very top of my list. In my opinion, I believe I can get this article to a GA rating by September or October, and in the meantime will make only minor changes to the article that deal with blatant errors, either factual or grammatical. I'll be re-writing this article in my sandbox at User:Abebenjoe/Sandbox2. I think this article can potentially be a great article, and I have worked on other FA space articles and I think this article can reach FA level again in the near-future.--Abebenjoe (talk) 04:44, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Self-contradiction

 * "With their help, particullarly Helmut Groettrup's group, he [Korolyov] reverse-engineered the A-4 and built his own version of the rocket, the R-1, in 1948."


 * "Korolyov constructed the R-1 missile, a copy of the V-2, without the Groettrup group's knowledge, based on some captured materials."

Korolyov built the R-1 either with, or without Groettrup's knowledge. Which is it? The first sentence seems to imply that he knew, though given the context of how the Soviets dealt with the Germans, I don't have any trouble believing that he didn't. What does the source say? JustinTime55 (talk) 17:00, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * My bad. Poorly worded, but it is actually a contradiction. The Groettrup group was isolated from what the rest of the Soviet design bureaus were doing after 1946, when they were moved to the Soviet Union, from eastern Germany. Although Groettrup and his fellow engineers were brought out from time to time to fix issues with the captured V-2s, and helped redraw missing or destroyed technical diagrams, they were not aware that Korolyov was building the R-1, which was a duplicate of the V-2. If he was running into trouble with the design, they would have a soviet official ask the Groettrup group how they would handle the problem.  This went on for the next three years, as they were asked to design rockets that were never built, but their innovations were incorporated in Korolyov's designs, the most obvious case of this was Groettrup's G-4 that directly competed with Korolyov's R-3 design. The G-4 design eventually became the basis for the R-7's design, essentially 5 G-4s strapped together.  I'll rework the paragraph.--Abebenjoe (talk) 18:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Used Siddiqi to clarify it. Though most of the Germans did not know explicitly about the R-1, their main task was to design a Soviet version of the A-4. Like everything else that the Groettrup group designed, their A-4 equivalent was not built, but much of their design work was absorbed into Korolyov's R-1 project. The article about the Groettrup Group could be vastly expanded, thanks to both Siddiqi and Ordway's books. It's fascinating how much these second-tier rocket engineers played in the early Soviet development of an ICBM. But that is not the scope of this article, and should be left to the one that deals with the group specifically.--Abebenjoe (talk) 21:21, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

A MILITARY CONFLICT ?!?!?
I find the "infobox military conflict" totally out of order. This radical a change was made without discussion or evidence of consensus. It is inherently controversial and biased. Is there a preponderance of reliable real-world sources who call the Space Race a military conflict? Absent such, it is original research. The NASA and Soviet space managers were not military "Commanders".

The point of including the World War II and Cold War origins section was not to brand it a military conflict, but to set it in proper historical context, and to highlight the fact that development of manned space flight required rockets large enough, which at the time required capitalization by governments, on whom the coincidental fact that these same rockets are also a good way to hurl weapons of mass destruction at the enemy was not lost. That's why it happened when it did. While this remained a publicly unmentioned subtext (and military uses of space were explored), the primary purpose of space exploration was always publicly expressed as scientific (IGY satellites, man on the Moon, space stations), and the two principal nations signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967 designed to prevent space from becoming a military theatre (a fact which probably should be highlighted more prominently in the article.) JustinTime55 (talk) 19:33, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * This article is not the history of spaceflight, and in fact was a military conflict, part of the Cold War, as quite clearly demonstrated in the origins section. Please re-read the section, because, what you are expecting is the History of Spaceflight, which this article is not about. It is a battle, a skirmish if you wish, between the two major superpowers of the mid and late twentieth century.  As part of a wider conflict, it absolutely follows that it can be adequately served by the military battles infobox.--Abebenjoe (talk) 00:02, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * We should probably include the list of battles and skirmishes, as well as casualties from enemy forces. And let's see... since the war resulted in a "U.S.-Soviet Joint Victory", we might want to include the separate peace treaty that was made with NASA (one of the listed belligerants). -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:42, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Not the History of Spaceflight
As the title suggests, the Space Race is not the history of spaceflight, which has its own article. The Space Race was a battle fought during the Cold War, as acknowledged by most scholarly and popular texts on the subject. As such, the article is being constructed to be different from the History of Spaceflight by exploring more its political/military aspects than a raw chronology of events, as this article descended into, which if kept as it was, should have been merged with the History of Spaceflight article.

In its new form, when it is completed sometime in September, it will follow the geo-political origins of the Race, some of the chronology of major events, and then its legacies. As such, it will regain its FA status in the near future. Ignoring that it was a stand-in for an actual war, is disingenuous, as it did absolutely have a military/ideological objective: beat the other side. The newly revised sections that I have written, are fully cited and will hold up to scrutiny as having a neutral point of view as stated in Wikipedia's guidelines for NPOV--Abebenjoe (talk) 00:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Broken citations
Scan the Notes section, and you see a lot of references using only authors' last names and page numbers, with no other information such as title of the work, which should have been in the first reference of each. Abebenjoe, I believe you might have inadvertently broken these while removing text containing the first citations. Can you fix this please? Thanks. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:41, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The citations are formatted the way they are, because the bibliography/reference section utilizes the author's last name, and date of publication, for sorting purposes, which is an MLA standard. This allows a writer to just use last name, date, and page numbers for the citation. Where the reference is a link to a website, for instance, it is as fully listed within the citation as possible, because it is not always possible to have the name of the author(s), the date of publication, or for that matter, who the publisher is (which might also introduce the question of its reliability). Since there are many legitimate ways to format citations on Wikipedia, the guideline for passing an FA review is that the citations be consistent throughout the article. That means each medium – be it books, journals, newspapers, websites, videos, etc... – follow the same citation format within their category.  The method I chose has passed various FA reviews, is simple and accurate, but does require the reader to look at the bibliography to get all the information related to: full authorship info, date, publisher, location, isbn, etc....  Hope that explains why they appear the way they do.--Abebenjoe (talk) 16:12, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I guess that's cleaner and easier than embedding the cites inside the ref tags, when you have multiple references at different pages in a source. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:07, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Dab link to Asian space race
Is it possible to link Asian space race in the Dablink at the very top of the page? Right now, it reads: For a discussion of all spaceflight programs to date, see... the term "Space Race", see Space Race (disambiguation). We should make mention of the Asian version there I suppose? A NG C HENRUI Talk♨ 04:49, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

New Peer Review complete
I submitted this article for peer review on the 12th of October, and the results are in! Hopefully this will give us some tasks to do now that our to do list is empty. This is the link to the peer review here. Good luck, everyone! MichaelHenley (Talk-Contribs) 13:34, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Edits to "The Soviet Moon Program"
Dear Dominictroc,

Your several edits to the "Space Race" article are appreciated, yet a bit confusing. I deleted one sentence ("The Zond had a crew of two cosmonauts, a commander and a pilot") because it conflicted with an earlier stipulation that the flights were "unmanned," with one successful flight returning its non-human passengers (tortoises) to Earth. Perhaps you can clarify.

The section is, in general, a bit confusing--especially for someone who knows little about the program you are describing. Could you please define your terms and clarify things a bit more? Also the section is entirely unsourced. We do need sourcing. Thanks!Apostle12 (talk) 21:12, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Why is there no word on Soviet Lunokhod program? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.73.87.28 (talk) 20:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Spelling of "William E. Burrows"
According to a Random House web site, the author of This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age (and several other space-related books), is William E. Burrows, a reporter for several major US newspapers and an NYU professor of journalism. His name is correct in the quote and the reference entry, but seems to be incorrectly spelled "Burroughs" in every citation note. William S. Burroughs was a Beat generation author who wrote Naked Lunch (certainly not a reliable source on the Space Race.) Apparently the misunderstanding is widespread in the real world, as a Google search of "William E. Burroughs" will turn up references to both author's books.

I am at a loss to understand how this happened; the principle of "American vs. British English" spelling cannot rationally apply to proper names (it's bad enough there is ambiguity in the spelling of non-English, e.g. Russian, names; why do we have to spread it to native English?). This needs to be fixed for what I think should be obvious reasons.

Abebenjoe, since I believe you are responsible for the citations, would you please be so kind as to correct them? (It might be a good idea to change the internal ref name tags too, just to reduce confusion.) Thanks. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:03, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Cold War section straying off-topic
One of the things keeping this article from approaching GA status, is that it has become quite bloated, albeit with well-researched details; so much so, that it's starting to read more like a master's thesis than an encyclopedia article.

There's probably a lot that should be either moved elsewhere, or deleted. As a first pass, I deleted three sentences in this section which I thought it could do without. I don't think these should be reverted wholesale, without a discussion.

The issue is not whether or not the deleted sentences are well-sourced, but that they are irrelevant to this article's topic. They might be relevant to the Cold War article, which is a larger topic.

My specific reasoning for deleting these sentences:


 * Although the primary participants' military forces never clashed directly, they expressed this conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, a nuclear arms race, and economic and technological competitions, such as the Space Race. (Cite Schmitz)

Rationale: I don't think it's necessary for the reader to have a summary here of all aspects of the Cold War (which is what this sentence is) in order to get the premise that the political/military conflict fueled the Space Race. The relevant issues are the ICBM competition, the superior US Air Force of which the Soviets were afraid, and the mutual fear of nuclear weapons. Military coalitions, aid to third-party states, proxy wars and espionage aren't directly relevant to the Space Race. The only relevant passage which could perhaps be kept is "technological competitions, such as the Space Race." The real meat of this section is in the third and following paragraphs (which I left alone, except for a NNPOV, OR phrase) where Stalin, Korolyov and von Braun start developing the missiles.

In fact, if you read the first two sentences carefully, you'll see there is some redundancy with the first sentence (proxy wars, economic competition), which more than adequately summarizes the Cold War for the purposes of this article. At the very least, these two sentences should be merged into one (which should be easy, since they both cite the same source.)


 * In simple terms, the Cold War can be viewed as an expression of the ideological struggle between communism and capitalism. (Cite Burrows)

Rationale: Again, redundant, since this is mentioned in the quote box. The wikilinks to communism and capitalism can be applied there. (There's no taboo against wikilinking quotes, right? Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, and Goddard are already wikilinked.)


 * A new fear of communism and its sympathizers swept the United States during the 1950s, which devolved into paranoid McCarthyism. With communism spreading in China, Korea, and Eastern Europe, Americans came to feel so threatened that popular and political culture condoned extensive "witch-hunts" to expose communist spies. (Cite Burrows)

Rationale: This is, in my opinion, the worst, bordering on NNPOV through unbalance (notice there is no corresponding comment on the cultural environment in the Soviet Union.) How are communist "witch hunts" or Joseph McCarthy relevant to the Space Race, which certainly would have still occurred without them? (Both "witch hunt" and "McCarthyism" are loaded, controversial terms.)

Comments? JustinTime55 (talk) 18:33, 25 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I understand your reasoning. The problem I see in deleting this material is that many people alive today have little-to-no awareness of the Cold War and the climate of near-hysteria that prevailed during that period.  "Why was the United States willing to finance such a massive, expensive undertaking?" Although admittedly oblique, the relevance of McCarthyism lies in the answer to this question.


 * The cultural environment in the Soviet Union is addressed in the section that begins "For its part..." It's important to recall that all decision-making in the Soviet Union occurred at the top (democratic centralism); what the common person thought, or feared, was of little relevance, unlike in the United States.


 * As strange as it may sound to those of us who lived through the period between 1945 and 1991, many people alive today are quite unaware of the intense ideological struggle (communism vs. capitalism) that prevailed during that period. Even the differences between the two systems have been submerged in our current U.S. debate, where ideologues conflate progressivism, socialism, communism and even fascism. There is little doubt that the Space Race would never have occurred had the struggle between communism and capitalism not manifested in the Cold War.


 * The first sentence (Although the primary participants' military forces never clashed directly, they expressed this conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, a nuclear arms race, and economic and technological competitions, such as the Space Race.) seems especially useful and concise.


 * I am in favor of keeping this information in the article. Some minor editing might, of course, be useful.  Apostle12 (talk) 21:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Wow. This is a pleasant surprise; I'm finding myself in basic agreement with most of what you say. I totally agree that people today need to understand what the Cold War was like, the nature of the Soviet government (which I still see a generation (including about half of us who lived through it) of US "hippies" as romanticizing, or third-party countries not understanding), and also that the manned space program was born of the ugly political realities of life, rather than the utopian Star Trek quest "to boldly go...".


 * I guess what I felt most strongly about was that the way the "witch hunt" and McCarthyism references were worded, makes me leery of more America-bashing. And in referring to no balancing Soviet culture statement, I didn't mean to imply any public symmetry in US/USSR decision making; just no implication that the Soviets were any less "nutty" than the US is fashionably being portrayed in that era. Perhaps the fears of the US could be worded better.


 * As I indicated, I'm basically fine with the first sentence, too. Perhaps the first two can be combined (as I said, there's some redundancy.) Maybe I'll make another, less invasive cut, and then remove the "off-topic" tag.


 * Thanks for the discussion, Apostle. JustinTime55 (talk) 22:25, 25 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Glad we have been able to define some common ground. Having grown up in Berkeley, I was acquainted with real-life members of the Communist Party who idealized life in the Soviet Union to a ridiculous degree. For me it took an extended trip to Eastern Bloc countries and the Soviet Union itself, as well as several years of concentrated work in Soviet studies, to entirely dispell any illusions about the ugly reality of, to borrow Reagan's phrase, "the Evil Empire."  Early Soviet leaders were not just "nutty;" they were evil, dangerous people who murdered countless millions of their own citizens.  We are lucky that most of the Cold War happened after Stalin died, under Soviet leaders who were somewhat less dangerous:  Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and (especially) Gorbachev.  I'm not sure how to balance U.S. McCarthyism and Soviet intransigence for the purposes of this article.


 * Re-reading the first paragraph of the "Cold War" section, I think you are correct that there is considerable redundancy between the second and third sentences; perhaps these could be tightened up with good results. As I recall, at one point these sentences appeared as a single, run-on sentence, which resulted in the current edit.  Will look forward to seeing what you come up with.


 * Cheers. Apostle12 (talk) 23:22, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

External link leads to possibly infected site
In the "External links section," after clicking on the entry "Why Did the USSR Lose the Moon Race?," I got a McAfee antivirus red warning page. There very well could be automated malware downloads from that website. Should the link be deleted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.212.189.240 (talk) 23:19, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

References in 'Advances in Technology and Education Section'
The entire section 'Advances in Technology and Education' lists benefits of the space program without any citations. This seems more like an opinion piece than factual statements. I'm concerned as to their veracity as it reads like marketing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.247.124.84 (talk) 02:17, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

They include 'Dried Fruit' as an advance of the space program for Heaven's sake. I'm pretty sure dried fruit is a technology that predates the space program by several thousand years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JFrazer1 (talk • contribs) 02:24, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Heavy emphasis on manned side only
The article text covers a lot of ground on manned side of first achivevements, but things like first lunar orbits and landings ( see Luna programme ) and pictures from the far side, first visits to to other planets ( Venera ), first remote-controlled planetary robots, first martian landing. At least on the soviet side these achievements were very much hyped up.

Im not sure how to structure or fit it in exactly, to not overclutter things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Savuporo (talk • contribs) 15:17, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Moon landing
This redirect is up for discussion. Please see WP:RFD. Simply south...... creating lakes for 5 years 19:57, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Avoiding Bias
This article is in serious risk of dicrediting itself as having a USA biased view of the topic. People are going to define "The Space Race" slightly differently, while the article is perfectly fine referring to it as the cold-war era competition between the USA and USSR for space supremacy, many people refer to the space race as specifically the race to put a man in space, which would not make as good an article but is an equally valid definition. I note in the peer review the comment "most sources claim the Space Race to be won by the US". I don't know how many of wikipedia's editors are from the US but I believe such a viewpoint would be pretty rare in any other country. Everyone I know would say "USSR won the space race, USA won the Moon Race." For a decent period the emphasis in media within the countries was clearly on "putting a man in space" and when Yuri Gagarin went up it was reported on both sides as a pretty clear cut victory for Russia. The moon race was quite widely seen as a new race, and a response to defeat in the space race. With the intro section of the article containing no mention of the winner of the space race (as i said, considered to be USSR pretty consistently by everyone outside USA) and the picture of Neil Armstrong being placed right beside the intro text it's hard for someone outside the USA not to see a USA bias. While it can be argued that the sputnik picture adds USSR balance, sputnik is referred to in the intro as the beginning of the space race not as any kind of victory, and the two pictures seem to imply that the USSR started the race and the USA won it.

Perhaps if a picture of Gagarin was included (as well as rather than replacing the Armstrong picture) and the intro text were to include something about "Within the narrower definition of the space race as the race to put someone into space the USSR were the winners of the race" then any fears of a bias would be much reduced. If this ruffles American pride too much a continuing something like "but within the wider context of the competition for superior space technology the USA was widely regarded as the victors after the successful Apollo 11 mission and the withdrawal of the USSR from moon landing attempts" might be a happy middle ground.

As the article stands though, it reads as decidedly written and edited by Americans only, which is not the standard people expect form wikipedia. NickPriceNZ (talk) 02:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I suppose it is true that most current editors have been American, though at least one Brit, one German, and one Russian have participated. What one editor says in discussion ("Most sources claim the Space Race to be won by the US") has little relevance and is not reflected in the article itself.


 * As far as who "won," the balance shifts from one side to the other until co-operation between the USSR and the US becomes the norm by 1975--a reality that continues to the present with modern-day Russia. The article gives deserved credit to every Soviet accomplishment, and it never claims an overall American "win." In the final analysis, the Space Race competition resulted in win-win for both the USSR and the US--certainly the eventual demise of the Soviet Union had nothing to do with an American "win."


 * The ideological struggle that ensued after WWII had to be experienced to understand its all-encompassing intensity; perhaps in some sectors this impact was muted, though my friends in Europe (both East and West) certainly felt the tension and understood the stakes. I think the article offers extremely accurate context in this regard. That the ideological struggle became centered on specific accomplishments in space is also difficult to deny; I recall the fear that Americans experienced after Sputnik was successfully launched in 1957. Federal, state and local legislation soon followed, funding massive increases in American educational spending.  As a Soviet specialist, I can vouch for commensurate increases in the allocation of scarce resources imposed from on high by the Kremlin.  None of this would have occurred absent the East/West ideological struggle and the relevance of space rocketry mastery to the military offense/defense issues that attended that struggle.  I think there is little evidence that the Space Race was simply "a race to see who could first put a man in space."


 * The article can always be improved, and balance is certainly key, however I hardly see it as terribly flawed in this regard. Much less does it seem in danger of discrediting itself by displaying an American bias. Perhaps you should start in, making some changes that seem appropriate to you--the suggested Gagarin photo would certainly be an appropriate addition. Apostle12 (talk) 07:04, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I took your word for it and read the whole article. After the introduction it reads very well and is very balanced, i think it's just the introduction that might put people off, i don't know how to source a photo that is legal to use on wikipedia as i have never done that before so i'm of no use for the Gagarin photo. I might try a little change in one sentence of the introduction and and see how it reads. NickPriceNZ (talk) 08:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No need to edit, it has already been changed slightly and reads better now, overall a fantastic article to be honest. NickPriceNZ (talk) 09:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There is definite room for improvement here, for example "It effectively began with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1 artificial satellite on 4 October 1957, and concluded with the co-operative Apollo-Soyuz Test Project human spaceflight mission in July 1975." is an interesting pov, looks like the Russians were in no hurry whatsoever to launch sputnik 1, as there was no race until after the launch, so was the program just a gentleman's hobby prior to the launch ? Penyulap   talk 13:38, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Need a timeline
I came here looking for the relative timing of Gagarin's flight vs. Carpenter and Glenn. I know they were within months, and the info is there, but a timeline would have answered the question in seconds.

I see by the comments that there used to be a timeline but it was removed. Did it end up at Timeline of space exploration? If so, that's not really a space race timeline, as it only has firsts. Carpenter's flight isn't even on there, because it wasn't a first, Gagarin having preceded Carpenter into space. But Carpenter's flight is an important milestone in the space race, as he was the first US man in space.

I'd like to see a timeline that includes first Soviet man in space, first US man in space, first Soviet spacewalk, first US spacewalk, etc. Kendall-K1 (talk) 14:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Good idea...go for it! You might begin by finding the old timeline, checking it for accuracy and thoroughness.  Apostle12 (talk) 05:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * If you give me a list of dates, I'll paint you a pretty picture for the article. That may help make the information approachable. Penyulap   talk 21:44, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Inclusion of unmanned probes
This paragraph recently inserted, has some problems:
 * "The race to the Moon started with unmanned missions. The Soviet Luna program crashed the first probe Luna 2 on the Moon in 1959, Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the Moon later in the year, and Luna 9 became the first craft to achieve a soft landing on the Moon in 1966.  Luna 17 was the first rover in 1970, and Luna 16 was the first automated return of samples to the Earth."


 * The article at one time (a year or two ago) included unmanned space probes to the Moon (plus Venus and Mars) in the 1950's to 1970's, but this was removed when someone apparently decided this article should concentrate on human spaceflight. Putting this paragraph here just seems to interrupt the continuity of the article as it's now written.
 * The paragraph is unbalanced, including only Soviet probes and ignoring the ones the United States launched.
 * The first sentence, "The race to the Moon started..." is arguably untrue, and ambiguates the definition of the word "race" as we're using it here. The rest of the article makes it clear that the "race" with the Soviets to the Moon (landing a man) was started by President Kennedy in 1961. The USSR was sending probes in the late 1950's, but that wasn't an explicit competition with the US.

We need to discuss these issues and reach a consensus on whether or not, and if so, how, the unmanned probes should be re-added to the article. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)


 * If only manned missions to the moon count, maybe we should remove Sputnik, and the orbital flights.  And the space race could be redefined as putting a man on the moon, with nothing else counting.  But I do not think that would be a good idea.  Clearly the race was all about "firsts", and Kennedy is not the only person who can define which ones count.


 * The truth is that the Soviets nailed almost all of the Firsts except for the final, big one, man on the moon. Which means that both USA and Soviets can claim a victory of sorts.


 * I am not particularly wedded to my paragraph above, and agree about the flow. (As to being unbalanced, the comment said TODO, add USA, but I don't think there were any of note.) Why not reinstate the earlier paragraph and tidy it up.  Certainly the race to the moon must include the Luna flights that I had mentioned.  It would also be good to add the first pictures from the surface of the moon, by Luna 9 -- they could not be copyright as they are Soviet.


 * If someone wants to do a better job, then great. Otherwise I will put back the paragraph in its own section to fix the flow, as something is better than nothing.  Improvements are most welcome.


 * 118.208.133.15 (talk) 23:51, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with both of you. I figure you can't tell the whole story unless you have both sides at the very least, and why was there a race anyhow ? Clearly if the article is just going to divide the race into human spaceflight, well, maybe that is just fiddling with the starting lines. Can we find some refs for where each side thinks it started, because I don't think we should define it that way ourselves unless the article title or lede disambiguates. 118.208.133.15, if we say "the final, big one, man on the moon" you'd leave out the rivalry over mars, the cold war may well be over, but look at the American frosty attitude to the Chinese today. Penyulap   talk 21:42, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Colbert identifies the Space Race as a proxy war
Colbert quote: __________________________


 * But for God's sake, you brought a plaque up there which reads:


 * "WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND"


 * Come on! The Space Race was a proxy war against the Soviets.  That plaque should have read:


 * "SUCK IT, IVAN! SINCERELY, JFK'S GHOST"

__________________________

That quote is from the Colbert Report's piece on Neil Armstrong from last Friday (starts immediately after the commercial break): http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/fri-august-31-2012-james-carville http://colbertnewshub.tumblr.com/

I see this to be worthy of inclusion in the article. It will be a huge help for people trying to understand what the Space Race really was.--Tdadamemd (talk) 08:42, 3 September 2012 (UTC)


 * You have got to be kidding. A statement of opinion from a political satirist (not to be confused with a journalist,) cannot in any way, shape or form be considered a reliable source for this topic. And this wouldn't pass the undue weight test in a "criticism" section. People can make their own judgements as to what it was about just fine, from simple presentation of the facts. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:36, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Out-of-scope detail about Glenn
The following paragraph added by a new user, on balance detracts more than it adds to this article (reasons given after):


 * "The first American man to ever orbit around the Earth was named John Glenn and was not only an astronaut, but also a military officer who became a US Senator years after his space exploration. His mission was the third crewed space flight conducted by the United States. It was a part of what NASA called the Mercury project whose objective what to send a man in orbit and had various missions from 1961 to 1963.  Glenn’s mission, as mentioned above, was the third of the program and the first to successfully achieve the goal set by the NASA. Three others, two in 1962 and one in 1963, followed it. Mercury-Atlas 7, Mercury-Atlas 8 and Mercury-Atlas 9 orbited three times, 6 times and twenty-two times respectively. It was on February 20 1962 that the American spacecraft Friendship 7 departed from Cape Canaveral in Florida and successfully achieved orbit for the first time for the Americans.  The spacecraft was pushed by an atlas rocket and the capsule separated from the booster rocket after reaching a speed of 17 500 miles an hour and at an altitude of 500 000 feet. It was the balance of the speed of the craft and the Earth’s gravity that allowed the capsule to reach orbit.  The Mercury-Atlas 6 mission lasted a little under five hours and John Glenn circled the Earth three times during it.  Interestingly enough, much later, Glenn also became the oldest human being, at 77 years old, to travel to space. He joined the Discovery space shuttle for a nine days mission from October 29 to November 7 in 1998 thirty-six years after his famous flight. "


 * Glenn's subsequent Senate career and space shuttle flight are totally out of scope of the Space Race, as would have been the subsequent career of whatever career Gagarin might have had if he had survived like Glenn. Gagarin's death is appropriately mentioned (later on, at the appropriate place) because it did occur while the Race (Cold War) was still on.
 * Details about the Atlas rocket, orbital speeds, and what keeps a spacecraft in orbit, are similarly off-topic. They also introduce a bias by {{WP:UNDUE|undue weight]]; similar facts were equally true about Gagarin's flight.
 * There are other errors of grammar, spelling, and missing wikilinks (e.g. "atlas rocket"), plus awkward style ("first American man to ever orbit around the Earth was named...", "whose objective what to send a man in orbit and had various missions from 1961 to 1963") which needlessly add to required cleanup effort.
 * The rest of the Mercury program after Glenn isn't covered; that should be corrected by inserting a paragraph later on (probably a bit of restructuring is in order to show how the Soviets exceeded Mercury's endurance and simultaneous flight capability with Vostok.) It interrupts the chronological flow to stick this in front of the paragraph in which Kennedy launches the Moon race.

I believe it's a reasonable compromise to keep Marie1889's edit about Explorer I (still could use some cleanup), but not the Glenn edit. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:29, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Out of place newbie contribution
I reverted the following addition to the First artificial satellites section added by Skbierman:


 * The use of robotics in space played a key role in allowing humans to travel to the moon in the future. Robots were sent out into space before humans ventured into the frontier.  The first of these was Luna 3, launched by the Soviets in 1959.  It successfully unveiled the dark side of the moon, giving us a realistic visual for the first time.  The United States followed suit in the 1960’s by sending a series of probes named Ranger to find out what awaited the pending arrival of the astronauts.  These robots paved the way for the first human space travel in the following decade. (gives ref Ian Ridpath, http://www.ianridpath.com/moon/moon1.htm, "Exploring the Moon-The First Robotic Explorers" in the edit summary)

All very true, but this article has structure, and a consensus has developed about what it should include. Several points:
 * It used to have a section devoted to unmanned lunar and planetary probes, but it was decided this article wasn't about the history of space exploration, and should instead focus on the political aspects of the US/Soviet competition in the 1950s-70s period.
 * The Ranger probes, as you say were launched in the 1960s; there is a later section for that. This paragraph is specifically about the first Sputniks and US satellites.
 * We must make sure we keep a neutral point of view, keep to the facts without making unverified judgements, and make sure we don't just copy the opinions of others. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Astronautica is Unreliable
I have seen too many articles there that are made up by pro-German propaganda writer(s) without any reliable sources to backup their claims. In one of the cases for example regarding the "Early Russian Ballistic Missiles" article, it says: "It was German aerodynamic analysis that came up with the unique conical rocket configuration adopted by Korolev for the R-7 and N-1. It was the German team that suggested fundamental features adopted by Korolev in the R-7 - integral propellant tanks, placement of the liquid oxygen tank forward of the fuel tank. German guidance teams developed a radio-corrected guidance technique that was adopted for the first generation of Soviet ballistic missiles. German-developed engines were used by Glushko as the basis for those of the same missiles."

Okay, that right there is straight up negligence of the major Russian contribution to space and rocketry age. The article makes it look like that the Germans created a R-7 rocket-kit and the Russians just tied the screws together and took the credit for the whole thing. Give me the evidence that the G-4 have anything in common with the R-7 rocket boosters, as matter of fact I even want anyone to to give me the real G-5 blueprint(s) WITH VALID SOURCES and their specifications of what they were designed to achieve and how exactly they co-relate with the R-7, because I don't trust the pictures that are represented at that site(windows paint was not available back in the 1940-50s). The sources I've seen there, links to Olaf Przybilski who have not been able to provide any reliable sources for many of his claims. So how can we trust this website? It mixes truth with lies obviously. I don't understand how this information after all these years still ends up on wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.73.134.38 (talk) 23:33, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Celebrated as triumph for all mankind?

 * "When the flight was publicly announced, it was celebrated around the world as a great triumph, not just for the Soviet Union, but for mankind itself. Yet it once again shocked and embarrassed the United States." (Ref. Hall (2001) (Emphasis added)

Since the citation is given at the end, I can't tell whether it is meant to verify just the "shocked and embarrassed" statement, or the previous sentence, which states the whole world celebrated it as mankind's triumph. While it is recognized today (out of the context of the Cold War) as the achievement of the first human in space, I find it extremely difficult to believe that, at the time it was universally perceived as such. The Soviet government, as ar as I know, never claimed the purpose of their space program was to benefit all mankind, being concerned mainly with proving the military and technological might of the Soviet state and "the glorious Communist revolution." "Around the world" certainly includes the United States, most of whose citizens at the time were scared as hell (not just "embarrassed once again") and did not necessarily see this as a triumph of all mankind. ("Mankind itself" is a clumsy phrase.) The first sentence sounds like someone's spin, and since I don't have immediate access to the cited source, I can't tell whether it's the authors', or the Wikipedia editor's spin. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:55, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Start of the Space Race
The United States didn't spontaneously decide to launch a satellite when the Sputnik was announced (and neither did the Soviets). This took two years of preparation. The US made the first decision to launch at the International Geophysical Year in 1955, and the Soviets reacted with their decision to launch four days later; this effectively started the race. Sputnik is the first recognizable milestone, but that doesn't mean that started the race. Do not edit war; don't change the introduction without discussion. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:40, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Category: Astronomical controversies?
User:Solomonfromfinland apparently created Category:Astronomical controversies, and recently added it to this article. Why do you think the Space Race was an "astronomical controversy"?

I think in including "Controversies in astronomy and spaceflight" when creating the category, you are conflating two things that aren't in fact related. Astronomy is a scientific discipline, and scientists can disagree about theories of astronomy. Spaceflight, by contrast, isn't just the science of astronomy; it is an engineering discipline (and could be categorized specifically with transportation) based on creating vehicles to fly in space. And any "controversies" that arise in spaceflight are basically political in nature. (I also don't think it's appropriate to categorize spaceflight accidents and failures as "controversies"; controversy means people disagree, and no one disagrees that failures and accidents are bad things which shouldn't happen.) The category should be broken out into a separate one for spaceflight, if you feel it's necessary to categorize these as such. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:52, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps I can break up the category I created, splitting off part into "Category:Controversies in spaceflight" or something like that, which could be a subcategory of Category:Astronomical controversies. (I have long regarded spaceflight as a part of astronomy.)--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 16:00, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Ongoing space race
Several Asian countries are currently engaged in a space race. India's propaganda has been enhanced with its Mars Orbiter Mission reaching Mars orbit. I think that this article should not limit itself to the USA-Russia race, as it is still happening elsewhere. I propose to expand this article with the Asian space race. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 19:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose This article covers the historical, cold war race between the US and the USSR. As such, the "new race" is entirely out of scope. Expanding it has been tried before, and rejected. (Check the archives of this page.) Which is not to say that a new Asian space race article isn't warranted.  Oops; I just typed that, expecting it to be a redlink, and look -- surprise, surprise. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:35, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Gagarin's FAI record controversy
This sentence seems to be inaccurate:


 * Under Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (International Federation of Aeronautics) FAI qualifying rules for aeronautical records, pilots must both take off and land with their craft, so the Soviet Union kept the landing procedures secret until 1978, when they finally admitted that Gagarin did not land with his spacecraft.

In comparison, it is written on the page Vostok 1:


 * The FAI rules in 1961 required that a pilot must land with the spacecraft to be considered an official spaceflight for the FAI record books. Although some contemporary Soviet sources stated that Gagarin had parachuted separately to the ground, the Soviet Union officially insisted that he had landed with the Vostok; the government forced the cosmonaut to lie in press conferences, and the FAI certified the flight. The Soviet Union did not admit until 1971 that Gagarin had ejected and landed separately from the Vostok descent module.

In contrast, the German article de:Wostok 1 refers to a detailed report published on April 13, 1961, in the East German newspaper "Junge Welt" where the ejection of Gagarin from the spacecraft was described and displayed in a sketch.

Thus, on the one hand correct accounts of the landing were published in many Eastern Block newspapers. On the other hand, Soviet officials indeed attempted to hide this from FAI by writing in the records file: "...Gagarin landed with the Vostok spaceship..."

At the page of The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum it is stated:


 * They prepared their documents for the FAI omitting this fact. This led everyone to believe that Gagarin had landed inside his spacecraft.  It was not until four months later, when German Titov became the second human to orbit the Earth and the first person to spend a full day in space, when the controversy began to brew.  Titov owned up to ejecting himself.  This led to a special meeting of the delegates to the FAI to reexamine Titov’s spaceflight records.  The conclusion of the delegates was to rework the parameters of human spaceflight to recognize that the great technological accomplishment of spaceflight was the launch, orbiting and safe return of the human, not the manner in which he or she landed.  Gagarin and Titov’s records remained on the FAI books.  Even after Soviet -made models of the Vostok spacecraft  made it clear that the craft had no braking capability, the FAI created the Gagarin Medal that it awards annually to greatest aviation or space achievement of that year.

Indeed, Titov states in his FAI records file:
 * At low altitude I separated from the spaceship with the seat. After that the parashute system began functioning with which I performed landing.

So it looks like already in 1961 or 1962 it became fully clear, that Gagarin ejected himself from the spaceship. The claims that this was kept secret by the Soviets until 1971 or 1978 seem to be wrong. I suggest to remove this controversial statement from this article. It is not really important here. The details can be described in the Vostok 1 article.

--Off-shell (talk) 14:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Good detective work. I think we should summarize here the fact that the Soviets attempted briefly to deceive, and then the FAI changed their rule, citing source 5, besides correcting the full details at Vostok 1. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:09, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Either removing the sentence here or reformulating it, both is fine with me. I just don't know how to put it concisely. If you can, please, correct it. --Off-shell 19:10, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Variables for American success
I have moved the following recent addition here for discussion:

"Although it seemed evident that the Soviet Union would win the race, the United States reached ultimate success in the space competition in 1969. The US did not orbit a satellite until January 31, 1958, four months after Sputnik 1. Overall, the United States possessed far more sophisticated applications satellites and landed men on the moon numerous times compared to the Soviet Union. (Brown, 2011, p.177) NASA was created nine months after Sputnik, and made a prestige-based manned lunar program its majority in late 1959. The U.S. Congress created NASA and approved the funds requested by President Kennedy for a manned mission to the moon. Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon in 1961. The success of this mission is often used to commemorate America’s triumph in the space race. The United State's success can be explained by success, which is the dependent variable, and three independent variables: the focuses of the space programs, the economic philosophies of the two states, and secrecy among the respective scientific communities. − Success is the dependent variable of the Space Race. Both programs were very successful compared to nations, who were lacking in space efforts. The United States and the Soviet Union were virtually the only two superpowers in the Space Race. The United States were considered more successful, because they developed the Saturn V, which was a super-booster that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon, and whose power the Russians were never able to match. The Apollo-Saturn system was far more sophisticated than the Russian's systems. in the 1970s, the space race shifted from the moon to low Earth orbit (LEO). The United States produced Skylab, which was a larger and far more complex space system then its Russian counterpart's module, Salyut. − Focus, is one of the independent variables supporting the United State's success. The Soviet Union focuses its costs into the exploration of the planets, while the United States focused space research on earthbound needs. The United states eventually turned its focuses on grand actions in space after these actions would immediately translate into increased geostrategic influence. Following the launch of Sputnik, the Soviets concentrated on bio-astronautic flights, while the United States focused on communications satellites. The USSR focused on space activity that would return profits to their economy, failing to realize the value of applications satellites for many years. The United States saved $38 billion for its economy through the achievements of applications satellites by the end of the 1970s. The Soviets focused on opportunities to promote space propaganda. They made three attempts to hit the moon in 1959; Luna 2 succeeded, carrying more than 150 hammer-and-sickle emblems of the USSR to scatter over the moon's surface for propaganda purposes. (Brown, 2011, p.179) These emblems took up space and weight in Luna 2 that could have been reserved for scientific instruments. − The second independent variable explaining the success of the U.S is their economic philosophy. The Soviet space program had a greater relative cost than the American because they were half as productive as the U.S, and their technological base was inferior. The Soviet satellite design philosophy was an extreme economic force that was heavily influenced by communism and run by a highly centralized organization. On the other hand, the American economic approach was founded on market mechanisms that could equilibrate the management of resources. − The third independent variable is secrecy, or lack of it. The Soviet scientific establishment suffered from excessive secrecy. For example, the scientists that worked in the Soviet space program were not permitted to participate in the launching of space vehicles. They were also kept in the dark about the hardware and operational characteristics of the spacecrafts. The openness of the American space program led to the success of the U.S. The lack of secrecy in the U.S allowed the American establishment to thrive and flourish, while the Soviet Union was inhibited by excessive secrecy."

- User talk:Mayamcgee

Missing section
Long time ago this article had a section called Animals in space. Then it was removed reasoning that "it doesn't really belong in the article, more a history of spaceflight section than Space Race..." I disagree with this. Sending animals into orbit and proving that they return alive was an important step between the first satellites and the first human flights. This was thus part of the race. I propose to restore this section. --Off-shell (talk) 11:00, 4 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't believe this really warrants its own section; it was not a major goal of the Space Race, but served, as you say, to support human spaceflight. The preliminary animal flights can be mentioned in context as sentences in the First human in space and First American in space sections. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:13, 4 June 2015 (UTC)


 * After thinking for a while about this issue, I believe to understand the different views of this issue. From the American point of view, these were just experiments to support human space flight. However, the Soviets also used these experiments for propaganda purposes. The flights of dogs were announced as major achievements in spaceflight (first animal in orbit (Laika), first surviving animals in orbit (Belka & Strelka), longest stay of dogs in orbit (Ugolyok and Veterok)). The flight of Laika was claimed a milestole nearly as important as Sputnik. Note that usual technical developments and experiments were kept absolutely secret by the Soviet. They published only information which had a propaganda value. In this case they even issued post stamps. In this sence these events were also part of Space Race and need to be mentioned. --Off-shell (talk) 13:56, 19 July 2015 (UTC)