Russian Space Flight - Part One

With all the talk about commercial spaceflight, Constellation (NASA's current exploration program), Chinese human spaceflight and Russia providing the bridge to the ISS after the Shuttle is retired, it's only natural that mention of NASA's crowning achievement come up, along with the reminder that it's not only an achievement no one else has made, but it's shouldn't be this big a deal to go back. I disagree with the latter and hope no one strives to go elsewhere until we've well and truly conquered the moon, but that's another set of blog topics.

The thing is it's easy to lose sight of all the Soviet/Russian human (and other) spaceflight programs have achieved. NASA definitely deserves kudos for the incredible task it did back in the 60's (notwithstanding the criticism that we've gone a long time living off that past glory, but, again, I digress), but I'd be a poor student of space history if I didn't acknowledge all the Russians/Soviets have done (I'm going to just say Russians from now on - I'm lazy) to further spaceflight. Someone said they were ahead of us technologically in the beginning. I say, not really - the playing field was actually pretty level with both of us working of the German designs. The Russians were driven by many different drives and had a different focus than we did. Not to say worse, not to say better, but different. And they had a number of tragic setbacks we managed to avoid. Even so, the list of achievements is long - I got this from Wikipedia and it may not be complete. I left the links in so that you can explore them and get comfortable with the notion that these are valid.

• 1957: First intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 Semyorka
• 1957: First satellite, Sputnik 1
• 1957: First animal to enter Earth orbit, the dog Laika on Sputnik 2
• 1959: First firing of a rocket in Earth orbit, first man-made object to escape Earth's orbit, Luna 1
• 1959: First data communications, or telemetry, to and from outer space, Luna 1.
• 1959: First man-made object to pass near the Moon, first man-made object in Solar orbit, Luna 1
• 1959: First probe to impact the Moon, Luna 2
• 1959: First images of the moon's far side, Luna 3
• 1960: First animals to safely return from Earth orbit, the dogs Belka and Strelka on Sputnik 5.
• 1960: First probe launched to Mars, Marsnik 1
• 1961: First probe launched to Venus, Venera 1
• 1961: First person in space (International definition) and in Earth orbit, Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1, Vostok programme
• 1961: First person to spend over a day in space Gherman Titov, Vostok 2 (also first person to sleep in space).
• 1962: First dual manned spaceflight and approach, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4
• 1963: First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 6
• 1964: First multi-man crew (3), Voskhod 1
• 1965: First EVA, by Aleksei Leonov, Voskhod 2 *See note below
  
• 1965: First probe to hit another planet (Venus), Venera 3
• 1966: First probe to make a soft landing on and transmit from the surface of the moon, Luna 9
• 1966: First probe in lunar orbit, Luna 10
• 1967: First unmanned rendezvous and docking, Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188. (Until 2006, this had remained the only major space achievement that the US had not duplicated.)
• 1969: First docking between two manned craft in Earth orbit and exchange of crews, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5
• 1970: First samples automatically returned to Earth from another body, Luna 16
• 1970: First robotic space rover, Lunokhod 1
• 1970: First data received from the surface of another planet (Venus), Venera 7
• 1971: First space station, Salyut 1
• 1971: First probe to orbit another planet (Mars), first probe to reach surface of Mars, Mars 2
• 1975: First probe to orbit Venus, first photos from surface of Venus, Venera 9
• 1984: First woman to walk in space, Svetlana Savitskaya (Salyut 7 space station)
• 1986: First crew to visit two separate space stations (Mir and Salyut 7)
• 1986: First permanently manned space station, Mir, which orbited the Earth from 1986 until 2001
• 1987: First crew to spend over one year in space, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov on board of TM-4 - Mir

*On the "first EVA", it should be noted that it depends on the definition. Leonov never left the inflatable airlock but he definitely was suited and was exposed to vacuum outside his vehicle. Additionally, Leonov nearly was nearly trapped out there when his suit was too stiff to bend and drastically overheated (a chronic problem with early EVAs). He ended up bleeding air from his suit to get back inside. Pretty scary. The coolest EVA stories of all time can be found here.

It's a list that would do any country credit. Even today, there are things they do better than we do, like automated rendezvous. The Soyuz rocket has an admirable track record as well. Not that we don't have our own specialties and strengths, but that's a good thing. If we learn, shore up our weakness with learned strengths and do the same for others, it all brings us closer to a viable human space exploration.

And that, my friends, is for all mankind.

(I'm planning to write blogs on this topic most of the week. I don't know if I'll finish Russian spaceflight in the week, but I'll slip into next week if necessary).