The most incredible feat the soviets and Russians achieved with this rocket is to make it so reliable that going to space became almost something trivial.
@@AnarchySane hmmm.... no, not yet at least. I hope for success across the board for all companies and organisations. SpaceX, Blue Horizon, NASA, ESA, RosKosmos, etc. but spacex is nowhere near as trivial as the soyuz. the tech in the soyuz is so simple and so reliable it's insane. of course, once spacex can launch 60 of them a year without losing a crewed one for decades it will be different, but for now all I can do is be sad that a shit government has that tech
What is most impressive about Soyuz is it's safety record. By the end of the program it had accumulated dozens of successful launches safely carrying people into orbit. Even a launch failure late in the program impressed American engineers with the safety of the launch vehicle - the launch suffered booster failure late in the boost phase. Normally what occurs then is that aerodynamic forces rip the vehicle apart, inevitably a fatal situation, except with Soyuz. The cosmonaut initiated an abort, the manned capsule successfully separated, and the occupants survived a high g ballistic return to the Earth's surface with almost no injury. The capsule separated just as the vehicle began to break up - they were hundreds of miles down range of the launch pad and were traveling over 5000 miles per hour. IMO no US manned vehicle would have survived that circumstance, though there was a procedure considered that would have allowed the shuttle to survive a high speed abort, it did not include catastrophic booster failure. The soviet engineering was mind boggling. That said it is my understanding that if the capsule had delayed separation for even a handful of seconds, or if the vehicle had been moving slightly faster, it would have been destroyed.
You must have failed science back in high school (or you’re just a kid who hasn’t gone yet), but when the first stage is “late in the booster phase” there aren’t any “aerodynamic forces” to effect the vehicle in any meaningful way as they’re basically out of the atmosphere. Also, I watch this particular launch you’re drooling over and the failure mode (while pathetic) wasn’t a big deal and didn’t come anywhere close to such an emergency that the capsule escape system would’ve been dealing with anything challenging whatsoever… 🤦♂️
this why 'space race' is an absurd concept. when you're sitting at home, and your friend is already at some location you want to go to, only a moron would claim that you're racing your friend there. yet this is exactly the situation that the 'space race' describes.
@@Constant_Of_Morality Soyuz 1 was a failure in what was then a new capsule design (Previously they had used one based on the Vostok) the launcher has had very few failures at all and almost no major changes the the lower stages.
6:40 as a linguist and etymologist, I would just like to add my 5 cents to this... Sputnik = s - put' - nik. The main word is "put'" , which in English took it's form in "path". Russian "put'" and English "path'" is of the same origin. "S" just means "with" or more precisely " co - " (like co host). And "nik" is just a case sensitive ending. *So, Sputnik = co path entity (follower).*
And the "put" (пут) is pronounced as the English word "put", not "putt", so "spootnik" not "sputtnik" as in the commentary. The commentator also gets Союз (Soyuz) wrong but so do most English speakers. The stress is on the second syllable so it's more like "Sa-YOOZ". And, as for Королёв (Korolyov), no idea how the commentator came up with his pronunciation! Russian pronunciation apart, thanks for an excellent and informative video!
@@Procyon7986 You'd think if you were going to make an extensive documentary, you would do the most basic thing and get pronunciation correct along with the technical and historical facts. Something like that, just goes to ruin what might have been an otherwise excellent effort and demonstrates a lack of completeness.
Thank you! This nevers stopped bothering me, it's just such a little thing but it can get so frustrating at times 😅 especially for something so historic, so significant, something that should be considered an achievement for all mankind regardless of origins or intentions
@@JKRoss-zm3zu Ну откуда об этом знать тем кто школу не окончил и прыгал все время в тапках надеясь что чего нибудь дадут. Потом ехал на велосипеде и мечтал что станет вот вот европейцем и тут жизнь сразу же наладится, главное помнить кто твой хозяин.
@@unlomtrashмногоступенчатые ракеты Кондратюк раньше Циолковского предложил, ну они независимо друг от друга изучали космическую тему примерно в одно время.
It’s kind of weird to think, that for all of human history, with its myths and tales and stories, we have only know that the far side of the moon looks like for 65 years. Say what you want about how they got there and their safety, but the soviets knew how to build a rocket.
Yes - and their engines (never used due to program cancellation) for their moon rocket were literally decades ahead of their time, were far more efficient than anything the US had, and were considered impossible by American engineers when they first heard of them. The Russians are intelligent, practical people and their education in the physical sciences is rigorous.
@@gustavgnoettgen they did. The Nk-33 engine, meant for the uprated N1F rocket, and a direct descendant of the Nk-15 on the N1, is used on the modern Soyuz 2-1v. Some were also sold to america after the fall of the USSR and put on the Antares series of rockets (under the new name AJ-26)
As an American, I can totally recognize and respect that it's a BEAST and WORKHORSE. Never understood why white people are supposed to be against each other anyway, especially after the fall of communism. They do things differently, and there's obviously some very smart, educated and aspirational people in Russia. That's the diversity that would be our strength. They also are ballsy and do things we wouldnt try due to safety concerns. They've had to do everything they've done on a much smaller budget as well. Would be great if we could collaborate more, but it's notable the amount we do even right now and have for years as we were embarrassingly unable to put any people in space for a decade+ after retiring the space shuttle. We had our guys go to Roscosmos and hitch a ride with them, requiring learning new language, systems, procedures etal.
As an American? Who cares for that? Just state your comment, and it's your people who wants to rule others and tell them what to do and up to what level, and the US can't live without creating an enemy...
And I'll tell you what happens next.) The Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle will be in operation until the end of this decade, after which it will be replaced by the Amur launch vehicle, which is currently being developed in Russia. The Amur launch vehicle will be twice as effective as the Soyuz-2. Liquefied natural gas and oxygen will be used as fuel on the Amur launch vehicle.
@@amberglow-pi3oc There is no such launch vehicle as Soyuz-7. Production of the Soyuz-5 launch vehicle, an improved version of the Zenit-2 launch vehicle, is currently underway. It will be used at the Baikonur and Vostochny cosmodromes. The Amur launch vehicle is being developed as part of the Amur-SPG development work, the first launch is scheduled for 2028 from the Vostochny cosmodrome.
14:28 "arguably" would fit better than "ultimately". For the USSR, all achievements were done. A manned mission on the moon had little to no meaning for them an engineers hat to urge the bureau a lot to be funded at all. USSR had reached moon, venus, got all the firsts around the Earth itself, reached, orbited, impacted, landed first on the moon. The manned race to the moon was a race simply fabricated by the USA. They were racing... alone. It is an impressive and significant achievement non the less, but to call it a win in the space race is like saying you won a marathon when you ran alone after you've lost all other marathons before where you've had a competitor. All in all, that's something a sore loser would do. Come up with new races not until you win a race, but until you bored your so far victorious enemy out in participating at all. Regardless, I am happy the US has not given up on the goal and created this defining moment in their space presence. Edit: What they really lost is the leadership in space, not the space race itself. At the time the US landed on the moon, USSR landed a vessel on Venus and later on Mars. While for the moral of humanity the moon landing might be more significant, scientifically and from an engineering standpoint, landings on two different planets are as if not more impressive.
manned mission on the moon has never taken place. and it's not a conspiracy theory. IF this ever happened, NASA wouldn't have any problem to do it again. Hollywood fraud
It's interesting how we may accept the oversize design of the F1 engine and its flawless record in spite of the inherent difficulties that cannot be fixed through the use of baffles as stated in revisionist efforts to justify the official record. Near-Earth orbit is a reality while the moon lay over one thousand times further distant so that the original F1 engine would not be necessary to reach orbit with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement. Did they leave near-Earth orbit? . . As we see Earth from over half the distance to the moon, and we see blue light flooding in through the window -- when only a moment before, the Earth was far distant in what appears to be very low light conditions . . and it was very interesting to see straight line formations of cloud fronts extending for over 6000 miles across the earth -- something that has never occurred in the meteorological record . . framed by the round window of the command module with a much smaller portion of the Earth's surface in view under greatly reduced exposure settings. When those exposure settings return to normal in the unedited version, as the camera continued to roll, we see a large amount of light flooding in through the same window, the only source of which can be the Earth without a change in orientation of the spacecraft while in orbit.
I questioned that as well. I found a source claiming that it did that struck me as marginally reliable. While not crossfeeding, the stage-and-a-half configuration on Atlas would have faced some of the same technical problems. I believe SpaceX had originally intended to crossfeed on Falcon Heavy, but abandoned those plans in favor of throttling down the center core.
@@disorganizedorg At that time, throttling had not yet been implemented. The "simply" developers loaded 2 times more fuel into the central core. It is desirable to introduce crossfeeding at the development stage, during the operation of the engine at the first stage. Integrated parallel design with three propellant ballons, which were made in the first atlases, of high-strength heat-resistant titanium-aluminum alloy with a minimal heat shield, control system and parafoil. For RTLS and full reusability without propulsive landing with a 3-cable aero-finisher to avoid landing gear.
The Soviet Union did not loose the space race, it only lost the race to the Moon, it beat the US in every other category pretty much, but it's not that important anyway, all of those achievements were to the benefit of science and humanity and everything both sides learned during it helped everyone a lot.
Actually no significant achievement after that, except Venus hard landing. European Space, Japanese Space, Indian Space programs and NASA still sending space probes to other planets and asteroids. Last time Roscosmos tried to send to the moon and Mars failed.
Bold statement "USSR lost space race"... 3 minutes passed: "Soyuz was THE ONLY way to get to ISS". Orly? USSR: First satellite, first living creature in space, first man in space, first space station, firs landing on the moon, venus, mars, first world-wide communication network, etc. US: first crew on the moon. Did I get it right?
@@sergipol99 Yes, Venera program resulted in several Venus landings. There are color photos, sound recordings and soil analysis. True, one time they mistakenly analysed the probe's camera cover, instead of soil, but most of the landings were quite a success.
I will add that not all launches are to the East. Launches to both Polar and Sun-Synchronous orbits are mostly either North or South. For political reasons, Israel launches their orbital rockets to the West.
Its a beautifully engineered design, no doubt with plenty if incremental upgrades over the last 60 years. Its like how Boeing got it right with the 707 and is still using the basic airframe even today with the 737 (which has the 707's fuselage).
I never did understand Boeing reluctance to replace the 737. with new Airbus designs coming through its time to reconsider this and develop a replacement for the 737.
0:15 "has gone relatively unchanged since the" - LOL!! It's like saying that we still drive a Ford Model T! The reality is that from the hull technology, to the engines and electronics, everything has been revised many times. Р-7 - Спутник - Спутник-3 - Полёт - Луна - Восток - Восток-2 - Восток-2М - Восход - Молния - Молния-М - Союз - Союз-Л - Союз-М - Союз-У - Союз-У2 - Союз-ФГ - Союз-СТ-А - Союз-СТ-Б - Союз-2ЛК - Союз-2.1а - Союз-2.1б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2М -
Some notes: the image used to represent the R7 is clearly no an R7 as it has what seemes to be 6 side boosters whereas the R7 only had 4 rocket staging in the form of tandem stages was only theoretical at the time of the R7s development, so parallell staging was less an improvment of the design and more an alternate route. Parallell staging also has little to do with dead weight. that weight is gonna be there whether the engine is running or not. the reason is that no one had tried starting a liquid fuelled engine in flight before, so it was considered more reliable to light the sustainer engine on the ground. (the first rocket to light a (liquid fueled) rocekt engine in flight was the Vanguard 1.) (Also all stages in a rocket except the payload are "essentially a fuel tank with engines at the bottom") The R7 did not feature crossfeed between the outer and inner stages. the core stage burned for longer due to having bigger fuel tanks. It is the RD-108, not the R108. As can be seen written on the engine in the picture shown While "sputnik" does indeed mean satellite. the name of the satellite was "Простейший Спутник-1" or just "Спутник 1" so sputnik is indeed it's name. (also the graphic showcasing sputnik has it sitting upside down in a modern fairing with it's antennas bent) Laika was not first in space, but rather first in orbit. The honour of first in space goes to some fruitflies launched from america on a captured V-2 rocket. The upper stage engine on the Vostok variant was a single bell RD-0109. (an evolution of the RD-0105 from the Luna variant). The graphic show instead featuers an RD-0110 (or -0107 or -0108, hard to tell), an engine used on the Molniya rocket and which did not propel humans until the Voskhod variant. Finally it's a bit dissapointing you didn't do the etymology of the Soyuz. The name translates to "union", which is fitting in so many ways. Not only was it launched on the 50th anniversary of the russian revolution which created the soviet *union*, it is also a *union* of 3 parts, and played a pivotal role in the *union* of Russia and others to create the ISS.
0:15 "has gone relatively unchanged since the" - LOL!! It's like saying that we still drive a Ford Model T! The reality is that from the hull technology, to the engines and electronics, everything has been revised many times. Р-7 - Спутник - Спутник-3 - Полёт - Луна - Восток - Восток-2 - Восток-2М - Восход - Молния - Молния-М - Союз - Союз-Л - Союз-М - Союз-У - Союз-У2 - Союз-ФГ - Союз-2.1а - Союз-2.1б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2М - Союз-СТ-А - Союз-СТ-Б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2ЛК
11:00 "None of them were successful in completing...." I beg to differ. A number of Venera missions (Venera 9, 10, 11, 13) were able to land on Venus' surface and send photos back. What blows my mind is that these photos were taken in 1980, and yet much of society is not only unaware, but also unaffected by this incredible achievement.
Good report on one of my favorite rockets, being a model rocket enthusiast. It is as you mentioned the venerable rocket from the 50's to today and great space launch vehicle, for the time. It's known in "space-nut" circles as the "VW" of rockets, a good design that is tweaked along the way with upgrades, sort of like the B-52 from the same era for the USA, which still flies today. As a flying model it is great, notice the tiny fins on it not enough to stabilize a model rocket but the four external tanks do the job adequately. It is a great little flyer, and it is a "crowd pleaser", or was last time I flew it a few years ago. Now, who knows, but I have made several variants of the R-7 booster, the Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz, all basically the same cool design, and all fly nicely on single model rocket solid propellent engines. My scale models are all scratch built but there may be kits out there who knows but give it a try if you build and fly model rockets. Just increase the four tiny fins by a factor of 3 or 4. Or get it as a nice static plastic model too for your collection if you don't already have one. I think Scott Manley needs one!! LOL. Cheers. :D
0:15 "has gone relatively unchanged since the" - LOL!! It's like saying that we still drive a Ford Model T! The reality is that from the hull technology, to the engines and electronics, everything has been revised many times. Р-7 - Спутник - Спутник-3 - Полёт - Луна - Восток - Восток-2 - Восток-2М - Восход - Молния - Молния-М - Союз - Союз-Л - Союз-М - Союз-У - Союз-У2 - Союз-ФГ - Союз-2.1а - Союз-2.1б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2М - Союз-СТ-А - Союз-СТ-Б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2ЛК
Another cool feature of the "1.5" stage configuration that the Soyuz uses, is that all engines can be lit on the ground, eliminating the risk of the second stage not igniting.
I don’t really understand why your subscription numbers remain low when your channel presents and explains so well. The space race is by far my favorite space channel.
Lots of space channel competition, but this is a very good one. Some go "into the weeds" too much, or become fan boy things for SpaceX, this is well balanced!
My grandad told me that he was working on an anthena that followed a Molnia 2 satellite. I got realy excited after I realized what does that satellite actuslly mean in Soviet history.
I love these in depth timeline videos of spacecraft and their interations throughout the years. The indepth descriptions of how they work and the detail is so cool. Hope to see more videos like this
it's not an AI generated image it's just a different rocket than the r-7 it is probably RN-2, a proposed vehicle powered by a nuclear engine in the central section and it definitely has 6 boosters
@@tonieistotne9471 RN-2 is name of project, name of rocket was ЯХР-2 (Yakhr-2) which stands for Nuclear-Chemical Rocket. And by the way, this is indicated on the fairing.
@@Ryan-mq2mi well I know this makes me sound like the fattest redit user, but if we want to get into details, the brain cannot hurt , it has no sensory nerve endings.
According to wikipedia, Laika was, "A stray mongrel from the streets of Moscow, she flew aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft, launched into low orbit on 3 November 1957. As the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, Laika's survival was never expected. She died of overheating hours into the flight, on the craft's fourth orbit. "
@@filonin2 Honestly, with the achievments USSR had, even if the moon landing was valuable, i'd say even still its a draw. You cant ignore the other achievments and say "yeah we were on the moon so we won lol"
THERE WAS NO SPACE RACE!! This was made up by the MEDIA!!! And the US government and the NASA, decided to keep that name. Tell me, were there rules, in writing, in wich precisely was written WHAT the ame of the "race" was, and when it was officially lost?! Were there written agremeements at wich date, and time the "Space Race ended?! NO!!! So cut the crap about "The Soviets lost the Space Race".
Yes, going back to the 60's there are a plethora of good subjects to explore. I have made scale model flying rockets of many of them, mostly launch vehicles of the USA probes and even the Saturn V. They all fly great, but some need a bit of augmentation of the fins to fly properly or one can use clear plastic on the ones w/o fins, like the Atlas and the Titan II launch vehicles of Mercury and Gemini space craft.
Actually, personally, I was looking forward to historical perspectives on the French developments 😅 Or the marvelous, wondrous American nuclear(and plasma) engine designs
@@shreysharma726 at this point just another sad sad branch of technological evolution and technical development that dead-ended, leading nowhere, not due to any irreconcilable technical problems but issues of politics and funding... decisions based off short-sightedness and small-mindedness 😢 and timing, as ever, and the specific needs* of the program, at least as acknowledged and outlined by the leadership... and of course just letting things sit in some hangar and such for decades on end with no real way to preserve the development itself, what it meant and where it could've led, even without having to build anything specific just yet... well, we all now that history is full of such hangars filled with lost miracles and forgotten dreams, wonders of what could've been ...even if only as exercise in technical prototyping if nothing else...but alas
There is a quite high number of imprecisions in this video. As you said, many parts of the rockets have been improved, from the engines, to the control systems, to the guidance computers. High energy fuels were also tested on special variants of the rocket. Also several different variants have been made to serve different purposes, so the Soyuz is more like a family of rockets than a single one. Saying that the Soyuz has been flying for 60 years is like saying that the Boeing 737 has been flying for 60 years.
I'm so proud to be Alexei Leonov's countryman. My mother personally met him once and he gave her an authograph. Alexei Leonov was born in a 1934 in a small village in Western Siberia, and at 1936 after shameful political arrest of his father, rest of the family moved to nearby city Kemerovo, from which i am. Kemerovo is a small (about 400k population) industrial city, known for it's coal mining facilities and chemical plants.
This is FANTASTIC!! Like so many other fairly new space related channels, I just assumed The Space Race was going to be an excellent go-to channel for current space events. It never crossed my mind you would expand into rocketry HISTORY, and I hope this is just your start. You did a great job with this, and with the inexhaustible well from the past, you just may have stumbled on to a new niche that could really differentiate The Space Race channel! I hope you agree, and I for one am certainly looking forward to the future of the past. Nice work.
yes, great to see the origins of today's vehicles, and space programs, many of whom believe they are "inventing new technology" without giving credit where it is due. Well, no, they build on old technology like all things in the progress of the modern world today, they had their percussors. There was even an EV in 1915 or so, Jay Leno has one in his car collection, for example. ;D
i suppose it came from his uneducated mind. the only crossfeed system was designed in USSR was UR-700. and even in UR-700 side boosters carried separated tanks which should feed only core stage.
7:16 You've got the satellite upside-down in your graphic (the antennae trailed downward). 7:40 Laika was not the first living being to reach outer space, she was the first to reach orbit. They had been launching animals (monkeys by the US and dogs by the USSR) past the Karmann line since the late '40s. 9:15 I believe the name "East" for Vostok had more propaganda value. It referred to the eastern hemisphere, which contained all of the USSR and China, which was the cold-war adversary of "the west" which meant western Europe and the US. 9:38 You got the origin of these spacecraft backwards. The Vostok was designed to carry a pilot and the Zenit used the design to carry camera gear.
Your interpretation of the East might be good, but восток (East) is also the direction where the Sun rises, check the meaning of Voskhod (sunrise), and Aurora, which is the goddess of the morning twilight, and was the name of the cruiser ship which gave the sign for the revolution in Petrograd on November 7, 1917, this was the most celebrated event of the history of the Soviet Union.
@@gregor_man - Multiple meanings! Very astute of the Soviets 🙂 The same sort of thing happened with their space shuttle буран ("Buran," meaning blizzard or snowstorm) which also referred to the ice cascading down off of the LOX tanks.
"With over 1,900 flights since its debut in 1966, the Soyuz is the rocket with the most launches in the history of spaceflight". "Soyuz, the spacecraft, is the world's safest, most reliable, most cost-effective human spaceflight vehicle" (cost-effectiveness maybe only surpassed these days, by SpaceX).
Imagine you make huge successes, like 10 groundbreaking achievements and then someone sends 3 men to a dead orbiter and wins the race, erasing most of the past successes from common knowledge
With a launch cost of US$35-48.5 million per laubch for Roscosmos its also incredibly cost effective. Only the Indian rockets such as PSLV and GSLV are cheaper along with a few of the Long March variants China operates
Actually correct! All eight tons of the centre core went into orbit, too, staying up for a week or two. In December 1958, the US put a whole Atlas into orbit (minus to engines). Similary for the Mercury astronauts in orbit: the four or five empty tons of the booster also went into orbit along with the capsule.
@@awuma even more correct, the russian named their rockets after their role/payload regularly, so the variant of the r-7 used for the sputnik satellite launches named sputnik too.
It was not competition, there is no competitor. Soviets/Russian success is stand alone. More than that, all the time US program used Soviet nozzles and engine technology in their spacecrafts.
Soyuz is a great rocket because it just works and rarely goes wrong. It is a bit cramped inside and you kind of have to squash people inside like sardines in a can. A lot of people bang the reusability drum these days but most times it's just cheaper to build a rocket you can dump. ULA did a cost break down on making the Vulcan rocket reusable and came to the conclusion it's cheaper to just dump it...same goes for Soyuz.
@@viarnay In most instances it is cheaper. Falcon 9 has very expensive carbon fibre landing legs, very expensive titanium grid fins, and a whole bunch of expensive avionics, electronics, guidance systems, computers, motors, very expensive drone ships to land on, and a 5 week servicing cost on ever flight. A bog standard rocket doesn't need any of that so can you just make a cheap metal tube and dump it basically.
@@viarnay we have no access to the actual cost of refurbishing. as well as the extra cost and lost performance for making it even possible to do it. very likely that the falcons are actually still not cheaper to reuse. even less likely they recovered the cost of the capability. in the very long run re-usability will be better, but if even the best case is reached that point is questionable.
@@dazuk1969 30 million $ to build a brand new falcon 9 I find it pretty cheap. From. Russia is hard to find the real cost of building a Soyuz from scratch
@@viarnay It's extremely hard to find breakdowns of Falcon 9 costs as spacex doesn't generally make that info available. Particularly turnaround service time costs and the marine asset costs like the drone ships. Not sure where you got that number from but you can find a few things that they released a couple years back on costs. One was costs to potential customers on using a used booster or a new one. If you insist on a new one the price was 69 million..not sure about used. But in either case you have to add the 10 million cost of the second stage which isn't reusable and burns up on re entry. Falcon 9 probably is somewhat cheaper at the moment because of the launch frequency launching star link satellites. That will change once the constellation is in place. There is a lot of misleading information out there on Falcon 9 costs and it just isn't as much as some think it is.
As for the number of engines, I would find it more intuitive to say that each stage DOES have 4 engines (plus 2 smaller gimballed engines) - albeit sharing a common set of turbopumps to feed them.
For a while, "sputnik" was actually used as a synonym for "artificial satellite" even in the English-speaking world. In turn, the word "satellite" - deriving from a Latin word, and also literally meaning "companion" - had at that time already been in use to denote a celestial body orbiting a planet, i.e. a moon (now more specifically referred to as "natural satellite", while "satellite" has evolved to mean "artificial satellite" by default). And while I'm not an expert on Russian language, it is my understanding that "sputnik", too, had already been in use earlier there to denote natural satellites.
Soyuz 2.1b is my favorite rocket Eventhough iam an Indian. Because it has a classy streamlined designed with beautiful colors, also the the red flames coming out of the engine is really beautiful ❤
Instead of the new N1 launch rocket, if they had used two R7s, one to put up the Soyuz and the other to put up a lunar lander joined with a boost stage. Then they would have had to dock with the other stage. Of course, whether they could have expanded Soyuz enough and worked out the bugs is another question altogether.
The N1 seemed a very good idea. See Sharship at the present days. The problem was the unhandled resonance which caused the explosion of both N1 rockets. The Soviets certainly could have managed that but the time was short, they would have needed more tests, and they gave up. It's a pity.
The Soyuz A (the EOR moon mission) required up to 5 launches, and would only be able to do a lunar orbit/flyby mission. The R7 is not powerful enough to get both a lander and transfer stage up in one launch. Later designs called for a 2 launch solution, but that was with the N1 (they eventually improved the N1s capacity so it could launch the entire conplex in one launch like apollo)
That's so funny in another video you said the atmosphere was thicker on top and i was wondering why you said that" when it's thinner. Now some how I came across this video where your saying the opposite.😅. Good stuff.
to my knowledge no rocket has ever used fuel cross feed as you describe. (Asparagus Staging) AFIK the R7 lit all five engines but, they were fueled from their own tanks the whole way. The centre core tank is bigger. And likely throttled down for max-Q Just a Falcon heavy does today.
The Soyuz rocket will be phased out withing the next 10 years. It is indeed a fantastic rocket, but its age is showing. The new workhorse of the Russian space exploration program will be the Angara rockets family, a modular rocket that is in its testing phase (several launches are planned for 2024). After the Angara rockets catch on, the Soyuz will be fully retired (around 2030). The legacy of this magnificent rocket will remain though, as Russia is also developing the Soyuz-5 and Soyuz-6 large rockets (the difference between these is that the Soyuz 5 will use hydrogen as fuel, and the Soyuz-6 will us natural gas), although while the Soyuz name will be used, these rockets will have basically nothing in common with the current Soyuz 2.1 or its previous versions.
@2:12 That is a depiction of Conrad Haas's multi stage rocket, he was a Transylvanian Saxon military engineer (Chinese did invent the powder and the rocket but this concept was his)
that rocket has v2 engines that were enlarged until they failed 5% of the time. The Russians then essentialy nailed 20 of them to a plank of wood and only loaded it to what 18 working engines will lift. extremely reliable spacecraft. It works like a Vostok watch.
sputnik more generally means companion , in russian , so a moon is a companion of earth and a satellite too , but someone who goes along with you on a walk is a sputnik too , the most literal translation would co pather , 'put' means path in russian
I feel like they one the race to be the first in space not the moon, I don't think anyone particularly wins this, we all do with every new feat from every country, space is about all of us.
no. the video is actually bad and has too many wrong info. Scott Manley did much better. well, almost any video about R7 history is better than this :)
It's sad that nobody is mentioning the life of Korolev BEFORE he started designing rockets. He was Ukrainian, born in occupied city of Zhytomyr, as well as Glushko (from Odessa). During Stalin's purges, he and Glushko were arrested, tortured, made to sign false confessions, and sent to Gulag. His engineering skills is only thing that saved his life later, but still Gulag left traces in his health.
Oh, and here are the ukrainians) Korolev was primarily Soviet, but he identified himself as Russian and Ukrainian, unlike modern Ukrainians who fell ill with chauvinism, he considered Ukrainians and Russians to be one people. Read what Korolev’s grandson writes about this.
nice video, watched with nostalgia. In the meantime, want to say that a new cooperation will be initiated by the NASA only when they find out Russians or other nations have something new and interesting to share😀
I'm happy to hear that ussr did this things for human technology. However they were competing each other i dont care. They helped us in modern days to find true space and I respect that.
3:49 you said the four outer tanks feed all the five engines until booster separation and only then the core tank would be used. And now that's definitely not true. The four outer booster tanks would only feed each one of the four booster engine attached to it. The fifth core engine is drawing fuel from the center tank from the start. The only reason the center engine burns even after the boosters all burn through is merely because the center tank has much more fuel in it compared to the smaller boosters. Thus if all engines consume fuel at the same rate(since they are all basically the same engines) the center engine just burns longer. If the four outer tanks were to feed also the center engine as you described, it would require fuel cross feeding technology and nobody has mastered that even to this day. Space X was famously gonna try that with falcon heavy but gave up.
Um... no. (1) The staging concept you describe at ~3:45 (known as "asparagus staging" in the KSP community) has never been implemented in any real-life rockets (to the best of my knowledge anyway); while theoretically being the most efficient staging model possible, it would be difficult to reliably transfer fuel from the outer boosters to the core stage. Soyuz and its predecessors instead use a larger tank for the central core, which therefore just burns longer than the external boosters. There is no fuel transfer between boosters and core. (2) The staging concept actually implemented in Soyuz may be more efficient than sequential staging, but that was just an added bonus; the primary reason this staging scheme was chosen was to avoid a host of problems associated with trying to ignite an engine later in flight. This way, they could make sure all engines would light properly before even committing to lift-off.
6:21 remember it’s competition is the bomber All they have to do is defend the launch site from bombers & with the S 75 American a bomber attack would no longer have to worry about just aircraft A nuclear bomb can destroy a city but you need to get it to the city first It’s the 1950s so think 1950s Nuclear war not 1980s
After analyzing missions of the United States and the Soviet Union, the space race definitely showed a turn around the middle of the Gemini Program. Rendezvous was an aspect that stumped Russians for a bit. By that time, the United States had amassed more launches.
Yes, but the Soviets performed fully automatic rendezvous substantially earlier than the USA, and that was really amazing regarding to the lack of on-board computer and much poorer electronics.
@@andrewsuvorow6818Yes again. The Buran was a good case in point. One might even imagine what could have been had the USSR not collapsed - although I’m not unhappy it did.
Another great subject for model rockets to fly. The Titan II vehicle does need fins however, I use clear plastic on my models, and they can't be seen from a distance, so it looks baffling as a finless model but flies beautifully.
It sounded funny when the author referred to the fact that the Russians gained an advantage by seizing the documentation of Werner von Braun, because the Americans captured Brown himself, by the way, an SS officer, and made him the head of their space program!😂
7:48 Laika wasn't the first living creature in space. That belongs to the fruit flies the US sent up in 1947 and the chimp Albert II we sent up in 1949. Laika was the first animal to ORBIT the Earth but wasn't the first animal to reach space.
The most incredible feat the soviets and Russians achieved with this rocket is to make it so reliable that going to space became almost something trivial.
☝️❌🧠
Bruh. SpaceX make its trivial😂
@@AnarchySane😂😂😂😂😂
@@AnarchySane hmmm.... no, not yet at least. I hope for success across the board for all companies and organisations. SpaceX, Blue Horizon, NASA, ESA, RosKosmos, etc. but spacex is nowhere near as trivial as the soyuz.
the tech in the soyuz is so simple and so reliable it's insane. of course, once spacex can launch 60 of them a year without losing a crewed one for decades it will be different, but for now all I can do is be sad that a shit government has that tech
@@AnarchySane
But the USSR did it 60 years ago...
I always felt the Soyuz rocket the most elegant and dynamic rocket shape. It's beautiful. I'm glad to see a respectful video about that, thank you.
Most advance rocket in history from the time its creation.
Its hideous, it looked dated when I was a kid in the 70s.
@@TransoceanicOutreach
@@TransoceanicOutreach that's great, mate! 👍🏻
@@serpentpigeon9108 What???? Its primitive and simple not at all advanced. Not in any way efficient or even fully functional.
What is most impressive about Soyuz is it's safety record. By the end of the program it had accumulated dozens of successful launches safely carrying people into orbit. Even a launch failure late in the program impressed American engineers with the safety of the launch vehicle - the launch suffered booster failure late in the boost phase. Normally what occurs then is that aerodynamic forces rip the vehicle apart, inevitably a fatal situation, except with Soyuz. The cosmonaut initiated an abort, the manned capsule successfully separated, and the occupants survived a high g ballistic return to the Earth's surface with almost no injury. The capsule separated just as the vehicle began to break up - they were hundreds of miles down range of the launch pad and were traveling over 5000 miles per hour. IMO no US manned vehicle would have survived that circumstance, though there was a procedure considered that would have allowed the shuttle to survive a high speed abort, it did not include catastrophic booster failure. The soviet engineering was mind boggling. That said it is my understanding that if the capsule had delayed separation for even a handful of seconds, or if the vehicle had been moving slightly faster, it would have been destroyed.
That is if you believe rusky statistics transparency 🤣🤦🏻♂️
You must have failed science back in high school (or you’re just a kid who hasn’t gone yet), but when the first stage is “late in the booster phase” there aren’t any “aerodynamic forces” to effect the vehicle in any meaningful way as they’re basically out of the atmosphere. Also, I watch this particular launch you’re drooling over and the failure mode (while pathetic) wasn’t a big deal and didn’t come anywhere close to such an emergency that the capsule escape system would’ve been dealing with anything challenging whatsoever… 🤦♂️
Flashback to Soyuz 1 Crash
this why 'space race' is an absurd concept.
when you're sitting at home, and your friend is already at some location you want to go to, only a moron would claim that you're racing your friend there. yet this is exactly the situation that the 'space race' describes.
@@Constant_Of_Morality Soyuz 1 was a failure in what was then a new capsule design (Previously they had used one based on the Vostok) the launcher has had very few failures at all and almost no major changes the the lower stages.
6:40 as a linguist and etymologist, I would just like to add my 5 cents to this...
Sputnik = s - put' - nik. The main word is "put'" , which in English took it's form in "path". Russian "put'" and English "path'" is of the same origin. "S" just means "with" or more precisely " co - " (like co host). And "nik" is just a case sensitive ending.
*So, Sputnik = co path entity (follower).*
And the "put" (пут) is pronounced as the English word "put", not "putt", so "spootnik" not "sputtnik" as in the commentary.
The commentator also gets Союз (Soyuz) wrong but so do most English speakers. The stress is on the second syllable so it's more like "Sa-YOOZ".
And, as for Королёв (Korolyov), no idea how the commentator came up with his pronunciation!
Russian pronunciation apart, thanks for an excellent and informative video!
@@Procyon7986 You'd think if you were going to make an extensive documentary, you would do the most basic thing and get pronunciation correct along with the technical and historical facts. Something like that, just goes to ruin what might have been an otherwise excellent effort and demonstrates a lack of completeness.
Sorry, but you are a little bit wrong, Sputnik means 'fellow traveler'. Follower is posledovatel. Hope, I helped. :)
Thank you!
This nevers stopped bothering me, it's just such a little thing but it can get so frustrating at times 😅
especially for something so historic, so significant,
something that should be considered an achievement for all mankind
regardless of origins or intentions
@@Procyon7986 😅 the soft [ t ] (which tapers off, like something wavering in the wind) indeed!
Korolev cross is a thing of beauty
Цилковского даже не упомянули. Хотя он придумал многие направления в технологиях.
Например многоступенчатость, явно не в средневековом Китае он это откопал. Еще математический аппарат, формулы расчёта параметров для ракет
Все аппараты, когда либо запускавшиеся в космос, делали это по формуле Циолковского.
@@JKRoss-zm3zu Ну откуда об этом знать тем кто школу не окончил и прыгал все время в тапках надеясь что чего нибудь дадут. Потом ехал на велосипеде и мечтал что станет вот вот европейцем и тут жизнь сразу же наладится, главное помнить кто твой хозяин.
@@unlomtrashмногоступенчатые ракеты Кондратюк раньше Циолковского предложил, ну они независимо друг от друга изучали космическую тему примерно в одно время.
Он просто философ и эзотерик, хотя имеет много вклада в популяризации освоения космоса.
It’s kind of weird to think, that for all of human history, with its myths and tales and stories, we have only know that the far side of the moon looks like for 65 years.
Say what you want about how they got there and their safety, but the soviets knew how to build a rocket.
Yes - and their engines (never used due to program cancellation) for their moon rocket were literally decades ahead of their time, were far more efficient than anything the US had, and were considered impossible by American engineers when they first heard of them. The Russians are intelligent, practical people and their education in the physical sciences is rigorous.
and they say socialism doesn't work blah blah well look what it does from the first satellites and more@@deandeann1541
@@deandeann1541If the engines worked so good, why didn't they use them elsewhere?
@@gustavgnoettgen Sadly, probably no political will or need at the time.
@@gustavgnoettgen they did. The Nk-33 engine, meant for the uprated N1F rocket, and a direct descendant of the Nk-15 on the N1, is used on the modern Soyuz 2-1v. Some were also sold to america after the fall of the USSR and put on the Antares series of rockets (under the new name AJ-26)
As an American, I can totally recognize and respect that it's a BEAST and WORKHORSE. Never understood why white people are supposed to be against each other anyway, especially after the fall of communism. They do things differently, and there's obviously some very smart, educated and aspirational people in Russia. That's the diversity that would be our strength. They also are ballsy and do things we wouldnt try due to safety concerns. They've had to do everything they've done on a much smaller budget as well. Would be great if we could collaborate more, but it's notable the amount we do even right now and have for years as we were embarrassingly unable to put any people in space for a decade+ after retiring the space shuttle. We had our guys go to Roscosmos and hitch a ride with them, requiring learning new language, systems, procedures etal.
As an American? Who cares for that? Just state your comment, and it's your people who wants to rule others and tell them what to do and up to what level, and the US can't live without creating an enemy...
And I'll tell you what happens next.) The Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle will be in operation until the end of this decade, after which it will be replaced by the Amur launch vehicle, which is currently being developed in Russia. The Amur launch vehicle will be twice as effective as the Soyuz-2. Liquefied natural gas and oxygen will be used as fuel on the Amur launch vehicle.
read less yellow journalism. what is already available and tested - you could only read in science fiction literature.
aren't they going with soyuz-7 instead of Amur?
@@amberglow-pi3oc There is no such launch vehicle as Soyuz-7. Production of the Soyuz-5 launch vehicle, an improved version of the Zenit-2 launch vehicle, is currently underway. It will be used at the Baikonur and Vostochny cosmodromes. The Amur launch vehicle is being developed as part of the Amur-SPG development work, the first launch is scheduled for 2028 from the Vostochny cosmodrome.
@@denslippedI meant naming-wise. I thought that they are going with Soyuz-7 as the name for the Amur project.
@@mishXY No. Soyuz-7 is a project of another launch vehicle.
14:28 "arguably" would fit better than "ultimately".
For the USSR, all achievements were done. A manned mission on the moon had little to no meaning for them an engineers hat to urge the bureau a lot to be funded at all.
USSR had reached moon, venus, got all the firsts around the Earth itself, reached, orbited, impacted, landed first on the moon.
The manned race to the moon was a race simply fabricated by the USA. They were racing... alone.
It is an impressive and significant achievement non the less, but to call it a win in the space race is like saying you won a marathon when you ran alone after you've lost all other marathons before where you've had a competitor.
All in all, that's something a sore loser would do. Come up with new races not until you win a race, but until you bored your so far victorious enemy out in participating at all.
Regardless, I am happy the US has not given up on the goal and created this defining moment in their space presence.
Edit: What they really lost is the leadership in space, not the space race itself. At the time the US landed on the moon, USSR landed a vessel on Venus and later on Mars. While for the moral of humanity the moon landing might be more significant, scientifically and from an engineering standpoint, landings on two different planets are as if not more impressive.
manned mission on the moon has never taken place. and it's not a conspiracy theory. IF this ever happened, NASA wouldn't have any problem to do it again. Hollywood fraud
It's interesting how we may accept the oversize design of the F1 engine and its flawless record in spite of the inherent difficulties that cannot be fixed through the use of baffles as stated in revisionist efforts to justify the official record. Near-Earth orbit is a reality while the moon lay over one thousand times further distant so that the original F1 engine would not be necessary to reach orbit with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement. Did they leave near-Earth orbit? . . As we see Earth from over half the distance to the moon, and we see blue light flooding in through the window -- when only a moment before, the Earth was far distant in what appears to be very low light conditions . . and it was very interesting to see straight line formations of cloud fronts extending for over 6000 miles across the earth -- something that has never occurred in the meteorological record . . framed by the round window of the command module with a much smaller portion of the Earth's surface in view under greatly reduced exposure settings. When those exposure settings return to normal in the unedited version, as the camera continued to roll, we see a large amount of light flooding in through the same window, the only source of which can be the Earth without a change in orientation of the spacecraft while in orbit.
I'm pretty sure that the R7 never had propellant crossfeed.
I questioned that as well. I found a source claiming that it did that struck me as marginally reliable. While not crossfeeding, the stage-and-a-half configuration on Atlas would have faced some of the same technical problems. I believe SpaceX had originally intended to crossfeed on Falcon Heavy, but abandoned those plans in favor of throttling down the center core.
@@disorganizedorg
At that time, throttling had not yet been implemented. The "simply" developers loaded 2 times more fuel into the central core. It is desirable to introduce crossfeeding at the development stage, during the operation of the engine at the first stage. Integrated parallel design with three propellant ballons, which were made in the first atlases, of high-strength heat-resistant titanium-aluminum alloy with a minimal heat shield, control system and parafoil. For RTLS and full reusability without propulsive landing with a 3-cable aero-finisher to avoid landing gear.
The Soviet Union did not loose the space race, it only lost the race to the Moon, it beat the US in every other category pretty much, but it's not that important anyway, all of those achievements were to the benefit of science and humanity and everything both sides learned during it helped everyone a lot.
Moon landing was a hoax.
Yeah it's mostly because they put a disproportionately high amount of funding into it for propaganda purposes
Сша не было на Луне!
@@sergeykomarov5596🇷🇸⚔️🇷🇺 Bravo brat, amerikanci su bili na mijesecu samo na televiziji. Hollywood movie 🍿
Actually no significant achievement after that, except Venus hard landing. European Space, Japanese Space, Indian Space programs and NASA still sending space probes to other planets and asteroids. Last time Roscosmos tried to send to the moon and Mars failed.
Bold statement "USSR lost space race"... 3 minutes passed: "Soyuz was THE ONLY way to get to ISS". Orly?
USSR: First satellite, first living creature in space, first man in space, first space station, firs landing on the moon, venus, mars, first world-wide communication network, etc.
US: first crew on the moon.
Did I get it right?
Also first spacewalk and 1st woman in space (way back in the 60's). Impressive list.
Soviets really bodged the Mars program. I'd say that's another win for the Yankees.
@@volo870did they visit Venus back then?
@@sergipol99 Yes, Venera program resulted in several Venus landings. There are color photos, sound recordings and soil analysis.
True, one time they mistakenly analysed the probe's camera cover, instead of soil, but most of the landings were quite a success.
@9:15 we dont launch east to match the rotation of the earth, we launch east to use the earth's rotation to achieve a faster orbital velocity
I will add that not all launches are to the East. Launches to both Polar and Sun-Synchronous orbits are mostly either North or South. For political reasons, Israel launches their orbital rockets to the West.
@@KnightRanger38 ngl, the israel thing is really petty
Its a beautifully engineered design, no doubt with plenty if incremental upgrades over the last 60 years. Its like how Boeing got it right with the 707 and is still using the basic airframe even today with the 737 (which has the 707's fuselage).
I never did understand Boeing reluctance to replace the 737. with new Airbus designs coming through its time to reconsider this and develop a replacement for the 737.
@@LeonAust They must be considering it now. The 737 Max surely has "maxed out" the original airframe!
0:15 "has gone relatively unchanged since the" - LOL!! It's like saying that we still drive a Ford Model T!
The reality is that from the hull technology, to the engines and electronics, everything has been revised many times.
Р-7 - Спутник - Спутник-3 - Полёт - Луна - Восток - Восток-2 - Восток-2М - Восход - Молния - Молния-М - Союз - Союз-Л -
Союз-М - Союз-У - Союз-У2 - Союз-ФГ - Союз-СТ-А - Союз-СТ-Б - Союз-2ЛК - Союз-2.1а - Союз-2.1б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2М -
Some notes:
the image used to represent the R7 is clearly no an R7 as it has what seemes to be 6 side boosters whereas the R7 only had 4
rocket staging in the form of tandem stages was only theoretical at the time of the R7s development, so parallell staging was less an improvment of the design and more an alternate route.
Parallell staging also has little to do with dead weight. that weight is gonna be there whether the engine is running or not. the reason is that no one had tried starting a liquid fuelled engine in flight before, so it was considered more reliable to light the sustainer engine on the ground. (the first rocket to light a (liquid fueled) rocekt engine in flight was the Vanguard 1.)
(Also all stages in a rocket except the payload are "essentially a fuel tank with engines at the bottom")
The R7 did not feature crossfeed between the outer and inner stages. the core stage burned for longer due to having bigger fuel tanks.
It is the RD-108, not the R108. As can be seen written on the engine in the picture shown
While "sputnik" does indeed mean satellite. the name of the satellite was "Простейший Спутник-1" or just "Спутник 1" so sputnik is indeed it's name.
(also the graphic showcasing sputnik has it sitting upside down in a modern fairing with it's antennas bent)
Laika was not first in space, but rather first in orbit. The honour of first in space goes to some fruitflies launched from america on a captured V-2 rocket.
The upper stage engine on the Vostok variant was a single bell RD-0109. (an evolution of the RD-0105 from the Luna variant). The graphic show instead featuers an RD-0110 (or -0107 or -0108, hard to tell), an engine used on the Molniya rocket and which did not propel humans until the Voskhod variant.
Finally it's a bit dissapointing you didn't do the etymology of the Soyuz. The name translates to "union", which is fitting in so many ways. Not only was it launched on the 50th anniversary of the russian revolution which created the soviet *union*, it is also a *union* of 3 parts, and played a pivotal role in the *union* of Russia and others to create the ISS.
Thank you for commenting on the mistakes.
That comment should be pinned. And The Space Race channel earmarked as unreliable.
Propaganda 💩👎 piss off pootin 💩 lover👎
0:15 "has gone relatively unchanged since the" - LOL!! It's like saying that we still drive a Ford Model T!
The reality is that from the hull technology, to the engines and electronics, everything has been revised many times.
Р-7 - Спутник - Спутник-3 - Полёт - Луна - Восток - Восток-2 - Восток-2М - Восход - Молния - Молния-М - Союз - Союз-Л -
Союз-М - Союз-У - Союз-У2 - Союз-ФГ - Союз-2.1а - Союз-2.1б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2М - Союз-СТ-А - Союз-СТ-Б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2ЛК
His name is Sergei Korolev NOT Koreleov, he was a visionary and grounded in the basics of rocketry and aerodynamics well ahead of his time.
11:00 "None of them were successful in completing...."
I beg to differ. A number of Venera missions (Venera 9, 10, 11, 13) were able to land on Venus' surface and send photos back. What blows my mind is that these photos were taken in 1980, and yet much of society is not only unaware, but also unaffected by this incredible achievement.
Good report on one of my favorite rockets, being a model rocket enthusiast. It is as you mentioned the venerable rocket from the 50's to today and great space launch vehicle, for the time. It's known in "space-nut" circles as the "VW" of rockets, a good design that is tweaked along the way with upgrades, sort of like the B-52 from the same era for the USA, which still flies today.
As a flying model it is great, notice the tiny fins on it not enough to stabilize a model rocket but the four external tanks do the job adequately. It is a great little flyer, and it is a "crowd pleaser", or was last time I flew it a few years ago. Now, who knows, but I have made several variants of the R-7 booster, the Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz, all basically the same cool design, and all fly nicely on single model rocket solid propellent engines. My scale models are all scratch built but there may be kits out there who knows but give it a try if you build and fly model rockets. Just increase the four tiny fins by a factor of 3 or 4. Or get it as a nice static plastic model too for your collection if you don't already have one. I think Scott Manley needs one!! LOL. Cheers. :D
0:15 "has gone relatively unchanged since the" - LOL!! It's like saying that we still drive a Ford Model T!
The reality is that from the hull technology, to the engines and electronics, everything has been revised many times.
Р-7 - Спутник - Спутник-3 - Полёт - Луна - Восток - Восток-2 - Восток-2М - Восход - Молния - Молния-М - Союз - Союз-Л -
Союз-М - Союз-У - Союз-У2 - Союз-ФГ - Союз-2.1а - Союз-2.1б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2М - Союз-СТ-А - Союз-СТ-Б - Союз-2.1в - Союз-2ЛК
Another cool feature of the "1.5" stage configuration that the Soyuz uses, is that all engines can be lit on the ground, eliminating the risk of the second stage not igniting.
wrong the technology is 70 yo but the rocket is brand new on every launch
Ha. An excellent point.
Yup, and VW's (another great design of the era) were "factory fresh" each time you bought a new one! ;D LOL
I don’t really understand why your subscription numbers remain low when your channel presents and explains so well. The space race is by far my favorite space channel.
200 thousand isn’t bad.
@@andrewdoesyt7787No, it’s not, it’s rather excellent. This foray into the past may just be what takes this channel into the UA-cam mainstream.
Lots of space channel competition, but this is a very good one. Some go "into the weeds" too much, or become fan boy things for SpaceX, this is well balanced!
Yes, lots of good material from when the space race was "young"!!@@ronjon7942
My grandad told me that he was working on an anthena that followed a Molnia 2 satellite. I got realy excited after I realized what does that satellite actuslly mean in Soviet history.
I love these in depth timeline videos of spacecraft and their interations throughout the years. The indepth descriptions of how they work and the detail is so cool. Hope to see more videos like this
Well done! Although I have watched many rocket videos this was one of the best summaries of that impressive program 👍
Great video!
As much as I love videos of current times it was cool to see a historical video!
the AI r-7 picture is so curesed. it makes it look like it has 6 booster rockets and its making my brain hurt
it's not an AI generated image
it's just a different rocket than the r-7
it is probably RN-2, a proposed vehicle powered by a nuclear engine in the central section
and it definitely has 6 boosters
@@tonieistotne9471 RN-2 is name of project, name of rocket was ЯХР-2 (Yakhr-2) which stands for Nuclear-Chemical Rocket. And by the way, this is indicated on the fairing.
@@tonieistotne9471 Which, misattributed, would still make his brain hurt.
@@Ryan-mq2mi well
I know this makes me sound like the fattest redit user, but if we want to get into details, the brain cannot hurt , it has no sensory nerve endings.
@@tonieistotne9471 Man, I swear I could hear, "achkwually" from reading it.
According to wikipedia, Laika was, "A stray mongrel from the streets of Moscow, she flew aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft, launched into low orbit on 3 November 1957. As the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, Laika's survival was never expected. She died of overheating hours into the flight, on the craft's fourth orbit. "
Pure humanism
@@hamletodua how's avdiivka
So they cooked her ?
@@artemplatov1982its holding
@@hamletodua pure humanism was also forced covid vaccination with shit just to run profits to the shitty pfizer, right?
Why did the Russians lost the space race when they were first in space? Wouldn't it be more correct to say the soviets lost the moon race?
No, that's like saying you won a race by starting out first. The Moon was the goal of the Space Race and they lost, badly.
@@filonin2 Honestly, with the achievments USSR had, even if the moon landing was valuable, i'd say even still its a draw. You cant ignore the other achievments and say "yeah we were on the moon so we won lol"
THERE WAS NO SPACE RACE!! This was made up by the MEDIA!!! And the US government and the NASA, decided to keep that name.
Tell me, were there rules, in writing, in wich precisely was written WHAT the ame of the "race" was, and when it was officially lost?!
Were there written agremeements at wich date, and time the "Space Race ended?! NO!!! So cut the crap about "The Soviets lost the Space Race".
Next topic: Energiya rocket!
Yeah, and let's not leave out Lockheed Martin's involvement with Krunichev-Energia...
buran
Yes, going back to the 60's there are a plethora of good subjects to explore. I have made scale model flying rockets of many of them, mostly launch vehicles of the USA probes and even the Saturn V. They all fly great, but some need a bit of augmentation of the fins to fly properly or one can use clear plastic on the ones w/o fins, like the Atlas and the Titan II launch vehicles of Mercury and Gemini space craft.
Actually, personally, I was looking forward to historical perspectives on the French developments 😅
Or the marvelous, wondrous American nuclear(and plasma) engine designs
@@shreysharma726 at this point just another sad sad branch of technological evolution and technical development that dead-ended,
leading nowhere, not due to any irreconcilable technical problems but issues of politics and funding...
decisions based off short-sightedness and small-mindedness 😢
and timing, as ever, and the specific needs* of the program, at least as acknowledged and outlined by the leadership...
and of course just letting things sit in some hangar and such for decades on end with no real way to preserve the development itself, what it meant and where it could've led,
even without having to build anything specific just yet...
well, we all now that history is full of such hangars filled with lost miracles and forgotten dreams, wonders of what could've been
...even if only as exercise in technical prototyping if nothing else...but alas
There is a quite high number of imprecisions in this video. As you said, many parts of the rockets have been improved, from the engines, to the control systems, to the guidance computers. High energy fuels were also tested on special variants of the rocket. Also several different variants have been made to serve different purposes, so the Soyuz is more like a family of rockets than a single one. Saying that the Soyuz has been flying for 60 years is like saying that the Boeing 737 has been flying for 60 years.
Great time for a thorough review.
7:46 REST IN PEACE LAIKA YOU WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN! 🚀
I'm so proud to be Alexei Leonov's countryman. My mother personally met him once and he gave her an authograph.
Alexei Leonov was born in a 1934 in a small village in Western Siberia, and at 1936 after shameful political arrest of his father, rest of the family moved to nearby city Kemerovo, from which i am.
Kemerovo is a small (about 400k population) industrial city, known for it's coal mining facilities and chemical plants.
This is FANTASTIC!!
Like so many other fairly new space related channels, I just assumed The Space Race was going to be an excellent go-to channel for current space events. It never crossed my mind you would expand into rocketry HISTORY, and I hope this is just your start.
You did a great job with this, and with the inexhaustible well from the past, you just may have stumbled on to a new niche that could really differentiate The Space Race channel! I hope you agree, and I for one am certainly looking forward to the future of the past.
Nice work.
yes, great to see the origins of today's vehicles, and space programs, many of whom believe they are "inventing new technology" without giving credit where it is due. Well, no, they build on old technology like all things in the progress of the modern world today, they had their percussors. There was even an EV in 1915 or so, Jay Leno has one in his car collection, for example. ;D
weird. I don't think that soyuz ever had crossfeed between side boosters and core engine. Where did you get this?
i suppose it came from his uneducated mind. the only crossfeed system was designed in USSR was UR-700. and even in UR-700 side boosters carried separated tanks which should feed only core stage.
Someone, unlike the greatest and exceptional, has not lost all his space technologies.
7:16 You've got the satellite upside-down in your graphic (the antennae trailed downward).
7:40 Laika was not the first living being to reach outer space, she was the first to reach orbit. They had been launching animals (monkeys by the US and dogs by the USSR) past the Karmann line since the late '40s.
9:15 I believe the name "East" for Vostok had more propaganda value. It referred to the eastern hemisphere, which contained all of the USSR and China, which was the cold-war adversary of "the west" which meant western Europe and the US.
9:38 You got the origin of these spacecraft backwards. The Vostok was designed to carry a pilot and the Zenit used the design to carry camera gear.
Your interpretation of the East might be good, but восток (East) is also the direction where the Sun rises, check the meaning of Voskhod (sunrise), and Aurora, which is the goddess of the morning twilight, and was the name of the cruiser ship which gave the sign for the revolution in Petrograd on November 7, 1917, this was the most celebrated event of the history of the Soviet Union.
@@gregor_man - Multiple meanings! Very astute of the Soviets 🙂 The same sort of thing happened with their space shuttle буран ("Buran," meaning blizzard or snowstorm) which also referred to the ice cascading down off of the LOX tanks.
"With over 1,900 flights since its debut in 1966, the Soyuz is the rocket with the most launches in the history of spaceflight". "Soyuz, the spacecraft, is the world's safest, most reliable, most cost-effective human spaceflight vehicle" (cost-effectiveness maybe only surpassed these days, by SpaceX).
It is really amazing the soviets philosophy for engineering. I hope someday I will find a video on youtube about it. Cheers!
Imagine you make huge successes, like 10 groundbreaking achievements and then someone sends 3 men to a dead orbiter and wins the race, erasing most of the past successes from common knowledge
Yes sputnik in 1957, nasa moon preparation started in 1961 and 1969 they landed. Incredible pace.
Core ohhh Lev
More like KOR-oh-lyov
The Soviets didn't lose the space race, lol. They still make the best rockets for space exploration till date.
The soviets were also the first to land on Mars, with Mars 3 in 1971
With a launch cost of US$35-48.5 million per laubch for Roscosmos its also incredibly cost effective.
Only the Indian rockets such as PSLV and GSLV are cheaper along with a few of the Long March variants China operates
india ? they dont have food for people WTF talking about .
The cost of production without transport and launch services approximately is US$17 million
B-52 Stratofortress is even older - first flight: 15th April 1952. And is still quite good so I believe if it well works, why change it.
Correction if you don't mind:"You said the first orbital rocket was Sputnik" instead of saying the first orbital satelite.
Actually correct! All eight tons of the centre core went into orbit, too, staying up for a week or two. In December 1958, the US put a whole Atlas into orbit (minus to engines). Similary for the Mercury astronauts in orbit: the four or five empty tons of the booster also went into orbit along with the capsule.
@@awuma even more correct, the russian named their rockets after their role/payload regularly, so the variant of the r-7 used for the sputnik satellite launches named sputnik too.
@@thorin1045yeah exp r7 vostok,r7 voskhod,r7 soyuz
Soyuz is good example of old technology being evolved over time.
It was not competition, there is no competitor. Soviets/Russian success is stand alone. More than that, all the time US program used Soviet nozzles and engine technology in their spacecrafts.
Soyuz is a great rocket because it just works and rarely goes wrong. It is a bit cramped inside and you kind of have to squash people inside like sardines in a can. A lot of people bang the reusability drum these days but most times it's just cheaper to build a rocket you can dump. ULA did a cost break down on making the Vulcan rocket reusable and came to the conclusion it's cheaper to just dump it...same goes for Soyuz.
No, is not cheaper building a brand new rocket from scratch just remember the falcon 9 launched 19 before crashed by bad weather
@@viarnay In most instances it is cheaper. Falcon 9 has very expensive carbon fibre landing legs, very expensive titanium grid fins, and a whole bunch of expensive avionics, electronics, guidance systems, computers, motors, very expensive drone ships to land on, and a 5 week servicing cost on ever flight. A bog standard rocket doesn't need any of that so can you just make a cheap metal tube and dump it basically.
@@viarnay we have no access to the actual cost of refurbishing. as well as the extra cost and lost performance for making it even possible to do it. very likely that the falcons are actually still not cheaper to reuse. even less likely they recovered the cost of the capability. in the very long run re-usability will be better, but if even the best case is reached that point is questionable.
@@dazuk1969 30 million $ to build a brand new falcon 9 I find it pretty cheap. From. Russia is hard to find the real cost of building a Soyuz from scratch
@@viarnay It's extremely hard to find breakdowns of Falcon 9 costs as spacex doesn't generally make that info available. Particularly turnaround service time costs and the marine asset costs like the drone ships. Not sure where you got that number from but you can find a few things that they released a couple years back on costs. One was costs to potential customers on using a used booster or a new one. If you insist on a new one the price was 69 million..not sure about used. But in either case you have to add the 10 million cost of the second stage which isn't reusable and burns up on re entry. Falcon 9 probably is somewhat cheaper at the moment because of the launch frequency launching star link satellites. That will change once the constellation is in place. There is a lot of misleading information out there on Falcon 9 costs and it just isn't as much as some think it is.
The safest space vehicle by far. Not a single crew died in almost 50 years.
WOW, these facts are astounding!
No need to change perfection! I am as American as apple pie but I know a good rocket when I see one
Another great video! Thank you!
As for the number of engines, I would find it more intuitive to say that each stage DOES have 4 engines (plus 2 smaller gimballed engines) - albeit sharing a common set of turbopumps to feed them.
For a while, "sputnik" was actually used as a synonym for "artificial satellite" even in the English-speaking world.
In turn, the word "satellite" - deriving from a Latin word, and also literally meaning "companion" - had at that time already been in use to denote a celestial body orbiting a planet, i.e. a moon (now more specifically referred to as "natural satellite", while "satellite" has evolved to mean "artificial satellite" by default).
And while I'm not an expert on Russian language, it is my understanding that "sputnik", too, had already been in use earlier there to denote natural satellites.
Soyuz 2.1b is my favorite rocket Eventhough iam an Indian. Because it has a classy streamlined designed with beautiful colors, also the the red flames coming out of the engine is really beautiful ❤
Instead of the new N1 launch rocket, if they had used two R7s, one to put up the Soyuz and the other to put up a lunar lander joined with a boost stage. Then they would have had to dock with the other stage. Of course, whether they could have expanded Soyuz enough and worked out the bugs is another question altogether.
The N1 seemed a very good idea. See Sharship at the present days. The problem was the unhandled resonance which caused the explosion of both N1 rockets. The Soviets certainly could have managed that but the time was short, they would have needed more tests, and they gave up. It's a pity.
The Soyuz A (the EOR moon mission) required up to 5 launches, and would only be able to do a lunar orbit/flyby mission.
The R7 is not powerful enough to get both a lander and transfer stage up in one launch. Later designs called for a 2 launch solution, but that was with the N1 (they eventually improved the N1s capacity so it could launch the entire conplex in one launch like apollo)
You guys continue to always come out with great stuff. Well done! thank you very much. 😃
That's so funny in another video you said the atmosphere was thicker on top and i was wondering why you said that" when it's thinner. Now some how I came across this video where your saying the opposite.😅. Good stuff.
14:27 Russia won the space race by putting first satellite and human in space. But they lost the moon race.
We (Russians) did send robots to the Moon and explored it, so I wouldn't call it a complete fail. It's all about the Science, right?
Race, race,...........There WAS no race!!! That term was madeup by the American media!!
to my knowledge no rocket has ever used fuel cross feed as you describe. (Asparagus Staging) AFIK the R7 lit all five engines but, they were fueled from their own tanks the whole way. The centre core tank is bigger. And likely throttled down for max-Q Just a Falcon heavy does today.
Nope the cetral core just has a lot more fuel
@@nikolaideianov5092 What are you talking about? I said that
@@CoreyKearney im sure i posted this on a another comment
The Soyuz rocket will be phased out withing the next 10 years. It is indeed a fantastic rocket, but its age is showing. The new workhorse of the Russian space exploration program will be the Angara rockets family, a modular rocket that is in its testing phase (several launches are planned for 2024). After the Angara rockets catch on, the Soyuz will be fully retired (around 2030). The legacy of this magnificent rocket will remain though, as Russia is also developing the Soyuz-5 and Soyuz-6 large rockets (the difference between these is that the Soyuz 5 will use hydrogen as fuel, and the Soyuz-6 will us natural gas), although while the Soyuz name will be used, these rockets will have basically nothing in common with the current Soyuz 2.1 or its previous versions.
Well, can't wait to see what future space tech they can develop.
@2:12 That is a depiction of Conrad Haas's multi stage rocket, he was a Transylvanian Saxon military engineer (Chinese did invent the powder and the rocket but this concept was his)
that rocket has v2 engines that were enlarged until they failed 5% of the time. The Russians then essentialy nailed 20 of them to a plank of wood and only loaded it to what 18 working engines will lift. extremely reliable spacecraft. It works like a Vostok watch.
You are really talking total BS. I have never read some stupid story as this!!
High thrust is needed mostly for fighting gravity, not so much for fighting drag.
a small corection:the design is 60 years old,the rockets itself is a brand new one on every lunch into space!!
Its Sputnik, not Spatnik.
Did the US CIA have Sergdi Koeoylev assassinated in the Hospital in January 1966?
It only resembles R7, but it is completely a new rocket now. So it IS NOT 60 years old in no way. It has nothing from R7 inside.
This is HOW AND WHY, Russia won the Space Race.
If it ain't broken, don't mess with it.
sputnik more generally means companion , in russian , so a moon is a companion of earth and a satellite too , but someone who goes along with you on a walk is a sputnik too , the most literal translation would co pather , 'put' means path in russian
I feel like they one the race to be the first in space not the moon, I don't think anyone particularly wins this, we all do with every new feat from every country, space is about all of us.
Nuclear bomb? Americans used on Japan. Don't forget.
The ISS would not exist without the Space Shuttle. The only use of the Soyuz launcher was resupply, orbit boost and crew transport.
Протон?
Soyuz today reminds of the Boeing 737 Max. Once revolutionary, it is now an anachronism.
Next will be Angara-A5 💪💪💪
Last time I checked it was really hard to find any valuable info about this rocket system.
Brilliant video. Thank you.
no. the video is actually bad and has too many wrong info. Scott Manley did much better. well, almost any video about R7 history is better than this :)
It's sad that nobody is mentioning the life of Korolev BEFORE he started designing rockets.
He was Ukrainian, born in occupied city of Zhytomyr, as well as Glushko (from Odessa).
During Stalin's purges, he and Glushko were arrested, tortured, made to sign false confessions, and sent to Gulag.
His engineering skills is only thing that saved his life later, but still Gulag left traces in his health.
Oh, and here are the ukrainians) Korolev was primarily Soviet, but he identified himself as Russian and Ukrainian, unlike modern Ukrainians who fell ill with chauvinism, he considered Ukrainians and Russians to be one people. Read what Korolev’s grandson writes about this.
1947: First animals in space (fruit flies)
1949: First primate and first mammal in space
1950: First mouse in space
1957: Laika
nice video, watched with nostalgia.
In the meantime, want to say that a new cooperation will be initiated by the NASA only when they find out Russians or other nations have something new and interesting to share😀
I'm happy to hear that ussr did this things for human technology. However they were competing each other i dont care. They helped us in modern days to find true space and I respect that.
At the end of the day they won the space race and that was their goal. At the end of the day they won the space race and that was their goal.
Love your channel! Thoroughly enjoyed this overview of rocket history - bravo on your entertaining and enlightening content
Hey if it's proven and it works for multiple roles, why change it. Sounds like a good rocket to me.
don't fix it until it's broken :)
3:49
you said the four outer tanks feed all the five engines until booster separation and only then the core tank would be used.
And now that's definitely not true.
The four outer booster tanks would only feed each one of the four booster engine attached to it. The fifth core engine is drawing fuel from the center tank from the start. The only reason the center engine burns even after the boosters all burn through is merely because the center tank has much more fuel in it compared to the smaller boosters. Thus if all engines consume fuel at the same rate(since they are all basically the same engines) the center engine just burns longer.
If the four outer tanks were to feed also the center engine as you described, it would require fuel cross feeding technology and nobody has mastered that even to this day. Space X was famously gonna try that with falcon heavy but gave up.
Lada Ziguly, WV beatle, Citroen CV2 of rockets
Just want to mention the Soyuz rocket supplied space stations, Proton built them.
I love this Rocket Episode
dude, what is that grafic at 1:02? that R7 has 6 boosters!
...someone who didn't know anything about the R7 did the graphics... they put sputnik upside down at 7:20, and have it on a R7 with an upperstage.
3:00 it has nothing to do with the atmosphere. The reason is that the rocket becomes lighter because the fuel is used up.
Um... no.
(1) The staging concept you describe at ~3:45 (known as "asparagus staging" in the KSP community) has never been implemented in any real-life rockets (to the best of my knowledge anyway); while theoretically being the most efficient staging model possible, it would be difficult to reliably transfer fuel from the outer boosters to the core stage. Soyuz and its predecessors instead use a larger tank for the central core, which therefore just burns longer than the external boosters. There is no fuel transfer between boosters and core.
(2) The staging concept actually implemented in Soyuz may be more efficient than sequential staging, but that was just an added bonus; the primary reason this staging scheme was chosen was to avoid a host of problems associated with trying to ignite an engine later in flight. This way, they could make sure all engines would light properly before even committing to lift-off.
In my eyes they won the space race
6:21 remember it’s competition is the bomber All they have to do is defend the launch site from bombers
& with the S 75 American a bomber attack would no longer have to worry about just aircraft
A nuclear bomb can destroy a city but you need to get it to the city first
It’s the 1950s so think 1950s Nuclear war not 1980s
After analyzing missions of the United States and the Soviet Union, the space race definitely showed a turn around the middle of the Gemini Program. Rendezvous was an aspect that stumped Russians for a bit. By that time, the United States had amassed more launches.
Yes, but the Soviets performed fully automatic rendezvous substantially earlier than the USA, and that was really amazing regarding to the lack of on-board computer and much poorer electronics.
@@andrewsuvorow6818Yes again. The Buran was a good case in point. One might even imagine what could have been had the USSR not collapsed - although I’m not unhappy it did.
Another great subject for model rockets to fly. The Titan II vehicle does need fins however, I use clear plastic on my models, and they can't be seen from a distance, so it looks baffling as a finless model but flies beautifully.
It sounded funny when the author referred to the fact that the Russians gained an advantage by seizing the documentation of Werner von Braun, because the Americans captured Brown himself, by the way, an SS officer, and made him the head of their space program!😂
7:48 Laika wasn't the first living creature in space. That belongs to the fruit flies the US sent up in 1947 and the chimp Albert II we sent up in 1949. Laika was the first animal to ORBIT the Earth but wasn't the first animal to reach space.