Talk:Soviet space program

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Doff1298.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Article needs more balanced coverage

This article needs more balanced coverage, and I'm soliciting comments before making changes.

What's omitted is the circumstances behind many of the "firsts". For example, while it's true that the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, it's also true the United States *could* have launched a satellite two years earlier, and in fact had the satellite in storage. ("Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space") Another example is that while it's true the Voskhod 1 had the first three person crew, it's also true that to do so, the crew had to wear no spacesuits! The "Buran" section makes no mention that the Soviet Shuttle was so widely recognized to be a tardy copy of the American shuttle, there were jokes and cartoons.

What's omitted in the article is a sense of perspective. Reading the "Notable firsts" section, a reader might get the impression that the Soviet Union was ahead in all areas, whereas many of the scientifically significant missions have been American, almost right from the start.

Some mention of the context of these "firsts" needs to be added. After all, Wikipedia is not a "Guinness Book of World Records". Or at least, I remember reading that somewhere in the guidelines.

Leptus Froggi (talk) 15:28, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

On the topic of the Buran, the lack of comparison to the U.S also prevents mention of the fact that in many ways (to my knowledge at least, I need to doublecheck my sources) the Buran was more flexible, and capable than the Shuttle. Jemhop (talk) 15:37, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Whether or not the USA could of/would have/should have launched the first artificial Earth satellite, is immaterial to the fact that they didn't, and that the USSR did. It's no more biased then saying the USA was first to have a crew go to the Moon even though the USSR was well on their way. As most space enthusiasts know, the effort was abandoned after the N1 disaster, and knowledge that the USA had won that race. --Kerbyki (talk) 14:47, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Problems

This article has many problems. Firstly, only 21 citations, far below the Pokemon Quotient. This, in an article about the first satellite, dog, man, and woman in space!!! Secondly, it seems hell-bent on denying the program's achievements. It has sections called "Incidents, failures, and setbacks" and "Canceled interplanetary projects". There is no corresponding section in the NASA article, despite the disasters of the Space Shuttle program. The article is laden with words like "failure", "setback", "disaster", "problem", "canceled", "abandoned", and "catastrophe", as well as "propaganda", "secret", "clandestine", and "cover up". The article foregrounds the involvement of scientists from Nazi Germany, even though they played a minimal part in the program, obviously in an attempt to minimise the Soviet success. You would never know that the International Space Station is dependent on Soyuz rockets. A lazy and biased article.--Jack Upland (talk) 11:54, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Just to add an interesting observation: As the above criticism made me curious I took a moment to compare with the NASA article, and I found that not only does the NASA article not have a similar section, but (using the page search function of my browser) I found that EVEN THE WORDS "incident", "failure", "setback", and "problem" DOES NOT OCCUR in that article AT ALL - none of them - not even once! (As for the word "secret" I found only an instance of the word "secretary" in the references). - Yes there absolutely is a very strong language bias going on here (as, might I add, seem to be a general problem of any article to do with the Soviet Union and the cold war). RP Nielsen (talk) 22:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi I fully agree with the criticisms of the current version of the text. As for the "Saturn" program it is possible that the reference is the program Tsiolkovsky (what is strange is the year 2012). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.180.61.60 (talk) 21:06, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

It's unsurprising when NASA is one of the major sources for the article.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:53, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Just to confirm I still think this page isn't neutral.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:43, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it's a question on if the NASA page should be more critical and mention setbacks and failures of Gemini, Apollo, etc, or if this article should be less critical Jemhop (talk) 15:37, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

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Should the Incidents, failures, and setbacks section be removed, or should a similar section be added to pages on other articles about space organizations?

I'm currently working on replacing unnecessarily negative language from this page, but I (obviously) don't feel comfortable removing an entire section. It seems to reveal a large amount of bias that this page has a section of this sort while that of NASA does not. Its more complete to have a section of this sort, but should it stay if there is none on the NASA page?--Jemhop (talk) 15:59, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Looking in the archives of the NASA Talk page their use to be a Criticism section on the NASA page that was worked into the text as per the recommendations of the Wikipedia:Criticism sections. Note that a fair bit of the text were moved to other relevant pages, for example, the Alleged alcohol use was moved to Lisa Nowak#Reactions. Would suggest the same could apply to this page. Ilenart626 (talk) 08:11, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like a good way to go.--Jack Upland (talk) 11:04, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Strong dissent The encyclopedia is never well-served by the removal of factual information. There is no undue weight problem caused by admitting the Soviet failures, as long as the same is admitted for NASA who also had some fatalities and setbacks. This is significant because of the importance of the Cold War and Space Race which founded the world space programs, and deserves more weight than "other space organizations". This is not unfair to the poor Soviet Union, boo-hoo. Not to make personal attacks, but I don't think you "citizens of the world" quite appreciate that if you weren't alive prior to 1992.

I would much rather see a comparable Setbacks and failures section in NASA. With the exception of Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 and the Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, NASA did not have nearly as many serious failures (e.g. Nedelin catastrophe) as the Soviets. Also no fair focusing on NASA alcoholism / marital infidelities, etc. The Soviet section has none of this, and concentrates exclusively on technical failures.

In fact, the article is already making some apologies for the Soviet program by disguising some failures as "canceled programs". Buran was an engineering failure (attempt to steal US technology protected by disinfo, failed to replicate a reusable heat shield); also Polyus (single flight test was a failure, and became a Cold War "white elephant"). Also, how can Energia be both a "completed project" and a canceled project (another white elephant without the Buran payload)? JustinTime55 (talk) 12:19, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

One more thing: notice this article's infobox is strongly tied to the "Incidents, failures, and setbacks" section because it contains wikilinks to several article sections. And this article and NASA are inconsistently classified by infobox: this is a "Space program by country" while NASA is a "Space agency". JustinTime55 (talk) 14:16, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Quite frankly your whole post is POV pushing ie “ This is not unfair to the poor Soviet Union, boo-hoo”, what sort of comment is that? And I also note how you dismiss “With the exception of Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 and the Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, NASA did not have nearly as many serious failures…”, lets just dismiss disasters that killed 17 people. If you want the facts go look at List of spaceflight-related accidents and incidents which highlight 24 US fatalities and 6 Soviet fatalities, which means the US record is far worse than the Soviets. Finally your suggestion of "...rather see a comparable Setbacks and failures section in NASA." goes against the Wikipedia policy detailed in Wikipedia:Criticism sections. Suggest you read it and hopefully you can understand why Jimbo Wales (one of the founders of Wikipedia) strongly endorses this policy, ie "sections dedicated to negative material may violate the NPOV policy and may be a troll magnet, which can be harmful if it leads to users with strong opinions dominating the article". Ilenart626 (talk) 22:59, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

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Update on ‘Origins’ section

Over the last couple of months I have been working on updates to the ‘Origins’ section, including new articles about Gas Dynamics Laboratory, Reactive Scientific Research Institute and German influence on the Soviet space program and a major update to the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion. I’m planning to now work on the rest of the article, however I think the article is now a lot more balanced with sufficient references to remove the NPOV and additional citation templates. Comments / thoughts? Ilenart626 (talk) 00:34, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I doubt the neutrality of your changes and deletions. Several arguments are provided in the talk to German influence on the Soviet space program. In Helmut Gröttrup I reverted some changes and added several explanations in the talk. Chertok is not a neutral source and incorrect in some areas, especially when it comes to the German contributions which were largely disclaimed during the Soviet era. Have a look on the similarities between the designs of the G-4 [1] (Gröttrup's team in 1948) and the Soviet R-7 [2] (Korolew's team in 1957 for launching the Sputnik) for the shape and size. Only major difference: The G-4 was designed with one swivel-mounted engine of 100 tons thrust while each R-7 booster used RD-107 with four combustion chambers, each with a similar size of the V2 engine but upgraded performance. --SchmiAlf (talk) 14:35, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Refer my reply at Talk:German influence on the Soviet space program#Joint work of Korolev and Gröttrup from 1945 to 1950. Ilenart626 (talk) 14:05, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

For more information on this topic refer to the dispute Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#German influence on the Soviet space program. SchmiAlf (talk) 07:22, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

German influence

The statement "However, after 1947 the Soviets made very little use of German specialists and their influence on the future Soviet rocket program was marginal." in this Soviet space program#German influence section is taken from the lead of German influence on the Soviet space program with four references (which do not support this statement). Following the dispute already mentioned above a survey Talk:German influence on the Soviet space program#Survey was opened by the moderator. Please participate in the survey and vote for your preferred option! SchmiAlf (talk) 15:46, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I removed three references (Neufeld (2012), Mick (2000), Zak (2016)) from the disputed statement "However, after 1947 the Soviets made very little use of German specialists and their influence on the future Soviet rocket program was marginal." It is only Siddiqi (2000) who mentions it on p. 84 but out of context with his detailed view on page 81-83. It is not at all supported by the three other quoted sources. Comments should be added to RFC on last sentence of Lede with all pros and cons of the dispute. SchmiAlf (talk) 16:01, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

"...the most capable German rocket scientists and engineers"? According to whom?

Under the heading "Origins: German influence", one finds this claim: "On 22 October 1946, 302 of the most capable German rocket scientists and engineers...were deported to the Soviet Union as part of Operation Osoaviakhim..." (emphasis added). Nothing is provided to explain what "the most capable" means in this context. The Russians did not get the top German rocket engineers; men like Wernher von Braun, Hermann Oberth, Walter Dornberger, Ludwig Roth and Arthur Rudolph, who were actual department heads and project leaders for the German rocket program, and who went to the US as part of Operation Paperclip. So what does "most capable" mean? Bricology (talk) 10:59, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I have removed this from the article.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:55, 7 December 2023 (UTC)