How Soviet science magazines fantasized about life in outer space | Hacker News Reader

How Soviet science magazines fantasized about life in outer space

atlasobscura.com

150 pointsHooke20 comments

I'm struck by how different the art in the Soviet articles is from the attempted-hyper-realism in Chesley Bonestell, Bob McCall, and Don Davis typical in the west. The Soviet art is more evocative and poetic (or alternatively, stylistically what might have appeared in advertising in the west), while the US artists I mention made me imagine I could be visiting a toroidal space station or be in orbit around Io.

Well, these magazines were issued in enormous circulation numbers. Year 1933, you would keep number of colors in illustrations as less a possible to make them affordable, right?

In 1980ies, with more modern polygraphy technology, they used more rich illustrations, check: https://www.tested.com/science/space/456670-incredible-space...

> The tankette, which would weigh not more than a few hundred pounds and would be radio controlled from the earth, would explore the surface of the moon and report its findings back to earth. Information so obtained would make possible the next stage-the mastery of the Moon by man in the next 5 to 10 years.

Unlike Khlebtsevich, most people behind the manned Soviet space program weren't so fond of the Moon back in 50s, though. Korolyov, Mishin etc believed that a manned Moon mission would be a mistake. They bet on the Venus or Mars flyby mission as the first step in the Solar System exploration, because the deep space missions clearly needed the ability to build large spaceships in orbit, and single launch missions would have taught them very little. In fact, N-1 was originally planned and optimized for assembling a LEO manned space station/spaceship (MPK/TMK) to be sent to Venus. AFAIK it was the JFK speech that made Politburo switch the target, at the worst time possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism

If you find this style of art interesting, I recommend this sci-fi movie animated in Czechoslovakia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Planet

I remember reading a book as a kid in USSR about some child inventing a rocket ship, flying to the moon and leading a communist revolution among the natives.

That book left a really big impression on me - it was truly entertaining.

P.S. Found it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon

It's more like an "Aelita" by Aleksey Tolstoy about Mars :)

It also contains one of the best, most poignant caricatures of American capitalism and mass culture.

Science or Science Fiction magazines?

That "Technology for the Youth" (Юный Техник) was magazine for teens with focus on technology and DIY projects. You can find them here: http://jt-arxiv.narod.ru

I've never seen "Знание — Сила" in real life so I cannot really comment on it.

There was also a very popular "Наука и Жизнь" (Science and Life) which was more serious popular science and technology magazine.

"Юный Техник" translates to "Young Technician", "Technology for the Youth" would be "Техника для молодёжи"

Those are popular science magazines. They had both scientific content and some science fiction too.

The Soviet version of Omni Magazine?

Far from that.

Popular Mechanics is a better match I think (if to add there SF section - 10% of magazine volume usually).

And the novelty is? I mean, everyone fantasized about life in outer space - why would the soviets not? Or is the novelty that it is amazing how the people that wrote those magazines somehow eluded the gulags? Because the answer there presumably is that they probably did not elude the gulags.

(This is a case where the leading "How", which HN's software sometimes drops from titles, makes an important difference. We've re-howed it now.)

Please don't post shallow dismissals to HN, though. The article doesn't make it hard to find out what its topic is or why it's interesting.

The internet pattern of rushing to the cosmic hash table to find the biggest thing associated with any key, then rushing to post about it, makes for lame discussion. We're looking for things that are less predictable here.

It’s interesting because in the west we didn’t hear much about what was going on in the Soviet Union.

Pity how much of that cultural content was lost during the post collapse years of the USSR.

Tesla's space truck!

It's time to start dreaming again because we are about to be able to do it.

Much of it was officially produced and supported. No question of gulags.

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