Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Alexandrovich_Morozov
I first started thinking about it when I read about Korolev. I can't imagine continuing to do any kind of work after spending years in prison and almost dying in a gulag.
(and yes, the term "Real Socialism" was actually a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_socialism
And to think, it only cost the lives of tens of millions of 'Russians'!
And that "educational effort" to steer children to denounce their own families and parents, commiting them to execution. That only cost tens of millions of Chinese lives too.
So despite your sarcasm, you seem to have provided exactly that information many already know: the achievements of communism are more important to communists than lives, but they are happy to use others lives both to justify their own actions and measure the success of communism!
Bewildering
In all seriousness, you can't make up numbers out of your ass. Do you know the lives of how many people costed to live under capitalism? How many died so we can have this computer, these clothes? The lives of how many exploited africans, asians and latinos it costed to make these things (computers, cellphones, clothes, but also grains, vegetables, food, oil, minerals)? How many millions die year by year because we live in a capitalist system, that values profit over lives?
The first world war was an imperialist war, where millions died because of a power struggle over African colonies. Thousands of workers were (and continue to be) killed protesting their working conditions. Millions of communists and suspected communists were killed in Indonesia and South America to defend capitalism.
The achievements of capitalism are more important to capitalists than lives, but they are happy to use others lives both to justify their own actions and measure the success of capitalism!
Bewildering.
Not very many. Regarding Africa in particular, it's not actually a major mineral producer, it barely contributes anything [1].
Marxists insist that the global economy somehow depends on African children ineffectively toiling in cobalt mines, because they need to maintain their zero-sum moralistic vision of economic relations where African poverty explains the riches of the First World and vice versa. In reality, had Africans been richer, they'd have been able to develop their resources in a proper industrial fashion and invest into covering their own needs, to the common benefit of them and everyone else. The current state of Africa is undesirable for everyone. It's just that not every tragedy is a product of a conspiracy and exploitation by capitalists.
1. https://kenopalo.substack.com/p/natural-resources-and-econom...
The Leninist policies are considered to have cost in the ballpark of 30 million lives. In the Tsarist rule ~1500 people were executed in a year at the extreme. In the communist days 1500 were killed in a day, but every day for 30 years.
The Moaists are considered to have killed 50 million.
"Capitalist Exploitation" - you mean businesses doing business?
Do you believe people will be exploited less under a different economic system? Why do you believe that?
[citation needed].
If you are considering transitory economic policies to be a condemnation of a whole economic and social system, then let me tell you about the Indian famines that regularly killed tens of millions of people on India, in a capitalist system, under the rule of a capitalist country (Great Britain). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_I...
So there you have it, definite proof of the consequences of capitalist policies.
> The Moaists are considered to have killed 50 million.
Again, you can't just make numbers out your ass. Do you actually think that communists ordered the killing of 50 million people? Do you think that communists are just evil maniacs who like to kill people because communism means wanting to kill people? Are you really that ignorant or indoctrinated?
Maybe is projection. More than 1 million people were killed in Indonesia for the "crime" of being communists or communist sympathizers. The United States (a capitalist country) supported, financed, and celebrated those killings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19...
When anti-communists talk about "mass killings," it's all about projection: it was YOUR policies, not the communists', that killed millions of people. So they need to project onto others the crimes that capitalism is guilty of.
> Do you believe people will be exploited less under a different economic system? Why do you believe that?
Capitalism brought us to the point where we are now, on the brink of WW3, facing extinction from climate change, a demographic crisis in most countries of the world, pollution and contamination like never before, and the exploitation of millions of human beings so the top 0.1% can be more wealthy. Capitalism is not able to solve any of the existential and humanitarian crises that exist because it is the CAUSE of those problems. And the capitalist class profits from them. So yes, either we do a revolution and overthrow the capitalist class, or we face extinction, quite literally.
Wake up. Do you know what one revolution gets you? Back to where you started! But you cant see that, because its always someone else in the way of your success... the monarchs, the capitalist, the educated (said Pol Pot). Yes these pesky groups always keep you down and therefore they must be overthrown!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Communists doing communist things, always thinking they know best.
(and I mean the "real socialism" as it existed in Eastern Bloc countries - not the rose-tinted hypothetical version that exists only in the heads of Western lefties).
I mean, some of the stuff I read about the famous Soviet names in aeronautics, space exploration or cybernetics, makes it feel like back then, NKVD was the HR department, PIPs involved a time in a gulag, and getting fired had a quite literal meaning to it. Look the wrong way at your manager or a co-worker, and the next day you have a 1:1... in a prison cell.
> Capitalism prevails but the overhead for everyone is orders of magnitude more than under communism for the chosen.
Curiously, I do have an impression that, on the capitalist side of the world, the highest productivity and the greatest achievements both are to be found in those little bubbles that isolate people and their work from the capitalist concerns. Smart people, survivable budget, a specific direction, and zero questions about how the work will contribute to the profits next quarter. Then there's that old adage that corporations tend to be capitalist on the outside and communist on the inside. Makes me think that we're naturally drifting to a mixed model here.
The difference between "Communist on the outside" and "communist on the inside" is that the former is backed by a compulsive government with a monopoly on the use of force, and the latter is a voluntary choice by all parties.
I know this because I was born in the Eastern Block.
Life offered lots of little moments of joy, such as going to math contests and getting awards (for me as a kid).
Just think of the times of Covid. In January 2020 we could not fathom the idea of being trapped at home for months, and then it happened just like that. Life went on.
The same with Communism. It's horrible, but (most) people adapt and keep living their lives.
Russian history is rich and convoluted and may look controversial to an outsider. But it is not really that to an insider. The controversial parts are just tragic.
(Later that man got Stalin prize for his book about surgery, although they did not let him put “Archbishop Luke” as the author and published it under his civil name.)
The building stood 60 years before burning down in middle 1990.
Skip a few years, my grandfather was the youngest doctor of science (in Russia that's next level from PhD) in his city in the field of Nuclear Physics and during his life was a dean in 3 different universities and a head of another one.
My 2nd grandfather was born in a village and had to tend for his younger sisters because his two older brothers were fighting in WW2 (and died there).
Skip a few years and he taught himself engineering and later became a head of a department in a big spaceship construction factory that employeed 10s of thousands of people, was doing research, travelled whole of soviet union overseeing testing of spaceship componponents.
Both died in poverty a few years ago: doing any government jobs in Russia is extremely unrewarding if you are an honest man.
(and here I am doing stupid crap in Javascript and Ruby earning 50 times what they did).
He anticipated what spacesuits would look like, what EVAs would look like: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/page-from-tsiolkovsk...
There was so much more in that museum from his journals which isn't available online. I saw pictures of spaceships with layouts accounting for the lack of gravity, dinner parties in space, I am not a good enough writer to do it justice.
"Anytime anyone says to you “if that’s possible, why hasn’t it been done yet?”, remember that virtually everything about modern spacecraft was figured out by a Russian eccentric decades before anyone did anything with his publications."
I wonder if there are such eccentrics alive today, and how could we tell if we're looking at a sneak peek of the future to come? Is such situation even possible today? Or can we safely assume that today, if something seems possible but hasn't been done yet, then either the math behind it doesn't work out, or the economics of it don't.
On the question of who, I can think of three candidates: Eliezer Yudkowsky and the crowd around him on General AI, Eric Drexler on nanotech, and maaaaybe Stephen Wolfram on the computational nature of the universe. In all three cases, the works I read presented ideas and reasoning that added up - but I'm aware they're also widely criticized, and unfortunately, I lack deep enough knowledge to properly evaluate both the ideas and the arguments of the critics.
The above is on the "seems like the math of the thing adds up?". On the "it obviously does, but the economics might be tricky" side, there's tons of well-developed ideas for things to put in orbit and on other celestial bodies. No point in picking examples.
I would assume they're being downvoted/mocked on social media.
Science fiction is important!
I think that a more contemporary example would be Ian Banks conception of the Minds - a set of a AGIs that are more or less benevolent; contrast with the dystopian ones: Skynet from Terminator, the OSes in Her, or the machine in Ex Machina.
Scifi authors are the dreamers and we need them to keep doing what they do to inspire people.
I remember one of the AGIs in the books decided to transcend, asked his humans, took the time to drop off humans who didn't want to at another habitat, and only then transcended.
Somehow this alone struck me as "huh, they really are benevolent"
Basically the point I am trying to make is, due to just how exaggerated our news is, its hard for us to find people that are actually making headwind. There is just too much noise right now. Personally, I try to sound out all the click-bait BS I can, and focus on hearing about people that are actually achieving something. I suspect that we won't hear the stories of men like this commonly for some time to come. Even at the time, Tsiolkovsky wasn't exactly a household name.
Glad to see him mentioned from time to time anyway.
(It wasn't that good of an episode. Doubly so for a kid, given some of the themes in it. Still, this weird ship with a weird name got stuck in my head. Oberth class, as I later learned. Another important name for space exploration.)
There's plenty of other people in scientific and engineering fields about whom I first learned this way. Goddard, for example. It was a really nice thing about Star Trek from that era: all those little hooks that could become springboards to learn about science and technology. I can safely say it had a major impact on the direction my life took.
"(25 June 1894 – 28 December 1989) was a Transylvanian physicist and engineer. He is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, along with Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard and Herman Potočnik."
Fun fuct: Fyodorov himself wished to be resurrected by a future civilization, which is an idea that resonated with Tsiolkovsky as well. Both believed that humanity would eventually transcend its physical limitations and achieve a level of existence beyond what we can currently imagine.
Did either of them think how the costs of resurrection would be covered? For example, would the resurrected have to spend some quote of their new lifetime spouting advertisement, etc?
>> It’s a shame that Tsiolkovsky didn’t live to see the M-1. It stands twenty-seven feet high, the diameter of the throat is thirty-two inches, and that of the nozzle exit is almost eighteen feet. At full thrust it gulps down almost 600 pounds of liquid hydrogen and a ton and a half of liquid oxygen per second. Konstantin Eduardovitch would have been impressed.
(it's possible to navigate here in Google Earth Street View, but I couldn't figure out how to get a shareable URL)
Tsar Russia was a backwards and problematic nation. WW1 and the consequent, The Russian revolution, is still the largest catastrophe to ever happen to the human race.
Imagine a 400 million liberal Russian nation today, a timeline where the bolsheviks dont take over.
Please, provide economical facts. As stuff about "repressions", althought, for sure, took place in USSR(as in US) and had few very well known cases of excess, is mostly based on US propaganda.
To be clear, i'm not defending the personality of Stalin or any other ruler and aware of excesses in power that they used(whatever the motivation for that was). But i would argue, that it was at the same level as in US(by politician and business owners). And even much milder, if we take into account US colonialism and suffering(physical and economical) that it caused to many nations all across the globe.
Tsarists Russia was agrarian state with minimal human rights for common folk. And then take a look what common people had after Stalin's era. Almost everyone had a housing/education. No risks of becoming homeless/unemployed. And that after a multiple catastrophes that USSR indured because of external factors(famines and wars).
Modern Russia is wholey based on Soviet achievements. And it's people are still holding up, provided with food and shelter, despite actions of it's rulers and oligarchy. Indeed, what a catastrophe was an October revolution.
You likely want to disagree but it is true - Putin came to power just after Yeltsin era hard and difficult reforms were done and oil prices, that were for a decade record low, skyrocketed. And Russian economy is nothing more than oil, and then some more oil and gas.
And yes, i realize that it sounds utopic.
I think that the model of European Union is still promising. It could even sustain more national independence. Nothing would break fundamentally when for example Catalonia became independent (from Spain) within European Union - there will be still free trade, there will be still freedom of movement.
Bolsheviks destroyed this, they also destroyed the change for Ukraine and Belarus and made all of it a murderous genocidal shit hole that lasted well until the death of Stalin during what they invaded and murdered even more nations.
No risk of unemployment? Just the great opportunity being forced to work without pay in the collective farm - from serfdom into slavery, have Russians ever been free? Getting executed for protection of your rights? Or at best getting long imprisonment? What you are doing here is glorification of regime responsible for large scale crimes against humanity. It is like glorifying Nazis because they built the autobahn. Well done!
Yes, modern Russia, is based on this past, clearly, but not in the good way.
Provisional government had a lot of decisions or rather "undecisions", for example regarding land policy. For which there was a huge support from peasantry. Then it's questionable position on war.
Provisional government was what it is -- provisional. There were a lot of disagreements between majority of people and old elites. At the end, old elites lost.
And what " murderous genocidal shit" are you talking about? I will not argue about excesses in repressions, as they clearly existed. But can we call them genocidal? Then, if you talk about Holodomor -- it's very controversial topic, surrounded by Western propaganda. You can easily find and read Stalin letters to Kaganovich, where you see that they actually tried to solve the problem of supplies but due to poor government organization failed to do so. So in no way it was "murderous genocidal shit", but just a system failure which lead to catastrophe.
Holodomor is a different case that stands out on its own as a clear case of targeted starvation. It was created by planned over collection of grain where no compromise was allowed despite clear signs of very dangerous situation.
I really don't know to what Putinist Stalin white washing propaganda you are referring to, but events of the genocide are very well documented. You can study this summary for example https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resista...
There was no failure. It was a planned way to crush Ukrainians.
https://education.holodomor.ca/teaching-materials/primary-do...
Specifically, because provisional government couldn't get to a peaceful consensus that would satisfied both sides. Old elites didn't want to give they privileges away. So people took it. Good lesson to modern elites.
But you are right, in the end the opposition to Bolsheviks failed because the only serious opposition to them was tsarist who could not provide any new ideas. Bolsheviks killed (and very literally) any change of real opposition to them. When people realized the actual situation then it was already too late.
Same as with aviation and some other fields, rocketry and astronautics has many "fathers", mostly because of nations stressing the contributions of their compatriots. Oberth can not only be claimed by Germany (where he studied and worked), but also by Romania (where the city where he was born and spent his formative years is located today, and where he also worked later) and potentially also Austria/Hungary (which the city was part of at the time he was born).
I wonder if things would have been any different if these scientists had lived in a freer country?