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Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

> Only three entities have successfully soft-landed on the Moon — the government-funded space agencies of China, the Soviet Union and the United States. And only China has done it since the 1970s and on its first attempt.

This sounds as if the journalist tries to downplay the fact that NASA managed to do it a) first, and b) actually landed humans on the moon, not just unmanned vehicles. The only thing which makes it less impressive is the enormous budget of the Apollo program.

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Thought it was the soviets to first "land" a ship on the moon. Remember they had a lot of internal dicussions on if the Moon had a solid surface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9

> On 3 February 1966, the Luna 9 spacecraft became the first spacecraft to achieve a survivable landing on a celestial body.

Oops. But too late to delete the comment now...

By the way, it got 7 upvotes despite being factually incorrect.

You said land, and afaik it was land and not crash, even if it was too hard for test dummies. Dunno that people were upvoting something incorrect.

The Apollo 11 crew was ready to immediately take off again if the lander's legs began sinking deeply into dust.

NASA didn't do it first, the USSR did. And the only reason they didn't land people on the moon first too is because their country was falling apart and they reduced investment in their space program.

You're the one downplaying actual history.

It took 12 attempts to land a robot on the moon for the USSR. Their heavy booster program was in shambles. They literally never developed anything close to as powerful as Saturn V (5m pounds of thrust). They would be lucky not to crash 12 human vehicles on the moon. Leading for the first 5 miles of a marathon doesn't make you the winner!

I think their N1 rocket was similar and pretty far in development before it was cancelled.

The N1 rocket was intended to be similar but how far along it really was to completion seems questionable to me. I’m not a rocket scientist, but my understanding is the first stage was not statically tested and the complete rocket failed in the first stage on each of its four tests - one of which caused a gigantic explosion in the launch complex visible from over 20 miles away. If anyone with deeper rocket history expertise can weigh in I’d be interested to know how feasible an average historian would consider the successful completion of the N1 if it had continued to be funded.

Here are links to posts about the N1, and the Soviet lunar program, on AskHistorians:

Most mention Korolev's failing health and death.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3riyh3/why_d...

Summary: Khrushchev wanted the moon for cheap, lunar rockets weren't useful for ICBM research, the transition to Brezhnev threw a wrench into the program.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/22pled/why_d...

Summary: infighting, N1 had too many rockets and not enough quality control, exhaustion on the team, and Soviet electronics were way behind U.S. electronics.

Comments from the soviets themselves: https://web.archive.org/web/20121002063209/http://www.astron...

In the space race's case, they were leading in literally all practical and utilitarian aspects during the entire race, then they won the race, called it quits, and then the USA moved the goalposts and crossed them.

They could not get their moon booster rocket to reliably work, and that ended their moon shot program.

Saturn V had the same problems (dynamic instability) which nearly destroyed it. It just barely worked.

"Called it quits, and then the USA moved the goalposts"

For an informal international pissing match, you're assuming some pretty formal rules. The point was nearly entirely to show off how much more impressive one country was over another. The USSR was winning until they weren't, sure, but then the USA started winning until the USSR literally died.

I didn't know the USA wasn't the first to land on the moon with something other than humans. I do kinda agree with the person above you that it does sound like they were simply better, only we'd never know because the USA made this last achievement into the only thing that's retold and rehashed. It speaks the most to the imagination to roam another world, but in the grand scheme of things...

I had never even heard of unmanned, automated landers making it to the moon before humans! They had some computers and I happened to have picked up that they've sent things into orbit, but predetermined engine burns (with time to apply corrections from the ground) in a vacuum with nothing around you is quite a different level of achievement.

I don't care as much about the history so much as the science and future, but I am a space nerd so I'm actually rather surprised that I never knew this. The USA manages its public image about as carefully as China I feel like, the advantage being that they're often genuinely on the good side (no concentration camps for a minority group tends to help, for instance) but by no means selfless, impartial, or genuine. (The best example of public image management may be immigration desire stats. You'd be foolish to immigrate from a poor place to the USA when you can immigrate somewhere with higher social mobility as well as security, but the number of people in such a situation that wish to immigrate to a place like Denmark is tiny by comparison. The American dream, it's called, not the Danish dream. It's a huge, well-managed PR campaign to look to the USA as a leader, shoving competitors' achievements under the rug.)

I don't agree with the race framing either, but I was replying to a comment that used it so I leaned into it.

My point is not who won and who lost, it's that the USA has basically erased the USSR's achievements through its PR campaign and framing it as a race to put people on the moon, instead of the USs effort to catch up to the way more advanced USSR.

"moved the goalposts and crossed them" seems like an unusual way to describe an enterprise (yes, this is a deliberate Star Trek pun) that provides an endless supply of next steps, or "new goalposts" if you prefer. There's no milestone you reach and gain the ability to declare the game over, or at least not one we've identified yet. The fact that the Soviet Union was first with some early steps is a pretty big credit to them, the fact that they were overtaken later on by the US is a point in the Americans' favor.

That's the thing, they weren't "the first with some early steps", they were way ahead of the US on literally every single measure that matters. The only thing the US managed to do first was land people on the moon, which is mostly a symbolic gesture.

However, because of a decades long PR campaign, people think the US "won" and don't even realize all of the USSR's achievements. That's the rewriting of history that I'm referring to. I'm happy to acknowledge NASA's achievements, as long as it's not at the expense of others.

I'm curious why you think the US moved the goalposts when Kennedy set the goalposts in May of 1961: https://history.nasa.gov/moondec.html

You could argue that was moving the goalposts, since at that point the Soviets were (significantly?) ahead of the Americans, but the Soviets had just put Gagarin briefly in orbit. It seems hard to say that there had been that much of a "race" to that point?

Yes, they declared their intent, but there was never an official "race".

Matter of fact is that the US was behind the USSR in terms of technology. Kennedy declared a symbolic goal that was extremely risky and served little scientific purpose, and then accomplished that. That's the moving of goalposts. It was never a race to put a man on the moon, it was a rapidly developing scientific field, and the USSR was ahead of the US until their country started falling apart.

And now, because of that symbolic goal and a successful PR campaign, people don't know the USSR's achievements. The commenter above didn't know the USSR was the first to land on the moon and just claimed it was the US. That's the part that irks me.

If we want to go back to the moon, or better, to Mars, I think after I turn 70, I would absolutely volunteer to take a high risk test mission off planet, and potentially to Mars. Sure, it would be very nice to have a way back, but not necessary. When you finally get here, name a mountain after me or something.

>the only reason they didn't land people on the moon first too is because their country was falling apart

My interpretation of the history of the USSR space program is that they more often than not went the hard way and used remote controlled/preprogrammed vehicles not because it was easier but because it was hard (sorry). I fail to see how landing people on the moon is a bigger achievement than if it was done by remote control in a time with, well, hardly any computer power at all. In my opinion this is part of the rewrite of the history of the space race to an alternative version where the goal was actually landing a man on the moon and not a moving goal post that changed every time something new was achieved.

I don't disagree with you, the goalposts were always being moved by the country that lost the last stage, usually the USA.

I also think there's a case to be made that, given their history of success and expertise, they could have also landed a man on the moon first if things had gone differently.

> And the only reason they didn't land people on the moon first too is because their country was falling apart and they reduced investment in their space program.

This is most definitely not the case in the late 60s. The Soviets very much wanted to land on the moon up until the Apollo landing.

The cuts to the Soviet space program came after.

I might be wrong there, thanks for the call out.

You could be right, but the way I read it is that those are things that everyone already knows, so there is no point in spelling them out.

But a lot of US govt programs from that era spent a lot more money, and didn't deliver such impressive results: if they delivered at all.

At least the Manhattan project was similarly impressive.

> This sounds as if the journalist tries to downplay

Even if you disagree the history, why attribute it to someone else's intentions? What evidence do you have?

It’d be much easier if all we care was humanity’s achievements.

Darwinistic tendencies will always be part of human behavior, it is ingrained in our biology.

People will be competitive, and they will form groups and take sides and compare technological achievements.

Lots of tendancies are part of human behavior. So is cooperation, eusocial behavior, etc etc etc. NASA relied on the cooperation of many, many people, and the funding of everyone in the US.

The sentence is just a factual statement. 3 agencies have done it. That is fact.

The sentence did mention china has done it on the first attempt which is also factual and relevant to context. The article is about moon landings and associated failures.

As for the Apollo program everyone knows about it. There's no point in regurgitating obvious facts.

It's only relevant to context if it also includes the context in which the event occurred: China's first attempt is not a notable achievement in the same way the first successful landing after many failures is. I really hate these sinophiles' attempts to elevate China into some super-awesome, super-intelligent master race.

> China's first attempt is not a notable achievement in the same way the first successful landing after many failures is.

Landing on the first attempt is pretty impressive in itself, given the difficulty in landing at all is.

> I really hate these sinophiles' attempts to elevate China into some super-awesome, super-intelligent master race.

...I'm sorry, what the fuck are you talking about?

There is a...contingent...of people here and in other social media venues who seem quite set on elevating the achievements of their chosen group (China, in this case) with exaggerated, unmerited praise, and simultaneously poo-pooing the (usually equally or even more notable) achievements of others.

It's not just with China; it happens in other areas, too, usually focused on eastern nations or private enterprise (e.g., classical/ancient period mathematicians from India, SpaceX, etc.). I don't know if it's overcompensation for westerners' historically casual and sometimes active diminishing/ignoring these accomplishments or what, but it comes off as a tasteless attempt to assert superiority where none exists. And I'm just kinda tired of seeing it.

>I really hate these sinophiles' attempts to elevate China into some super-awesome, super-intelligent master race.

Please don't do this. You are seeing things in the text that isn't there and you seem to do the same just the other way around. It reads anti-chinese / racist.

He was just arguing against (what he perceived as) excessive sinophilia.

I'm often suspicious of china's motives, but I didn't see any sinophilia in the posts they're replying to. You did say "perceived" though, but it's a fine line. Some crazy people also see "Jews" in every aspect of money and government and it eventually turns into hate.

There are two reasons to point "on the first try" and leave out all the other context (in particular, the giant body of work done by other space agencies and engineering technologies, especially the US's, that China built on): 1) to artificially elevate China's achievement; 2) out of ignorance. I suppose an assumption of ignorance might be considered more charitable somehow, since at least it implies the author could learn something.

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