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Comment by nephihaha | Hacker News Reader

Much of the Soviet space programme was down to the personal brilliance of Sergei Korolev and other such figures, and large dollops of intelligence taken from the Germans and the Americans. Definitely the greatest Soviet achievement, but Korolev died prematurely due to his time in a prison camp and their manufacturing sector often let them down.

YouTube is quite innovative, by the way, just not in the way it should be. Its comments sections change on a frequent basis allowing for ever more complex shadow banning and censorship systems. Its search algorithms also tend to exclude certain channels and big up others.

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I’d love to learn more about the Soviet Space programme. Short of asking my favorite LLM, are there any books / articles you’d recommend?

I can't remember the titles offhand unfortunately. Bear in mind that a lot of details didn't come out until the 1990s due to Soviet censorship. The BBC did a great documentary on Korolev about thirty years ago when some details came out.

Whatever one thinks of the Soviet political system, they did have some great achievements. Some of the ones that people forget include first probe and first automated rover on the Moon, first space station, first probe on Mars, first rover and picture from Mars (albeit scrambled), also first pictures from the surface of another planet (Venus)

NASA tried to claim recently it had the first sound from another planet (Mars) and airborne probe (helicopter). The Soviets had already transmitted audio from Venus in the 1980s and had a balloon there.

Thanks for the response. Lots of rabbit holes for my kids and I to explore. First up for this weekend is this -> "Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race" found here https://ihavenotv.com/cosmonauts-how-russia-won-the-space-ra....

> Whatever one thinks of the Soviet political system, they did have some great achievements.

So true. Kids and I are slowly working through the Gelfand correspondence course (math) and it's amazing.

Do you not think the achievements of YT are down to the personal brilliance of its engineers?

And what you describe is fiddling with knobs at best, not actual new innovative features.

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