this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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On the spaceflight note, it’s rather sad that the Soviets harassed and imprisoned Yuri Kondratyuk since his work was vital in the moon landing and orbital mechanics in general.
If his work in space flight was supported and not repeatedly crushed by authorities, the USSR might’ve landed on the moon first. Instead, he was imprisoned by the NVKD for some of his engineering designs (for “sabotage” of not using nails, which is a dumb thing on its own).
And eventually, he gave all his aerospace notes to a friend to smuggle them out of the country because he feared the govt would accuse him of treason like they had Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (the guy who made Sputnik 1).
The Soviets could have won the space race, if it weren’t for the “authoritarianism” you’re trying to make light of
A) that’s actually good meme haha
B) the space race ended when the US landed on the moon, if you run a 5k and get to 4.9k ahead of everyone but then don’t cross the finish line, you’ve still lost the race
Anyway the point of my comment wasn’t “the US beat the Soviets because they’re authoritarian” it was “the Soviets had everything they needed to absolutely dominate space travel but their authoritarianism hindered their scientific progress significantly”
This is what the lack of dialectical & historical materialism does to a motherfucker. You shall serve as a great example of what happens to the chumps who refuse to read theory.