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[Jev North]

Another tall tale of Soviet engineering -  there were similar stories around Viktor Belenko's defection. He brought a MiG-25 along with him, thought to be a particularly high-performance modern fighter jet. When the CIA got their hands on it, they thought they were being pranked - in some places, the damned thing had patches of rust on it. With use of high-tech avionics and exotic composite materials soaring, the Soviets had nevertheless built the majority out of sheet metal. Steel, to be exact. Hand-welded and, in places, riveted. The avionics used vacuum tubes.

[Casiella]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson made the interesting point that July 20th 1969 is the only positive event of the last 50 years for which everyone (who was alive, anyway) knows where they were at that moment.

[Wanoah]

No boasting, no bullying, just a soft-spoken man who insisted he was only doing his job. They're the heroes we like best, yes?

I liked this because I tend to agree.

Source

[Natalcya Katla]

Watching it again makes that apollo capsule look incredibly primitive. Got a lot of nerves to jump into that piece of "junk" to go to the moon (that's how it looks, not actually what it is, especially in the late 60's).

I remember a story around the opening of the Iron Curtain, when an ESA delagation went to visit the Baikonur cosmodrome and witnessed a crew working on a Russian rocket - hammering in rivets with sledgehammers. Which chilled the ESA people to the bone, because if you hit an Ariane V with a hammer, it breaks. Veracity somewhat disputed, but contains grains of truth about the general Russian approach to engineering, I think..

ESA's culture is very much based on NASA's culture, in which high performance systems are built with exacting precision.  From what I have read, Russian methodology is more brute force, solving engineering problems with straightforward approaches.

The approach simplifies the engineering, but also limits what the system is capable of doing.   There are bits and pieces of the Soviet Lunar program lying around.  N-1 Rocket  LK

The USSR LK vs the USA LM really shows the result of the different design philosophies when it comes to rockets and spacecraft, where mass is of critical importance.

However, with precision, comes less margin for error.

One story I've heard - and I don't know if it's true or not, but it does seem plausible - is how NASA supposedly spent a lot of money to design a pen that would work reliably in a zero-g environment. The Soviets, meanwhile, used pencils.

[Wanoah]

Watching it again makes that apollo capsule look incredibly primitive. Got a lot of nerves to jump into that piece of "junk" to go to the moon (that's how it looks, not actually what it is, especially in the late 60's).

I remember a story around the opening of the Iron Curtain, when an ESA delagation went to visit the Baikonur cosmodrome and witnessed a crew working on a Russian rocket - hammering in rivets with sledgehammers. Which chilled the ESA people to the bone, because if you hit an Ariane V with a hammer, it breaks. Veracity somewhat disputed, but contains grains of truth about the general Russian approach to engineering, I think..

ESA's culture is very much based on NASA's culture, in which high performance systems are built with exacting precision.  From what I have read, Russian methodology is more brute force, solving engineering problems with straightforward approaches.

The approach simplifies the engineering, but also limits what the system is capable of doing.   There are bits and pieces of the Soviet Lunar program lying around.  N-1 Rocket  LK

The USSR LK vs the USA LM really shows the result of the different design philosophies when it comes to rockets and spacecraft, where mass is of critical importance.

However, with precision, comes less margin for error.

One story I've heard - and I don't know if it's true or not, but it does seem plausible - is how NASA supposedly spent a lot of money to design a pen that would work reliably in a zero-g environment. The Soviets, meanwhile, used pencils.

Yeah, I've always liked that story. It's apparently not quite true, though:

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

[orange]

It may not have come across as such, but there are important lessons from both engineering philosophies.

The "Soviet" approach means that the rocket engines can have a lose nut passed through a rocket engine and the engine still successfully operate (iirc SpaceX does this to Merlin 1 Engines).  You could never do this to the Shuttle Main Engines (or Delta IV engines).