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What if the Soviets made it to the Moon first?
“The purpose of the space race was not science. It wasn’t even to land on the moon,” he said. McCurdy speculates that if the Soviets had been first to land on the moon, they probably would have also won the Cold War as a result. “One of the reasons we won the Cold War is because we won the space race,” he said.
Did the Soviet Union win the Space Race?
12 April 1961: The Soviet Union achieve a clear triumph in the Space Race. Aboard the Vostok 1, Yuri Gagarin makes a single orbit around the Earth and becomes the first man to reach space.
What if the Soviet Union landed on the Moon first Quora?
Nothing much. Even more Americans would claim the landing was fake. The US would have landed there second. Being first had no scientific value, besides earning NASA prestige and more willing funding to carry on.
What if the Soviet Union had got to the Moon first?
That single act trumped the Soviet achievement of sending the first man into space eight years earlier. But what might have happened if the Soviet Union had got to the Moon first? The first manned lunar landing was a triumph for Nasa, and when the Americans won the Space Race, they also sounded its death knell.
Who was Sergei Korolev and what did he do?
Long before we met him, one man dominated much of our conversation in the early days of our training; Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the mastermind behind the Soviet space program. He was only ever referred to by the initials of his first two names, SP, or by the mysterious title of “Chief Designer”, or simply “Chief”.
What if Korolev had lived a little longer?
In any case he was too much of a national treasure to have been sent on such a risky mission. However, if Korolev had lived a little longer and if Soviet spies had stolen US computer technology, then the Moon might well have been colonised and have been a base for international manned missions to Mars and – perhaps – beyond.
Could Leonov have been the first person to walk on the Moon?
A subsequent mission to inspect the station disproved the idea. Ultimately, Leonov will be remembered as the first person to walk in space. But if things had gone differently, the Russian might have become the first person to walk on the Moon.