Benjamin Dahl Dahl 1

Elton John Might Be A "Rocket Man," But He Is No Cosmonaut

Ignition! The space shuttle rockets away from the Earth at inconceivable speeds,

hurdling ever-closer to the great beyond. Booster rockets fall away, jumper rockets come

to life, and the skyscraper-sized vehicle becomes nothing more than a spec in the sky.

Emotionally overcome with wonder, awe, and amazement, you stare at the heavens and

let the feelings wash over you.

Throughout history, people have wondered about life outside of this planet, solar

system, and galaxy; for many people this manifests as the desire to become an astronaut.

If this was happening prior to the end of the Cold War, the United Soviet Socialist

Republics (U.S.S.R.) was the place to be. After the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of

the Cold War, the Soviet space program was dissolved and the United States became

superior in the field of space aviation. It was not the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. that

caused the downfall of Soviet space aviation; it was a combination of horrendous

leadership and pride.

After World War II, the United States and the U.S.S.R. emerged as the world’s

only superpowers. Wikipedia describes a superpower as, "A superpower is a state with a

leading position in the international system and the ability to influence events and project

power on a worldwide scale; it is considered a higher level of power than a great power"

(Superpower). In light of this fact, or perhaps because of it, they were locked in a battle

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for military superiority. Space aviation technology was viewed not as a scientific

application, but a military one. These views ultimately benefit the space race because it

meant increased funding and manpower for the United States and Soviet programs.

Anatoly Zak is a native of the Soviet Union and has contributed works for

practically every major space publication. He was the contributing editor for Astronomy

and Cosmonautics for the Moscow Polytech Society and currently works with IEEE

Society and Air & Space Smithsonian. Zak publishes RussianSpaceWeb.Com which

provides a wealth of information about space aviation and aims to, as he describes,

“preserve and popularize the history of space exploration and to promote the cooperation

in space” (Zak).

The year is 1957 and, according to Zak, it will be remembered in history as a

vanguard year for space aviation, particularly for the Soviet program. The importance of

this year begins on May 15th with the failed test launch of the R-7 Intercontinental

Ballistic Missile (ICBM). The test was completed successfully in August and marked the

official beginning to the space race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. The

Soviets also successfully launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, on

October 4th. On November 3rd, Sputnick-2 was launched and carried the dog Laika into

space, the first time an intelligent biological being was propelled into space. Throughout

the course of 1957, the United States had four failed test launches: two Vanguard rockets,

an Atlas rocket, and the Vanguard (TV-3) satellite (Zak). If the Soviet successes alone

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were not enough, the utter failure of their only competition, The United States, was sure

to cement their position as the primary space-faring nation of the era.

After the success of their rockets, the Soviets began focusing on the super

ordinate goal, the Moon. In 1959, the Luna-1 and Luna 2 were launched and became the

first object to escape Earth orbit and land on the Moon, respectively. At this point in

time, The United States had only managed to get a satellite into orbit and establish the

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). As the world rolled into the

new decade, the Soviet space program was clearly dominating the field of space aviation

(Zak).

John F. Kennedy, the U.S. President at the time, gave a speech in 1962 that would

begin a chain reaction that would change everything. President Kennedy said:

But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United

States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look

behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--

and so will space. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the

moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but

because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and

measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one

that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one

which we intend to win, and the others, too. It is for these reasons that I

regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high

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gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my

incumbency in the office of the Presidency. But if I were to say, my

fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from

the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the

length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which

have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several

times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a

precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed

for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on

an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely

to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per

hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as

hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before

this decade is out--then we must be bold. (John F. Kennedy Speech "We

choose to go to the Moon…")

Kennedy understood the importance of getting a man on the Moon and was willing to

throw all of his influence behind being the first to do it.

Unfortunately for the Soviets, their leadership did not have the foresight that

President Kennedy did. As detailed on Wikipedia:

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev did not relish "defeat" by any other

power, but equally did not relish funding such an expensive project. In

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October 1963 he said that the USSR was "not at present planning flight by

cosmonauts to the Moon", while insisting that the Soviets had not dropped

out of the race. (Moon Landing)

With Khrushchev's non-committal stance on a manned moon landing, and even with the

clear commitment from the United States, the Soviets still continued to outdo the United

States. Voskhod-1 and Voskhod-2 both successfully orbit the Earth and Alexei Leonov

performs the first "spacewalk" aboard the Voskhod-2. In 1966, The Soviets managed to

orbit the Moon and perform one successful soft landing on the lunar surface (Zak).

The chain reaction that Kennedy initiated with his promise of having a man on the

moon by the end of the 1960s reached critical mass on July 21, 1969. Three men: Neil

Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, Jr, changed history with the Apollo 11

mission. Wikipedia elaborates:

The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon.

It was the fifth human spaceflight of the Apollo program and the third

human voyage to the moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried

Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael

Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July

20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon,

while Collins orbited above. (Apollo 11)

The United States had done what Kennedy had promised years before and, in doing so,

delivered a crushing blow to the Soviets, who abandoned the Moon after their failure.

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Soviet space aviation would continue on for a number of years after the loss to the

U.S., but things would never be the same. One of the greatest achievements of the Soviet

space program, after its success in the late 1950s, occurred on February 20th 1986 with

the launching of the Mir space station. The Soviets already had a space station in orbit,

Salyut-7, but Mir represented a commitment to international space exploration. Mir was

constructed over a ten year period and composed of nine different modules (Zak). The

most important facet of Mir was that it represented the Soviets beating the United States

after their bitter defeat with the Apollo 11 mission. The Soviet program was still in dire

straits due to the political instability growing throughout the U.S.S.R.

As if Khrushchev's lack of support for the Moon Race was not enough, Mikhail

Gorbachev continued to turn things in Soviet Russia "on their head." Beginning in 1985,

Mikhail Gorbachev began seeking to pass reforms aimed at making sweeping changes

within the government. Perestroika, economic restructuring, and glasnost, political

openness, were the two most influential of these reforms. These two initiatives, coupled

with personally installing himself as President, runs contrary to almost everything that is

considered to be Communist.

Interest in the great beyond was being abandoned to focus on domestic initiatives.

James Oberg, a writer for Omni, describes this best when he writes, "When the first

spaceman actually becomes "stranded" this year (1991), the cause was entirely terrestrial:

His country had run out of money" (Oberg 1). Everyone at home was so focused on what

was happening around them that they forgot about Krikalev who was orbiting the Earth

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every ninety minutes. This is just one of the events influenced by the domestic fallout

occurring.

Individual power was being provided to the citizens and the states which began to

rebel against the central government. After a period of a few years, the U.S.S.R. began a

downward spiral that ultimately resulted in a failed military coup-de-etats in Moscow.

After the coup, the U.S.S.R. was officially dissolved and became the Commonwealth of

Independent States and the Ukraine.

Each of these entities had their own separate space programs and operating

imperatives. According to Vera Rich, in an issue of New Scientist, "Russia has set up an

independent space agency to take over most of the old Soviet space programme only

weeks after it agreed to join the proposed joint space programme of the Commonwealth

of Independent States" (Rich 13). Unfortunately, the Russian program would never excel

to the extent that the Soviet program previously had. Outside of Mir, a Soviet space

endeavor and not a Russian or Ukrainian one, nothing transpired after the fall of the

U.S.S.R. and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Zak).

Up to this point, the history, including successes and failures, of the United States

and the Soviet space programs have been investigated. Additionally, there is obviously

the correlation between the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 and the demise of the

Soviet space program which could be attributed as its downfall. However, in order to

fully appreciate the situation, the relationship between the fall of the U.S.S.R. and the

Soviet space program needs to be examined from a different perspective.

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Steven Levitt, a Harvard scholar and famous economist, has an interesting

prerogative about the application of finite principals to historical events. In his book

Freakonomics, he writes about the extremely high crime rate in the 1990s and how it

dwindled near the end of the decade. Many economists, politicians, and other influential

figures argued that the cause was due to the revival of the economy in the United States.

In Economics there is a principle that dictates that correlation does not prove

causation. Levitt explains this best:

But just because two things are correlated does not mean that one causes

the other. A correlation simply means that a relationship exists between

two factors - let's call them X and Y - but it tells you nothing about the

direction of that relationship. It's possible that X causes Y; it’s also

possible that Y causes X; and it may be that X and Y are both being

caused by some other factor Z. (Levitt 10).

Levitt then argues that the crime rate ultimately dwindled because of the famous Roe v.

Wade abortion case. The legalization of abortion significantly reduced the pool of at-risk

criminals and this is what ultimately led to the reduction of the crime rate. This is

significant because Roe v. Wade happened twenty years before the drop-off in the crime

rate (Levitt 5). Applying a similar non-conventional mode of thinking to the Soviet space

program allows the other perspective to be visualized.

Just because the United Soviet Socialist Republic was dissolved in 1991, along

with the Soviet space program, this does not mean that the correlation proves causation.

It was not the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. that caused the downfall of Soviet space

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aviation; it was a combination of horrendous leadership and pride. Nikita Khrushchev

refused to commit to the Moon Race like President Kennedy; Mikhail Gorbachev tried to

"fix what wasn't broken" when he tried to kill Communism. In addition to this, President

Kennedy made good on his promise to get the United States onto the moon first.

Broadcasting an event like this over international airwaves, the Aldrin walk is still

available on the internet, was ultimately the catalyst that destroyed Soviet space aviation.

Arguably, even with the Moon landing and the horrible leadership, The Soviets

have done amazing things involving space and contributed more from a quantitative

standpoint than anyone else. Mir is still in orbit and was the stepping stone for the

International Space Station; Soviet rockets were the benchmark for close to twenty-five

years. Applying Levitt however opens up the possibility that the problems were much

deeper and the actual dissolution in 1991 was merely the point where people began

paying attention. People will quickly jump to attribute failures with the event

historically closest. In the case of crime, it was attributed to the bull nature of the

economy; in the case of Soviet space aviation, it was the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991.

The collapse of the United Soviet Socialist Republic did not kill Soviet space aviation

Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and Kennedy did.