Space Race: Were the Soviets Really Better?

As I continue reading more and more about NASA's Project Apollo and particularly Project Mercury, I have to wonder if the Soviets were really better at getting into space than the United States. It seems like NASA was having a lot of difficulties with spacecraft technology, while the Soviets did not. Throughout Project Mercury, nearly every mission had some sort of minor difficulty.

Mission MA-7 seemed particularly difficult to me. First off, Deke Slayton was the pilot originally scheduled to man the craft, but NASA was concerned about his heart problem and thought that it would be better for Scott Carpenter to take the mission. Then, once Carpenter had gone into orbit after the May 24, 1962 launch, the temperature in his space suit kept rising, reaching 102 degrees Fahrenheit. A tethered balloon experiment failed, plus the craft was running low on fuel the entire time. Even the successful MA-6 mission, when John Glenn became the first American in orbit, had its minor problems.

Meanwhile, the Soviets have already gone for months enjoying the satisfaction of having reached orbit first and they continue launching this, that, and the other thing. They even placed the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, in orbit in 1963, and her flight alone was longer than all of the Mercury flights combined! Perhaps, if the Soviets indeed had as many difficulties as the United States, they covered up them up, no doubt. Or maybe the Soviets' technology was, in fact, better than that of the United States: their rockets were taller and heavier than ours and they had already placed several dogs and humans in space. But maybe the Soviets were able to reach space quicker because they were willing to take more risks than the United States and were not so concerned with safety.

The Americans seemed more cautious because they wanted every man that they sent into space to come back safely—President Kennedy said, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

So, maybe the Soviets were not really better than the United States at reaching space: they simply took more risks.

By the way, the other thing that I have been wondering about lately is why there was a difference between the design of the American spacecraft versus the Soviet spacecraft? How did the Americans even come up with their ideas to build the first spacecraft—what kind of process did they use?