Sergei Khrushchev: Why The Soviets Lost The Space Race
The USSR had a shot at the moon in 1967, but politics got in the way. We’re joined by Dr. Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, to talk about the Soviet race to the moon in the ’60s and his own role leading the development of the Proton Rocket, used to this day as one of the most successful boosters in the history of spaceflight.
Sergei, the space race during the 1960’s was tied to cold-war tensions & the demonstration of technological superiority, but for most people, including scientists like yourself, the dream of conquering space was about more than just who could build the biggest ICBM, right?
Yes, of course. First of all, space was not about building the biggest ICBM because even beginning with R7, it was not about the biggest ICBM, but the most effective. You have use a size of ICBM that will optimize it to economic conditions, in terms of cost & efficiency — those are very different goals from putting a man on the moon.
Now during the space race, the US & USSR were both intensely competing to achieve firsts in spaceflight — but within the USSR, you also had intense competition between design…
