rangerpl 13 Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) Well, first of all I don't have anything against Americans, I even lived there for a big chunk of my life, love the country (obviously don't love some of the politics as everyone), I greatly respect NASA's achievements and I don't mean to flame you or anything like that RangerPL, but almost every post from you in this thread seems to imply "US > Russia" :rolleyes:This whole argument started when someone posted a picture that basically said Russia has tons of achievements against America's only one, the moon landing. I wanted to disprove that. NASA is extremely good at pioneering. That's why they're the only ones to send a man-made object out of the solar system for example. I do admit that the Russians did some things better, for example Energia-Buran was far superior to the Shuttle, however the Shuttle actually accomplished more than Buran ever did. Russia is good at flying routine flights but has fallen behind on the high-profile stuff.My argument seems this way because it's in response to a very heavy-handed Russia > USA argument. ------------------------------------------ To address some other things said in the thread: Regarding Wernher von Braun, it is actually a misconception that he's responsible for the whole Apollo program. He helped conceive the idea of a lunar landing but his ideas as to how to do it were actually ignored in favor of the more conservative Lunar Orbit Rendezvous mission profile. While he designed the Saturn rockets used to launch Apollo missions, all the spacecraft were designed and built by North American Aviation and Grumman. As for the lack of a manned US space program, that is not a failure of NASA or American technology, but of Washington bureaucracy which failed to create a short-term plan. Not that it matters since Soyuz was going to be used as the main crew vehicle for the International Space Station anyway, as it's much cheaper to launch and operate. The Shuttle was used to build the station, crew rotation and resupply was handled almost exclusively by the Russians (with infrequent exceptions). For the record, I am not an American. Edited January 20, 2012 by RangerPL Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jblackrupert 14 Posted January 20, 2012 I think it was George Lucas. It later became known as Star Wars. Said in jest. Get over it :p No no, it was the movie formally known as Star Wars. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
