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"Soviet rocket technology comparable to Germany's" ???

I am moving @Ilenart626:'s recent addition here for now, for discussion. I find several things are problematic about it:

  • Was Nikolai Tikhomirov alive in 1921 to lead the first "sanctioned" Soviet rocket research? Our biography page, while calling him an engineer, says absolutely nothing about rocket research, and says he died in 1900 at the age of 42 or 43.
  • This statement is highly controversial: "During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's, but Joseph Stalin's Great Purge from 1936 to 1938 severely damaged its progress." Technology has to be developed; Germany spent the 1930s developing the Aggregat class of intermediate-range ballistic missiles; if the statement of parity were true, one would expect Hitler and Stalin to be lobbing IRBM's at each other, instead of just Hitler bombing London. It may well be true the Soviets would have come closer to parity had Stalin been more interested in that than purging his "enemies", but as it is this comes across as a "dog-ate-my-homework" sort of excuse.
  • There is a WP:BALANCE problem in going to this much detail for the Soviets, at the expense of the German and American programs; smacks of a bit too much sympathy for the Soviet Union. This section needs to be written in WP:SUMMARY style, with detail like this included in the referenced pages.
  • In light of the recent failed GA review, it was identified that the article needs to be trimmed, not bloated more.
  • The text is replete with grammatical (e.g. "an Tupolev" instead of "a Tupolev" and punctuation errors (missing quotes and commas, etc.)

The reverted text follows:

The first Soviet development of rockets was in 1921 when the Soviet military sanctioned a small research laboratory to explore solid fuel rockets, led by Nikolai Tikhomirov, who had commenced studying solid and liquid-fueled rockets in 1894, and in 1915 he lodged a patent for "self-propelled aerial and water-surface mines.[1][2] The First test-firing of a solid fuel rocket was carried out in 1928 and in 1932 in-air test firings of RS-82 missiles from an Tupolev I-4 aircraft armed with six launchers successfully took place.[3] Further developments were carried out by members of GIRD in the 1930s, where Soviet rocket pioneers Sergey Korolev, Friedrich Zander, Mikhail Tikhonravov and Leonid Dushkin[4] launched GIRD-09 the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933.[5] In 1935 the two design bureaus were combined and resulted in RP-318 the Soviets first rocket-powered aircraft and the RS-82 and RS-132 missiles,[6] which became the basis for the Katyusha multiple rocket launcher,[7][8][9] During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's,[10] but Joseph Stalin's Great Purge from 1936 to 1938 severely damaged its progress.

During World War II Soviet rocket development continued, including a short-range rocket powered interceptor called Bereznyak-Isayev BI-1 [11][12] and Auxillary liquid-fueled rocket engines to assist takeoff and climbing of prop aircraft.[13] In 1944 the Soviets became aware of Nazi Germany's rocket programme from Winston Churchill, which resulted in recovery of A-4 missile parts from a missile test station in Debica, Poland.[14] In early 1945 a team of Soviet rocket specialists were sent to Germany to idenify and recover German rocket technology,[15] which developed into Institute Rabe, a Soviet missile research group in Bleicherode, Germany that recruited and employed German rocket specialists to aid in current and future Soviet rocket development.[16]

References

  1. ^ Siddiqi 2000, p. 6.
  2. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 164-5 Vol 1.
  3. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 165 Vol 1.
  4. ^ Siddiqi 2000, p. 4-5.
  5. ^ George P. Sutton (November–December 2003). "History of Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engines in Russia, Formerly the Soviet Union". Journal of Propulsion and Power. 19 (6): 1008–1037. doi:10.2514/2.6943. Archived from the original on 2021-04-29.
  6. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 167 vol 1.
  7. ^ John Pike. "Katyusha Rocket". Globalsecurity.org. Retrieved 2016-01-19.
  8. ^ "Greatest World War II Weapons : The Fearsome Katyusha Rocket Launcher". Defencyclopidea. Retrieved 20 May 2022.
  9. ^ Siddiqi 2000, p. 9.
  10. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 167-8 Vol 1.
  11. ^ "Bolkhovitinov Bi-1". aviastar.org. Retrieved 29 May 2022.
  12. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 174,207 Vol 1.
  13. ^ Siddiqi 2000, p. 15.
  14. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 258-9 Vol 1.
  15. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 214 Vol 1.
  16. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 289-300 Vol 1.

Sources cited

JustinTime55 (talk) 17:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@JustinTime55:, thanks for the comments. Note that I started editing this section when I saw some of the existing information is incorrect. Soviet investigation of Russian rocket technology started in Aug-Sep 1944 in Poland and from Apr 1945 in Germany. Sergei Korolev was not involved in any of the intial investigation, he arrived in Germany in Sept 1945 to study missile launch preparation equipment and in Mar 1946 was appointed deputy (ie 2nd in charge) and chief designer of Institute Nordhausen. So the current statement that Korolev was"... chief rocket engineer (essentially the Soviet counterpart to von Braun) and sent him to lead a team of his best rocket engineers to Peenemünde to see what they could salvage." is not correct and why I prepared the new details.

To answer your specific questions:

  • Was Nikolai Tikhomirov alive in 1921 to lead the first "sanctioned" Soviet rocket research? Our biography page, while calling him an engineer, says absolutely nothing about rocket research, and says he died in 1900 at the age of 42 or 43.
Different person, I am talking about the rocket specialist Nikolai Ivanovich Tikhomirov (1860-1930) not the engineer Nikolai Mikhailovich Tikhomirov (1857-1900). Both the Siddiqi[1] and Chertok[2] references I have provided highlight details of his accomplishments. Note that one of craters on the far side of the moon is named after him.
THIS PERSON HAS A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE: Nikolai Tikhomirov (chemical engineer). His page says he was born in November 1859. JustinTime55 (talk) 12:32, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
  • This statement is highly controversial: "During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's, but Joseph Stalin's Great Purge from 1936 to 1938 severely damaged its progress." Technology has to be developed; Germany spent the 1930s developing the Aggregat class of intermediate-range ballistic missiles; if the statement of parity were true, one would expect Hitler and Stalin to be lobbing IRBM's at each other, instead of just Hitler bombing London. It may well be true the Soviets would have come closer to parity had Stalin been more interested in that than purging his "enemies", but as it is this comes across as a "dog-ate-my-homework" sort of excuse.
The statement "During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's, but Joseph Stalin's Great Purge severely damaged its progress." has been in the Soviet space program article for the last 7 years, however it was not supported by any references. When I was recently reviewing Chertok's Rockets and People Volume 1 I came across the following (p166-167):
"In the 1930s, only the Soviet and German governments were supporting work on a broad spectrum of rocket-related subjects. From 1932–1935, the Germans lagged behind us considerably, especially in the area of rockets. Beginning in 1935, however, the Germans started to catch up and then pass us in the development of liquid-propellant rocket engines, especially in those using oxygen/ alcohol components. During the tragic years of 1937–38, NII-3 lost its leadership. Kleymenov and Langemak were arrested in 1937 and shot to death in January 1938.Military engineer Boris Slonimer, who had returned from Spain, was appointed chief. Kostikov was appointed chief engineer and deputy chief. In 1938, Glushko and then Korolev were arrested."
This seemed to be a fair supporting reference for whoever first included this statement seven years ago, so I added the reference to the Soviet space programme article, which I then copied accross when I was updating this article.
In answer to your statement, "..if the statement of parity were true, one would expect Hitler and Stalin to be lobbing IRBM's at each other, instead of just Hitler bombing London." note that as soon as Hitler invaded USSR the Soviets were lobbing rockets at the Nazis; the Katyusha rocket launcher was already in use by the Soviet military, plus the RS-82 and RS-132 was also in use. In fact in 1939 Soviet aircraft shot down 19 Japanese aircraft with RS-82 rockets during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.
  • There is a WP:BALANCE problem in going to this much detail for the Soviets, at the expense of the German and American programs; smacks of a bit too much sympathy for the Soviet Union. This section needs to be written in WP:SUMMARY style, with detail like this included in the referenced pages.
I don't think WP:BALANCE is an issue here, particularly between the US and Soviet programmes. Before 1945 the US rocket programme did not exist, apart from Robert H. Goddard who was ridiculed. Contrast this with Soviet research before and during WWII, which had a number of research labs working on multitude types of rocket technology and had deployed working rocket systems in the military. WP:Balance states "Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence." Given the extent of the Soviet rocket technology I would see no issues with the Soviet section being double the size of the US section.
This is a fair point, however I would not describe replacing inaccurate information as "bloated more". Note that I have already trimmed down this section a fair bit, see the complete section in Soviet space program#Early Russian-Soviet efforts and the ""World War II" section below this, basically the Soviets were pretty active in this area, so describing what they did takes a bit of space. I would support creating or shifting information to other articles. From a quick look at this article I would suggest the "Outer space treaty" and "Space Shuttles" sections could be moved as I am unsure how they relate to the "Space race". We could also perhaps create a "Early History of Soviet space programme" similar to Creation of NASA, however at the moment the Soviet space programme has no issues with size.
  • The text is replete with grammatical (e.g. "an Tupolev" instead of "a Tupolev" and punctuation errors (missing quotes and commas, etc.)
I think this is a minor point. If you or other Editors would like review and / or highlight any issues I will correct. Note that I am an Ozzie so I speak an write "Australian" :)

JustinTime55, happy to discuss changes and / or improvements with yourself and other Editors on what I have drafted. However I believe the new wording is an improvement on the existing section and should be included. Ilenart626 (talk) 08:32, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

No reply so have move the above text back into the article Ilenart626 (talk) 00:36, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

My response

(I put this down here in a new section instead of responding to points in-stream in order to prevent a confusing wall of text.)
Sigh... Okay, I'm all for replacing inaccuracies with accurate info. I should say good catch; I guess GA nomination was premature anyway. until we get this all sorted out and polished.
  • I think we still need to straighten out the mess with so many Tikhomirovs, especially the two Nikolai's with different middle names. That strikes me as a bit too much of a coincidence; were 2 or all 3 of them related? (But that's mostly a matter for the other articles, not necessarily here. At least Nikolai Ivanovich Tikhomirov should have his own bibliographic article.) Meanwhile, how do we keep stray drive-by editors (seems to be the current level of interest in Space Race) from getting confused like I was and try to re-add the wrong wikilink? If you could work on straightening out the bios and Soviet rocket program, I can work on cleaning up your Space Race section.
  • It's good to have verification of my conviction that the Soviets could have progressed much farther, sooner if Stalin wasn't so paranoid and doing insane things like imprisoning Korolev. And to make myself clear, when I said "the Soviets should have been lobbing missiles" I was thinking of V2-sized IRBM's, not Katyusha artillery "rockets".
  • We shouldn't assume readers know, or make them guess, what GIRD stands for ("Further developments were carried out by members of GIRD in the 1930s"); needs to be spelled out in the wikilink.
  • Even though it helps develop the technology, I'm not quite sure how rocket-powered aircraft research relates directly to the Space Race. And weren't the Germans working on the same thing? (Is this like the V-1?)
I still think you write funny even for an "Ozzie" (I thought it's spelled "Aussie".) :-) JustinTime55 (talk) 12:16, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
No worries! Have been busy the last couple of days and managed to Translate the Nikolai Tikhomirov (chemical engineer) from the Russian Wiki site. I debated how to separate the two articles and as per WP:NCPDAB eventually settled on "chemical engineer", even though he is better known for his contribution to rockets. I'm happy to keep working on the bios and the rest of the Soviet program, currently working on translating the Russian version of Gas Dynamic Laboratory (GDL).
There is already an article on GIRD (Group for the Study of Reactive Motion) but I was trying to minimise the word count. Once I have some of these other articles finished probably worthwhile detailing how they fit together, maybe in Soviet rocketry? Ilenart626 (talk)
ANOTHER APPARENT CONTRADICTION: I'm assuming Gas Dynamics Laboratory was the name of the first small research lab Tikhomirov worked for, but several WP articles (e.g. RS-82 (rocket family)do a search on "Gas Dynamics Lab") state that this group included, but was not led by Tikhomirov, but by someone else: Georgy Langemak.
Also, the GIRD article contradicts the date of the GDL/GRID merger, 1933 rather than 1935. JustinTime55 (talk) 13:42, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
The Design work on RS-82 and RS-132 rockets was led by Georgy Langemak, who was an employee of the Gas Dynamics Laboratory. Tikhomirov started the lab in 1921 and it was initally called something along the lines of “Lab to commercialise the inventions of Tikhomirov. In 1928 it was renamed “Gas Dynamics Laboratory”.
These quotes from Rockets and People may help:
“ GDL was created in Moscow in 1921 to develop the inventions of Nikolay Tikhomirov.After moving to Leningrad it was named the Gas-Dynamics Laboratory. Nikolay Tikhomirov had proposed using the reaction of gases obtained during the combustion of explosive substances for “self-propelled mines for the water and air.” GDL activity was concentrated on creating smokeless solid-propellant projectiles and the technology needed to manufacture their explosive charges.Vladimir Artemyev was Tikhomirov’s close collaborator and co-author in the development of the first solid-propellant rockets. He designed the first smokeless powder rocket and authored many inventions in the field of solid-propellant rockets.
In 1930,after the death of Tikhomirov,military engineer and artilleryman Boris Petropavlovskiy was appointed GDL director. Petropavlovskiy was also a professor at the Military Technical Academy, and he actively promoted the idea of rocket weaponry among his students.At his initiative, GDL developed launchers for the firing of rockets in the form of simple openwork tubes secured under the wings of an aircraft.
Petropavlovskiy became seriously ill in late 1932, and died in 1933. Ivan Kleymenov was appointed as the new GDL chief.Before coming to work at GDL, he had studied in the physics and mathematics department at Moscow University, and from there had been sent to the N.Ye. Zhukovskiy Air Force Academy. Upon graduation from the Academy, Kleymenov received the GDL appointment and took up the baton for the development of smokeless solid-propellant rockets for aircraft and multi-barreled rocket launchers.
Along with Kleymenov and Artemyev, one of the main leaders in the development of rockets at GDL was Georgiy Langemak. Like Petropavlovskiy and Kleymenov,he had volunteered for service in the Red Army during the civil war, and then was sent to study.After graduation from the Military Technical Academy, he selected internal ballistics as his specialty.“
Ilenart626 (talk) 14:07, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Not sure of the date of the merger, have to do some research Ilenart626 (talk) 14:13, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Okay...thanks for the very fine research. But I'm sure you'll agree, that best fits in the Soviet rocketry article and is way TMI for the Space Race article; we should just essentially summarize by saying Tikhomirov was USSR's founding father of small rocket research in what became the GDL; then the military began the serious research at GIRD, and they were merged in 1932.
Summary of American rocket research: Goddard would have been US's founding father, except he was a victim of the WWI armistice (damned peace is bad for rocket development!) and the ridicule of the New York Times, and so became a recluse, leaving his wife to patent his discoveries and sue von Braun, yada yada.
BTW: an important implicit, (unstated) point of the Space Race article is that people who think it was all Jules Verne, science-inspired are misguided, and Gene Rodenberry had his head up his butt with his utopian BS; the irony is that without world war and megalomaniacal dictators (Hitler, Stalin) and Western governments to defend against them, there would be no wherewithall "to boldly go where no man has gone before". There were no real-life Daddy Warbucks with deep enough pockets to build rockets for space travel ($$$). Today entrepreneurs like Elon Musk are trying to fill in the gaps, but seem to be making slow progress when compared to JFK's moon race. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:09, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you can call Tikhomirov USSR's "founding father", I think he was one of the pioneers, however Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's article describes him as a founding father (along with the Frenchman Robert Esnault-Pelterie, the Germans Hermann Oberth, Fritz von Opel and the American Robert H. Goddard) of modern rocketry and astronautics). I'm also happy to work on bios and the Soviet space program if you want to work on this article. My plan is to finish off a few more translations of articles from the Russian wiki (ie Gas Dynamics Laboratory, GIRD, etc) as I am finding details which are not on the English wiki. Then I can carry out a cross check of all the articles for consistency. I also believe Siddiqi’s Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 and Chertok's 4 volume Rockets and People are two good sources to check / update all the articles. Ilenart626 (talk) 09:00, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Siddiqi 2000, p. 6.
  2. ^ Chertok 2005, p. 164-5 Vol 1.

NPOV issues

I want to bring attention to this edit which I have made because they are of pertinence to the presentation of the information within this article, even if they are of minor trivia or so, and concerns that some or all of this article may be too skewed towards pro-USSR/Russian viewpoints, which may invite animosity among WP:READERS in the context of 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The edit is actually a partial revert of User:Andyjsmith's removal of passages first added by other IP regarding Ham the space chimp, Ranger 4 and Alan Shepard. In my partial revert I had restored only the passages regarding the first two, while agreeing that the very latter may be better suited in articles which are "in-depth" rather than this.

User:Chipmunkdavis had undone my edits under the very vague reasons of "unencyclopedic", "trivia" or "not suited here", and as it reached 3RR I first attempted to reach him at talk page to discuss the issue, but found out that it was semi-protected. Thus I'd like to bring the issue here for discussion or solicit third opinions from subject matter experts such as User:JustinTime55.

204.15.72.92 (talk) 12:35, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Chipmunkdavis' removal of your edits, what have they got to do with the space race between the USSR and USA? And frankly what have your edits about Ham the monkey or objects impacting the moon got to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Ilenart626 (talk) 13:01, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
If you only skimmed through my thread with a mobile phone or so, then I'd happy to repeat a gist, but for only once:
concerns that some or all of this article may be too skewed towards pro-USSR/Russian viewpoints, which may invite animosity among WP:READERS in the context of 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The sin of omission itself, while may be constructive in some cases, may prove to be harmful in terms of WP:NPOV in other instances. For most the space race is also an exhibition of "firsts" and technical achievements, no matter how big or small, by either side so it's hard to see why it's good to left these out, except perhaps to avoid the page from becoming too long. Since I fear this is going to be a gridlock, I had by now used the talk page invitation function to get Justintime55 who's a subject matter expert that has performed substantive edits on this page, to give a third opinion on this.
204.15.72.92 (talk) 15:57, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
To add some more, the reason why I linked this issue to the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, is because readers could get an impression that USSR/Russia's achievements were overrated or bloated to the detriment of the US, even though the FAQ in this talk page header states that the race resulted in a tie and no one "won" the race. As a result some of them would go dig deeper and find out that there are nuances or caveats behind those achievements and proceed to either edit this page or just make a fuss about it. If it's reverted or so on then they could easily switch to the latter, where it could very well become something like the Streisand effect and produce a perception that Wikipedia violated WP:NPOV conventions by "secretly loving Russia" in here which I think could produce net harm to the project in the long term. Beside that, why is Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine which is far more unrelated to the scope of this article than the proposed edits, is in the "See also" section? 204.15.72.92 (talk) 16:13, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
I thought that saying Ranger “acquired the dubious honour of being the first spacecraft to impact the far side of the Moon” was a particularly fine example of an edit that absolutely cried out for immediate reversion as unreferenced irrelevant trivia. It manages to be opinionated (“dubious”) and anthropomorphic (“honour”) whilst conveying no information that is in any way relevant to the article or even interesting. Andyjsmith (talk) 21:28, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
There's always WP:SOFIXIT! It can be pared down to a staid manner which simply states that it was the first probe to hit the far side of the Moon. 204.15.72.92 (talk) 11:33, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
And the relevance to the space race is what exactly? Is crashing, unseen, in one place rather than another place even a thing? Is there a league table for objects that crashed on the moon where this vehicle has a place of honour? Did it spur Cold War rivalry or give Korolev bad dreams? Thought not. Trivia. Boring. Irrelevant. Andyjsmith (talk) 21:02, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
In turn there are POV issues which could conceivably give the users an impression that it is skewed towards pro-Soviet viewpoints, no matter how implicit it is. The "Origins" section gives more coverage to Soviet rocket development whereas American ones like Qian Xuesen and the GALCIT were left out, the latter makes the statement This left the United States as the only one of the major three World War II powers not to have its own rocket program, until Von Braun and his engineers were expatriated in 1945. inaccurate. Within the Robotic lunar probes section, the Soviet's Luna mission were given relatively meticulous attention (such as failure attempts) and America's early Thor-Able probes in the Pioneer program were ignored. At a glance readers would take that US has less failure rate that the USSR, but deep down it gave another wrong impression that US has a late footing than Russia and "didn't try hard enough" in terms of lunar probes launching attempts whether successful or not. Then finally the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine in the "See also" section, which should just be in namesake satellite page as it's a bit out of scope in this article, appears to be something that "spikes the football" for Russia, in spite of original editor's intentions when adding the link to here. 204.15.72.92 (talk) 21:00, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
Going the standards which you have used here in this case, the following passage in this article is conceivably "trivia" or "irrelevant" as well. 204.15.72.92 (talk) 21:08, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
Valentina Tereshkova, was launched into space on Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963,[90] as (possibly) a medical experiment. She was the only one to fly of a small group of female parachutist factory workers (unlike the male cosmonauts who were military test pilots),[91] chosen by the head of cosmonaut training because he read a tabloid article about the "Mercury 13" group of women wanting to become astronauts, and got the mistaken idea that NASA was actually entertaining this.
Boy you certainly like to bring in irrelevant points when discussing your edits, which is monkeys and impact on the moon. Suggest you review WP:TALK, particularly "Stay on topic". I think this discussion has "impacted" a deadend and we should stop "monkeying" around with this issue. Ilenart626 (talk)
The point remains that NPOV issues are at play here. In fact I had thought about going to the NPOV noticeboard and raise the issue to be resolved by experienced editors. As I am quite busy in other things at the moment I'll rest my case here, for now. Please read WP:NPOVT#Space and balance too. 204.15.72.92 (talk) 10:14, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

But you did anyway, at WP:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard#NPOV_issues_in_some_sections_at_Space_Race Andyjsmith (talk) 13:10, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

In light of a comment in that noticeboard advising me to read your statement again while checking the sections where the proposed edits about the Ranger probe and Ham the chimp is at, I've found out that the use of the word "first" was less prevalent than expected, thus I'll be happy to drop the two proposed edits, for now.
However, as for the third proposed edit regarding Alan Shepard, I think it should be okay if we slip in a brief statement that he landed while inside his spacecraft while leaving the extraneous lines into articles that which are "in-depth" rather than this. 204.15.72.92 (talk) 17:52, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
Looks like this edit had just fixed one of the listed NPOV issues. Thanks. 204.15.72.92 (talk) 18:03, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Cold War Science

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2022 and 14 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): KirkrobMP5 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Lukebbaldwin (talk) 19:36, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

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