Oil! A Primer on Petroleum Exploration & Production

same with the middle east

 

The Russian economy has been misunderstood for most of modern history by the general population. Media has fed us the entertainment we desired for many decades that they were somehow running neck and neck with the U.S. in many regards. But even during their peak, they have been mostly a paper bear (with nuclear technology they "borrowed" from the US).

Indeed a petrol and commodities economy, with GDP/capita more on par with Mexico:

OEC - Products exported by Russia (2017)

https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/USA/MEX/RUS

 

Luna 3 was an amazing satellite for its time. But with dismal imaging technology for any time.

 

I drift from the thread topic, but allow me the soap box for a bit more.

The "space race" was an interesting time, German rocket tech/scientist appropriation on both sides, theater, how advanced things really were (or not) on sides beyond the show, perhaps a side more cautionary but more advanced and advancing than the other than at first meets the eye, long game oriented before it even knew there was a game at play...

Bureaucracy as is the nature of one side's form of governance was in full swing. In that same country, fully a year before Sputnik, not knowing there was a competitor, we have a strangely little known example - and example whereby said country, had it known there was a race to be had, that race would have been won before having ever started:

In September of 1956, RS-27 was redesignated Jupiter C, Jupiter to imbue it with the priority of the Army-Navy rocket program as the same name and C denoting the launch as a composite reentry test flight. Early in the morning of the 20th, the rocket rose from the launch pad, reached a top speed of 13,000 miles per hour, and covered a distance of 3,350 miles on its short flight. The dummy fourth stage was lofted to a peak altitude of 682 miles. It was clear that had the fourth stage been active it could have put a satellite into orbit. Von Braun's system worked.​

The Interservice Rivalry that Delayed America's First Satellite Launch | Popular Science

Such Exhibit A ultimately ends in 1969 with a minor feat still not repeated by another country 50+ years later.

 

Luna 3 had 3-axis reaction wheels.

That's all I've got

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Actually, men to moon with tiny computers was not a minor feat.

 

They had slide rules.