In 1991 I saw an exhibition at the Boston Museum Of Science called “Soviet Space”. I saw more advanced technology in my grandfather’s basement in the form of his pluming and furnace. The first page of the old Cosmonaut handbook should say “thank you for dying for your country”. There is no second page.
I was on a flight from Yekaterinburg to Moscow, and happened to sit next to a grizzled old aeronautical engineer. As we were approaching for landing in Moscow, he started praying - I asked him since he took part in building this kind of aircraft, shouldn’t he have confidence in his work?
He answered in broken English, “It eez because I know who ELSE help build this I not have confidence!”
C’mon. Russians do have much less fatalities in their spacecrews comparing to NASA.
Especially considering the fact their space program was more intensive.