50 Let Pobedy

50 Let Pobedy

50 Let Pobedy is a Russian, nuclear powered icebreaker. It is the world's largest. I just saw it on Reddit and it reminded me that I put up a couple of posts awhile back about Russian icebreakers. You can see them here and here.

The post on Reddit gave me a name so I wanted to check it out, and that's when I come across this bit:

Russia currently operates all existing and functioning nuclear-powered icebreakers. The first one, NS Lenin, was launched in 1957 and entered operation in 1959, before being officially decommissioned in 1989. It was both the world's first nuclear-powered surface ship and the first nuclear-powered civilian vessel. - Wikipedia

Hey! Now wait a minute! I don't remember every hearing about the commies having any nuclear powered civilian ships, all I remember hearing about was this one:

NS (Nuclear Ship) Savannah, the first commercial nuclear power cargo vessel, enroute to the World's Fair in Seattle.

I remember it pretty well. I was only 11 when it came to Seattle. Took a tour while it was there. I remember it looked too pretty to be useful.

Now I read this bit about how the Soviets had a nuclear powered civilian ship before we did, and then I think about how the Soviets took an early lead in the space race and I'm thinking we've got some real dunderheads in Washington. But that's nothing new. At least we didn't have Stalin. If you are a corrupt despot you can direct the energy of your country any way you want. If you are a big shot anywhere else, you have to hire an advertising agency to make your pitch. After WW2, I think we coasted on our laurels a bit. No matter how much the hawks promoted the red scare, people just weren't scared enough to finance some scientific boondoggle.

I'm disappointed we don't have a base on Mars yet. Shoot, we don't even have one on the moon. When the Soviets failed to put a man on the moon, we relaxed and went back to arguing about politics or sports or whatever you feel like arguing about. I think arguing is our national pastime.

Or maybe our effort to put a man on the moon showed us how much we didn't know, so we pulled back and started going over what we had done and seeing how it could be done better. And we probably have a bigger pool of talent to draw from now. More people understand more about going into space that ever before, and maybe that's what you need to get there: a critical mass of people with the necessary knowledge.

Now it looks like SpaceX may build a rocket that could make building a moon base possible. I suspect the government is the only one with the wherewithal to fund such an operation, but if SpaceX reduces their costs as much as they promise, we could have tourists going to the moon, and Hollywood might even make movies up there. In ten years the moon could be a very busy place.