According to the Sputnik News server, the renowned scientist and popularizer of science Stephen William Hawking admitted that he would like to visit Russia one day. In addition, he said that he was greatly impressed by the fact that the Soviet Union managed to overtake the United States in the space race.
“Stephen Hawking admitted that on April 12, 1961, when the Soviet Union sent the first man into space, the success of Soviet science made a great impression on him,” writes the Sputnik server.
“I was amazed that Russia has overtaken America in the space race,” the scientist said in an interview with TASS.
However, what Hawking, judging by the quote, claims, is somewhat at odds with reality. “He said that today the US is forced to rely on Russian cosmonautics to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, and, in his opinion, this is the kind of cooperation of space powers that has potential in the future. In addition, Hawking said that he supports the project The Breakthrough Initiatives of the Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, aimed at finding extraterrestrial life, despite all the criticism that this project is subjected to."
In essence, Hawking is right that the United States today is dependent on Russia and its Soyuz spacecraft for getting people into orbit. However, Russia's advantage in the race is a myth. John Glenn embarked on his nearly five-hour flight into space on February 20, 1962, ten months after Yuri Gagarin. From a technological point of view, this difference is not a significant time lag. Seven years and seven months after that, the Americans visited the moon. Russia will not be able to bypass their leadership in the exploration of Mars and distant planets in the near future. Also, Americans are much more innovative.
Russia still uses the R-7 booster rocket, which was designed by Sergei Korolev, and on which Gagarin went into space in 1961, as well as the Soyuz spacecraft, which first went on a manned flight in April 1967. … The Americans used Apollo ships and a rocket plane. Yes, the Soyuz has been modernized, and the Soviet Union has accumulated extensive experience in operating space stations. However, the Americans also had Skylab, and their problem has always been that they would have done a lot more if politicians hadn't cut their funding.
Now the United States has set off on the path of further innovations: they have entrusted the delivery of cargo to the international station of the ISS to private companies, which will soon be engaged in astronaut flights. American astronautics is developing in leaps and bounds. President Barack Obama fatefully limited the Constellation project, which was supposed to bring Americans back to the Moon and Mars. However, one can hardly imagine that the Americans will leave the moon to the Chinese.
Hawking himself, by the way, wants to go into space in a private spaceship Virgin Galactic. In February, the scientist was honored to give the name to the second spaceship SpaceShipTwo (he called it Unity). Company owner Richard Branson promised Hawking a seat on one of his ships five years ago, but the project stalled in 2014 when the first SpaceShipTwo crashed.
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According to TASS, Hawking has sympathy for Russia, however, if he visited the USSR several times, then after the collapse of communism he never came to Russia. By the way, his daughter Lucy studied Russian at Oxford.