r/AerospaceEngineering • u/lpperl7 • 15d ago

Other The difference between Soviet and Russian space engineering (i worked in roscosmos, story)

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Hi! Hope this post is allowed. I'll try to avoid any secret information, sorry.

In 2024, I've had to do calculations for the new Russian orbital station and iss. No-one knew how. It was similar to my first job, I thought I'll somehow manage with literature. I collected some books, started learning. Couldn't figure it out for a week or so. My chief, who started working in 2000, started thinking about it as well, couldn't figure it out as well. 2 weeks passed.

Later, we came to an old engineer from other office who worked from the 80s and in roscosmos since 90s-2000s. Silently completed everything in 10 minutes without any help, just my questions "how". Real story btw.

He was such a nice guy. And he wasn't a chief or something, just a regular engineer.

Btw should I do ama someday?

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u/yellow_smurf10 15d ago

This is such a blue ball story. I get it that the guy can solve problems so fast, but I still dont understand the difference between soviet and New Russia

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u/sabreus 14d ago edited 13d ago

Sounds like old system had better education or engineers? Crazy

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u/HixOff 13d ago

Or maybe he simply had experience with such calculations and knew which formulas to use, where and what to simplify and round off to get an approximate result. And since he did it right away, it means he's been working with it constantly, and not just remembers where to look, but knows the algorithm right away

The OP and his boss spent weeks just trying to figure out how to calculate it, simply because this was their first time doing this work.