Space exploration in the USSR?

Tsiolkovsky and Glushko are the founders and people who laid the foundation. Scientists conventionally consider the creation of the Gas-Dynamic Laboratory in Leningrad in the 1920s to be the beginning of technologies for space exploration in the SSR. But the purpose of her work was not space flights. She was developing a jet engine. The development of space exploration has been fueled by an arms race and competition for leadership with the United States and Western Europe. The first artificial satellite of the USSR was launched back in 1957. April 12, 1961 was an odious step in this direction. On this day, the USSR made a successful launch of a man into space with a successful return. At the same time, he spent 108 minutes in flight. Information about thousands of corpses of animals and dozens of corpses of pilots who died during the tests is not particularly advertised. The United States responded to this step by landing astronauts on the lunar surface in 1969.