{"id":15074,"date":"2026-06-14T18:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T01:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/14\/why-russian-spacecraft-land-on-solid-ground-but-nasa-is-spreading-on-the-ocean-floor\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T22:45:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T05:45:16","slug":"why-russian-spacecraft-land-on-solid-ground-but-nasa-is-spreading-on-the-ocean-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/14\/why-russian-spacecraft-land-on-solid-ground-but-nasa-is-spreading-on-the-ocean-floor\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Russian Spacecraft Land On Solid Ground – But NASA Is Spreading On The Ocean Floor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To say that the United States and the Soviet Union chose very different paths during the great space race of the 1950s and ’60s would be an understatement – starting with the placement of their launch sites. It was not biased. Regardless of the geopolitical ideology, the way rockets were launched (almost always in the east, remember) and later picked up had more to do with physics and geography than the heroic efforts of men and women able to enter space during an era when it seemed completely impossible.<\/p>\n

Russia is the largest country in the world, a transcontinental country directly surrounded by 14 other countries. Since its geographic coordinates place it so far north, it is naturally far from the equator. Furthermore, while a good portion of the US is surrounded by open, uninhabited water, Russia has only the Arctic Ocean to the north and the Caspian Sea to the southwest. Unfortunately, nothing can be used safely because the Arctic is very cold and full of ice, and the small Caspian “sea” is closed by several inhabited countries.<\/p>\n

What Russia has in great abundance, however, is endless open space. About 65% of it is almost uninhabited due to the ground being permanently frozen (permafrost) and has been for thousands of years. A high-speed capsule plummeting across that uninhabited space makes for an ideal landing spot.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Location, location, location<\/h2>\n
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The equator is the best place to send rockets up because the speed of the Earth is 1,025 mph. Launching at that latitude (the part between the North and South Poles) gives the mission more momentum as it tries to reach an orbital flight speed of about 17,398 mph and break free from the planet’s gravitational pull effectively. This scientific principle is important because most of the continental United States is much closer to the equator than the rest of Russia.<\/p>\n

Both NASA and private companies such as SpaceX have launch sites located in the southern regions, placing them closer to the equator. For example, “America’s Spaceport” at Cape Canaveral, Florida, is only 1,960 kilometers north of the equator.<\/p>\n

The Russians built the Baikonur Cosmodrome, home to the worst accidents in the history of space exploration, as far south as possible – in Kazakhstan. Back in the 1950s, Kazakhstan was part of the old Soviet Union. When the communist nation fell in 1991, a lease agreement was established to keep the facility operational. However, it still sits about 3,150 kilometers from the equator in about the same area as Portland, Maine, and is still considered the farthest north.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Geography describes the location<\/h2>\n
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American launch centers are all located near bodies of water, providing a smooth, safe stay. Until the reusable Space Shuttle came online in the early 1980s and could land like an airplane, NASA astronauts always returned home through ocean water. Russian cosmonauts were not so lucky. To clearly show the difference, here’s how the first two astronauts in space returned to terra firma.<\/p>\n

The first man in space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who accomplished this feat on April 12, 1961, aboard Vostok 1, one of the most important spacecraft in the history of aviation. Meanwhile, Astronaut Alan B. Shepard – who was aboard the Mercury Freedom 7 spacecraft – became the first American a few weeks later (on May 5) but he was the first person to “splash down” (in the Atlantic Ocean).<\/p>\n

Unlike Shepard’s watery return, which allowed him to remain safely inside Freedom 7, Gagarin had to eject the Vostok 1 capsule while it was more than 4 miles above Earth and float back down using a parachute. Vostok 1 deployed its set of chutes about one and a half miles from the ground. Both landed in an open area 530 kilometers southeast of Moscow, the same return route used by Russians ever since.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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To say that the United States and the Soviet Union chose very different paths during the great space race of the 1950s and ’60s would be an understatement – starting with the placement of their launch sites. It was not biased. Regardless of the geopolitical ideology, the way rockets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-smartphones-tablets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15076,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15074\/revisions\/15076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}