Simplicity was the key to Soviet success in the 1960s, the golden years when the Russians still basked in the glory of their space achievements. The technology was crude, the design rugged, the missions straightforward. Reliance on the simple and methodical space exploration programme set up by the “grand designer”, Sergei Korolev, had, for a decade, kept them ahead of the Americans, their richer and more technologically sophisticated rivals.

To engineers today, the Soviet achievements seem all the more astonishing for the crudity of the materials. Korolev’s technicians used stainless steel, not aluminium and titanium, to build spaceships. They were fuelled by kerosene and liquid oxygen. Instead of using large engines, they built small simple ones, obtaining greater thrust by clustering more of them in the pods. It was enough to launch the first Sputnik; it would be enough for the greatest feat of all: the flight round the globe on April 2, 1961, of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

Simplicity was necessary partly because of the extremes of temperature and the need to operate in the steppes of Kazakhstan and near the Arctic Circle. It was also because the Russians lacked even the basic technology of solar panels, and relied on batteries for electric power which often lasted no more than two weeks and forced the frequent launch of new reconnaissance satellites (providing useful experience in launches).

But largely it was because, for all their theoretical knowledge and expertise in physics and mathematics, the Russians lacked the most basic materials and equipment in a country slow to overcome the devastation of the Second World War. Engineers had little experience of sophisticated electronics and assembling a qualified space team was not easy. But, just as Soviet soldiers found in the war, keeping it simple gave them an advantage. There was less to go wrong. Repairs could be improvised, and advances built on what was tried and tested, rather than on the leaps of faith and technology that marked Nasa’s catchup space programme.

For a while, this was enough to keep the Soviet Union ahead. It scored a number of impressive “firsts”: as well as Colonel Gagarin, the Russians put the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova). They launched the first craft to orbit the Sun, the first to fly by Venus, the first to fly by Mars, the first to fly by the Moon, and the first to land on the Moon. They also pioneered the first space station.

It came at a cost. The programme was strictly under military control, and shrouded in secrecy. There were dozens of disasters — only now are Russians learning how many cosmonauts died, how many rockets blew up, and how devastating were some of the accidents. One accident in 1960, when safety regulations were ignored trying to get a huge SS6 rocket to ignite, led to an explosion that killed more than 100 technicians as well as Field Marshal Nedelin, the commander ordered to attempt a Mars shot.

The dogged Soviet pursuit of a Moon shot led to notable advances. The Voskhod space capsule was a modification of the Vostok, taking out the ejection seat, thus allowing three cosmonauts into space together. It was used for the first Soviet walk in space, in March 1965, three months before the first American walk.

A redesigned Vostok capsule was also used as an unmanned reconnaissance craft, which replaced the human with a camera.

The Moon programme stimulated the development of rockets, especially Korolev’s huge N-1 vehicle and a rival three-stage vehicle, designed by Vladimir Chelomei, which became the Proton booster capable of launching 20 tonnes into orbit.

Accidents, cost and the swift American triumph finally aborted the Soviet Moon programme in 1974, after it had cost an estimated 2 billion roubles — then officially equivalent to almost $2.5 billion. But Gagarin’s death in an air crash in 1968 had robbed Moscow of its symbol of early success. Nevertheless, the Russians are still proud that, however rudimentary, they had kept ahead of the Americans in space for at least a decade.