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Trevor_Blake comments on The Cold War divided Science - Less Wrong Discussion
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The USA and the USSR both made spacecraft during the cold war. Air and space travel were not based on distinct physics in each nation. But the spacecraft looked quite different. The USA had cones and the USSR had scheres. My amateur conclusion is there was some measure of aesthetics and patriotism trumping physics in that visual difference.
I don't think it's a matter of aesthetics. The Vostok was spherical because they couldn't figure a better shape, the NASA did more research on spacecraft aerodynamics and particularly heat shields and and come up with the conical shape with an ablative heat shield on the bottom. The Soyuz eventually settled for a dome-like shape for the reentry module.