1. Spengler in space | Russians have cosmonauts and Americans have astronauts: that's the difference between a Faustian civilisation and a new culture with a Faustian overlay. Cosmos suggests a stable, ordered whole; Faustian man reaches for the stars (astro-).

2. As with the Ancient Greeks, who never left the Med, the Russians don't think in terms of infinite expansion. The Odyssey took place in a tiny patch of sea; for the Greeks the world was contained. The Russians called their space station "Mir" (village): small, even in space.

3. Russians could not contemplate this "space chair", an invention that allows one man alone to experience the infinite vastness of space. The Russians were in a village, even in space. Faustian man sets out into the infinite, alone.

4. The soul of a people can be found in their engineering and architecture. The Russian Soyuz rocket contains distinctive bulges that are reminiscent of the onion domes on St. Basil's. Faustian rockets are sleek and streamlined; Russian rockets undulate like a babushka's belly.

5. A rocket is, after all, a kind of cathedral spire. Faustian cathedrals reach up and out; space is their natural destination. Russians fail in space because their soul abhores infinite expanses; communism, a Faustian overlay, forced space travel on them.

6. Communism's "space religion" was imposed just as Peter the Great imposed Westernisation before. Westerners love Soviet space kitsch because it's Faustian and familiar. The Russian culture may explore space, when it emerges, but not in a Faustian way.