design methods proved to be the crowning achievement for science in the 1950s . Of course, the successful and promising work from both the United States and the Soviet Union only spurred each country to push for more powerful weapons, as the floodgates of thermonuclear weapon potential had been opened. This was, of course, entirely the norm at the time considering that the Cold War was in full swing. It was a significant boost to Soviet morale knowing that the Soviet Union's physicists, engineers, scientist, and great minds were able to not only compete with the Americans, but also able to outperform them in some key areas of weapon and technological development. The RDS program gave rise to the genius of Andrei Sakharov, who undoubtedly was the driving force behind the Soviet thermonuclear weapons development program. During his time at Design Bureau 11, Sakharov formulated the most critical ideas for the advancement of Soviet thermonuclear projects. RDS-37 gave Sakharov a lot of credibility and prestige among his co-workers and superiors. Following his success, he was given more autonomy in his research and made significant contributions in the realm of nuclear weaponry (and industry). His studies and theories on magnetic plasma confinement and on the magnetic thermonuclear reactor eventually led to the introduction of large electromagnetic pulse devices and laser fusion. Many of Sakharov's works and proposed ideas during his time working on the RDS projects are still on going today. Video of the RDS-37 are often confused with video of the Tsar Bomba, although they can be quite similar. RDS-37 videos have the detonation to the center, and Tsar Bomba videos have the detonation to the right (except for the mushroom-cloud video, which is in the center) . In addition, the RDS-37 test occurred in the Semipalatinsk test area, and some of the video looks across the roofs of the secret city of Kurchatov, aka Semipalatinsk-16. The Tsar occurred over the southern half of the Arctic polar desert island of Novaya Zemlya, with no similar population centers within hundreds of kilometers at that time. See also RDS-1 Soviet atomic bomb project RDS-3 RDS-4 RDS-5 RDS-202, АN-602 (rus. AH-602) (Tsar Bomba) Ivy Mike (first US hydrogen bomb) Castle Bravo (first US staged dry-fuel design) References Bibliography External links Soviet and Nuclear Weapons History Video of the RDS-37 Nuclear Test 1955 in the Soviet Union 1955 in military history Explosions in 1955