"Only a Matter of Time"

It would be easy to say that the Soviets discovered the secret of survivable "travel" because they were more ruthless, more willing to sacrifice innocent lives. But there was really no lack of ruthlessness on the part of the CIA. It was really just a matter of approach. The Soviets approached the mystery of the flesh interfaces the same way they approached their space program. The first humans in space (the so-called " Lost Cosmonauts " who were never officially acknowledged) were just ordinary people, culled from the gulags , with no more control over their missions than Laika the dog. The Americans , on the other hand, started with professional men, usually from the military. Likewise, when it was discovered that objects and even animals which entered the flesh interfaces occasionally returned unharmed, the Americans began training men to enter the interfaces. Because they culled their men from certain military ranks, they were all of similar ages. The Soviets, however, used prisoners, who had a much wider age range, and so they were able to discover the essential correlation: the younger a person was, the more likely they were to survive "travel," and the longer they would survive after travel. They discovered that 20-somethings were much more likely to survive, (albeit in a horribly "altered" state) than older people. They discovered that people in their early twenties fared better than those in their late twenties. Teenagers fared even better. So, despite all moral compunction, it was really a matter of time before they sent a child through. And it was only after the first round of children went through that they gained any idea of what was on the "other side".