Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ubvax!ames!mike From: mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: USSR and the Moon [was "Beyond the Energia crisis"] Keywords: Soviet/American shuttle comparison Message-ID: <18263@ames.arc.nasa.gov> Date: 16 Nov 88 19:06:49 GMT References: <880@cernvax.UUCP> Reply-To: mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP (Mike Smithwick) Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Lines: 88 In article <880@cernvax.UUCP> jon@cernvax.UUCP (jon) writes: [quote from The Guardian, a British rag] >He starts with a brief history of the Soviet space program. One thing I >found curious was claim about the demise of the Soviet moon project. > > "The superbooster designed to put a Russian on the Moon first didn't > work. A damage-limitation exercise was started. They didn't want to > go to the Moon they said. What they intended to do along was to build > space stations. Curiously the West believed them." > >This is the first time I have heard that the Russian ever had serious >plans to land a man on the moon. Is it true? > See if you can pick up a copy of Jim Oberg's book, "Red Star in Orbit". You won't be able to put it down. Yes, according to him and other Soviet space watchers, the moon race was every bit as real as we thought it was. The problem was that the Soviets underestimated our ability to beat them, thinking that they had at least until 1972. Apollo 8 changed all of that. There was an extraordinary article in Astronomy magazine a couple of years ago by Peter Pasevento (sp? I'm working from memory, since that issue is packed well away). Both he and Oberg tell the story something like this: The Soyuz spacecraft was modified to support one man on a lunar flyby mission. It was tested as the "Zond" lunar probe, (remember the Zond which flew in October or November 1968). It contained turtles and a tape recording of a soviet cosmonaut reading instruments, apparently to test their communications network. Meanwhile, Apollo 7 flew and was highly successful. Apollo 8 was to fly the lunar module in low earth orbit [LEO], and test the Saturn 5 for the first time. The LM was not ready yet, so with only a couple of months to go, the mission was switched to a lunar orbit flight in late December (Zond may have had something to do with that as well). The lunar window for the Soviet launch site opened up a few days before ours. Pasevento tells that there was a manned Zond on the pad at that time, but a problem during the countdown postponed the launch causing the window to be missed. Apollo 8 flew, and overshadowed any flyby the Soviets could have had so the Zond mission was cancelled. Oberg's main premise was that the Soviets don't like to be second place, (a doctrine which dictated most of the early space program). Since it looked like we would win they decided to try a different path and beat us on the space station front. Salyut received it's go ahead in January 1969. This did not spell the end for the Soviet moon program though. There was still a chance they could land ahead of us, or if that failed, return lunar samples before Apollo 11. Pasevento then describes that at a May 1969 science meeting in Europe, an American was talking with a Soviet space official. The Apollo 10 was just off it's successful flight, and the Apollo 11 was slated as the official first landing. He commented about how it looked like we were going to beat them. The Soviet said something like "you may be surprised!". Around July 10 or 11 three Soviet Cosmonauts climbed into their moon vehicle ready to do battle with the Imperialist Swine. As before there was some malfunction on the pad, so the launch was scrubbed. In a last ditch effort they launched the Luna 15 which crashed on the moon a couple of hundred miles north of the Apollo 11 landing site. It was felt that this was meant to be a sample return mission which failed. At this time, the Soviets started taking the sour-grapes attitude saying things like "we never had any intention of going to the moon" and "We choose to use unmanned robots" or "Apollo 11 was a stunt, and expensive stunt". This is interesting in light of the fact that Cosmonauts were taking helicopter training, or that a 1971 or 1972 Cosmos spacecraft was listed as an unmanned test of a possible manned "lunar cabin". It's a shame that these things were effectively wiped from the history books. That the designers, engineers and cosmonauts who were dedicated to landing on the moon were forgotten. We can only hope that Glasnost may extend back to 1969 and let us take a look at the Soviet lunar spacecraft, providing anything still exists about them. As mentioned above, I'm writing this purely from memory, and I'm sure some of the details have been scrambled just a bit. -- *** mike (starship janitor) smithwick *** "Some people say I'm arrogant. But I know better then them" - Mike Dukakis at the Al Smith Banquet [disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]