The Russians never duplicated Apollo 8

a reply to: Saint Exupery

Instead of taking this long-view,JFK, LBJ & your hero, Nixon treated the Moon Landing as a propaganda stunt. Making a race out of it made time a crucial factor. Lunar orbit rendezvous with a single launcher and expendable components got us to the Moon quickly, but it was a technological dead-end. It was clever, but in the long-run, not smart.

According Heinz Kaminsky at Bochum, November 18, 1968, "All the technical unknowns would be cleared up by the successful Zond 5 and 6 experiments," Kaminski said. He said it was possible for the Soviets to launch a manned shot for the moon between Dec. 2 and 12."

Source link news.google.com...

a reply to: Saint Exupery

Instead of taking this long-view,JFK, LBJ & your hero, Nixon treated the Moon Landing as a propaganda stunt. Making a race out of it made time a crucial factor. Lunar orbit rendezvous with a single launcher and expendable components got us to the Moon quickly, but it was a technological dead-end. It was clever, but in the long-run, not smart.

According Heinz Kaminsky at Bochum, November 18, 1968, "All the technical unknowns would be cleared up by the successful Zond 5 and 6 experiments," Kaminski said. He said it was possible for the Soviets to launch a manned shot for the moon between Dec. 2 and 12."

Source link news.google.com...

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: Saint Exupery

Instead of taking this long-view,JFK, LBJ & your hero, Nixon treated the Moon Landing as a propaganda stunt. Making a race out of it made time a crucial factor. Lunar orbit rendezvous with a single launcher and expendable components got us to the Moon quickly, but it was a technological dead-end. It was clever, but in the long-run, not smart.

According Heinz Kaminsky at Bochum, November 18, 1968, "All the technical unknowns would be cleared up by the successful Zond 5 and 6 experiments," Kaminski said. He said it was possible for the Soviets to launch a manned shot for the moon between Dec. 2 and 12."

Source link news.google.com...

what happened between zond 6 and zond 7?????

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
According Heinz Kaminsky at Bochum, November 18, 1968, "All the technical unknowns would be cleared up by the successful Zond 5 and 6 experiments," Kaminski said. He said it was possible for the Soviets to launch a manned shot for the moon between Dec. 2 and 12."

Source link news.google.com...

Heinz Kaminsky at Bochum, West Germany was not in a position to know what was possible for the Soviets. He was just reading the TASS propaganda reports like everyone else.

TASS reported that Zond 6 was a success. The fact that it was a failure that would have killed a crew was not known in the West for more than two decades, when the Soviet Union crumbled.

Before that time, it was a big mystery why the Soviets, with two apparently successful Zond missions, failed to follow-through and launch men in early December. Now we know that, if manned, Zond 5 would have put its crew in a hospital, and Zond 6 would have put its crew in a morgue (in chunks).

Now, it's pretty clear that the Zond/Proton system simply was not ready to fly in December, 1968. When they did fly it on January 20, 1969 the Proton rocket failed. This plus the N1 failure the following month and the American successes was all Keldysh needed to go public with the lie that the Soviets had not been trying to send men to the Moon.

Source link news.google.com...

"The Tass disclosure that the Zond ships are meant to carry men..."

Please note there is a factual error (most probably a typo) in the next to last paragraph of the news clip where it says "Tass said Zond 5.... assumed this was a failure... launching March 2."

The paragraph should actually read "Tass said Zond 4.... assumed this was a failure.... launching March 2."

If anyone here has further complaints about my reading comprehension then you may report it directly to the moderators, and cease to make further comments about it in this thread.

That's not what I said AT ALL. Reading comprehension does not appear to be you strong point.
edit on 14-6-2014 by Saint Exupery because: Clarity

You need to learn how to read all the words on a page and interpret them appropriately, as to opposed to picking the ones you like. onebigmonkey posted on Jun, 14 2014 @ 02:33

Facts & Interpretations Part 5

Source link news.google.com...

This is a Moscow (AP) bureau report.

A top Soviet scientist said last week that his government might send an animal around the moon to test the level of radia-tion b e f o r e attempting a manned moon mission."

Fact & Interpretation Part 6

Source Link news.google.com...

Some people in this thread were trying to argue that the Russians, after Apollo 8 and 11, were defeated and they stopped trying to go to the moon. That interpretation is shown to be incorrect.

Here we have an article dated August 15, 1969, the Soviets are still sending unmanned (?) Zond-7 spacecrafts to the moon. The Russians did not consider themselves defeated. This means that the American moon landing one month earlier has no affect on the "purposefulness and consistency" of Russian outer space exploration.

Here we have another article dated October 22, 1970, the Soviets are still sending(!!) unmanned (??) Zond-8 to the moon!! According to the Tass news agency ...

"The research program of the new automatic station Zond 8 is fresh evidence of the purposefulness and consistency of steps taken in the Soviet Union to explore space."

news.google.com...

Please read and understand that:

We expect civility and decorum within all topics.

You are responsible for your own posts.

Discuss the topic and not the members.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Some people in this thread were trying to argue that the Russians, after Apollo 8 and 11, were defeated and they stopped trying to go to the moon. That interpretation is shown to be incorrect.

Actually, I said that they stopped trying to send humans to the moon. I never said that they stop sending stuff to the moon, and that is pretty much what they did.....send stuff and not humans.

Can you show us where they continued to actually try sending humans to the moon?

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

From the second article:

The program seems to have settled down to unspectacular, plodding scientific work - accumulation of data that will help Soviet Scientists develop an orbital space station.

No manned missions to the moon planned then.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
Some people in this thread were trying to argue that the Russians, after Apollo 8 and 11, were defeated and they stopped trying to go to the moon.

Indeed. Some people in this thread were trying to argue that the the Russians never tried to send men to the Moon.

That interpretation is shown to be incorrect.

That's right. In addition to Zond 7 & 8 which worked-out the bugs from that system, the N1 rockets launched in 1971 & 72 had as their payloads prototypes of the Soyuz 7K-LOK - their equivalent to the Apollo CSM. Even more telling was the flights of Cosmos 398 and Cosmos 434 in 1971. These were orbital flight tests (equivalent to the US Apollo 5 mission) of the one-man LK lunar lander.

Despite the official story that they were never trying to send men to the Moon (which was a bold lie, considering the previous quotes that SJ has turned-up), the USSR was actually still in the game. Why? What did they hope to gain that would surpass Apollo?

Obviously, the Soviets were watching the US space program closely, and they knew from their own experience that politics and changing budget priorities could screw-over the best-laid plans. So it was with Apollo. NASA's budget had been falling since 1968. In January of 1970, Saturn V production was officially ended at 15, and Apollo 20 was cancelled to use its booster to launch Skylab. In September of 1970, further budget-cuts caused the cancellation of Apollo 18 & 19.

I'm speculating, but it appears to me that the Soviets were using unmanned test flights to debug the equipment as much as possible; then they used the knowledge-gained to plan Moon missions more elaborate then Apollo. Meanwhile, they avoided launching manned lunar missions (such as Soyuz 7K-L1) because that would reveal their intentions with a seemingly "inferior" mission. Remember, the point of the Space Race was to show the superiority of "our" technology over "theirs". At the 1971 Paris Air Show, the visiting cosmonauts had a new party line: They would not comment on manned lunar flights, but the Soviet Union was engaged in a safe and systematic exploration of space. Thus, they were not "behind" - they were simply being safe and responsible.

Behind the scenes, in May of 1972, the Council of Chief Designers approved development of the N1-L3M program. This would use 2 upgraded N1s (called N1Fs) to place a lander on the Moon that could support 3 men for up to 90 days. Such a mission, late in the '70s, would have totally upstaged Apollo at a time when the US no longer had the ability to build or launch Saturn Vs (the industrial plants & tooling had been disassembled and/or re-purposed, and the launch facilities were being modified to support the Shuttle) Other plans for N1 included a giant space station called MKBS and Mars sample-return missions. All they needed was to get the @#$%ing rocket to work...

On June 26, 1971, the N1 6L flew for over half a minute before it developed a roll that the guidance system couldn't correct. It was destroyed at 51 seconds into the flight. The good news was that the plumbing of the rocket was not the part that screwed-up, so maybe they were getting somewhere.

The crux of the problem with testing N1 was that the military (which ran the show) never provided money for a large test stand capable of ground-testing N1's first stage (Here are some films of the stand used to test the Saturn V's first stage. As you can see, it's a formidable piece of engineering). Thus, the only time it could be tested was during an actual flight. The kopek-wise/ruble-foolish folly of this was brought home forcibly was brought home forcibly on May 1, 1972:

" [N1-7L] ascended into the sky, and the engines ran 106.93 seconds, only seven seconds before completion of first stage burnout. Programmed shutdown of some engines to prevent overstressing of the structure led to propellant line hammering, rupture of propellant lines, and an explosion of engine number 4. The vehicle disintegrated."

Work continued, and the engineers had high hopes that they would have the bugs worked out for N1 flights planned for late-1974. However, in May of that year Soviet leadership had had enough of Chief Designer Mishin's incompetent management, sacked him and cancelled N1 and its grandiose payloads in favor of the cheaper and more accessible Salyut space stations.

I'd just like to comment that some of the replies to the OP were brilliant and very informative. I've learned many interesting facts. Special thanks to Saint Exupery.

It's a shame that these brilliant posts fall on deaf ears when there are preconceptions and one's own agendas involved.

Facts and the historical record speak much more convincingly than someone's comments in newspapers.

I think the answer to the thread title is that the Soviets didn't have a way to send humans to the Moon (even for an orbit) and return them safely. Sending comonauts to their death or crippling them with injuries wouldn't have been a good propaganda stunt.

Time To Let The Readers Decide!

The Russians never duplicated Apollo 8. There are 20 pages of study material in this thread. Anyone bravely enough to dig through all these sources is my friend. I would let the readers decide for themselves, to review the facts and interpretations and to come to their own conclusions.

Out of all the materials that I've looked at so far, there is a quote here from the Soviet side, that in my opinion, sort of summed up the Russian scientific method,

"The research program of the new automatic station Zond 8 is fresh evidence of the purposefulness and consistency of steps taken in the Soviet Union to explore space."

The Soviet space altitude records, which on first view seemed so unimportant, and the Zond missions, which were ridiculed by "space buffs" in this thread, both of these examples have played a more powerful effect on the narrative than I had anticipated. The contemporary news clips offered us a totally new perspective on the steady progression of the Soviet program. Western experts, many of them quoted in the papers of the day, were utterly convinced that a manned lunar orbit mission was imminent - either by USA or CCCP. As it turned out, the N-1, was not the reason the Soviet's stayed in low earth orbit for 49 years.

Without going into any depth -- 1968 was a busy year for both USA and CCCP. A US presidential election year... a Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the blood bath in South East Asia... all competed for headlines in late 1968.

originally posted by: wildespace
I think the answer to the thread title is that the Soviets didn't have a way to send humans to the Moon (even for an orbit) and return them safely. Sending comonauts to their death or crippling them with injuries wouldn't have been a good propaganda stunt.

Kind of.

I would add a strong caveat:

1.) "The Soviets didn't have a way to send humans to the Moon (even for an orbit) and return them safely..." when they needed it to fly those missions first. They were not interested in flying high-profile missions that either duplicated what the Americans had already done, or that could be interpreted as an attempt to "catch-up" with the Americans.

This political attitude actually caused pretty severe problems for engineers and managers trying to plan logical, step-by-step programs. This was exacerbated by the structure (or lack-thereof) of the Soviet aerospace industry. The Western image of Communist industry as monolithic and rigidly controlled was completely wrong (though the USSR didn't mind being seen that way). In fact, the various rocket design bureaux were each led by strong-willed autocrats who fought and plotted and undercut each other like contestant on a reality TV show.

Chief Designer Korolev was a technocrat who wielded the enormous prestige of having designed the R-7 rocket and its most famous payloads, Sputnik and Vostok. He parleyed this fame into approval for his "masterpiece": N1, which promised much but could not deliver (Korolev's enduring legacy is the DC-3 of the Space Age: Soyuz). His arch-rival Chelomei was brilliant, innovative and abrasive. He had ideas (such as the UR-700) that could have achieved all that N1 promised. Chelomei's chief Ally was rocket motor expert, Glushko, whom Korolev hated (he believed it was Glushko who denounced him in the '30s, resulting in his arrest, torture and 10-year imprisonment in a gulag). When Korolev died, he was succeeded by his deputy, Mishin - a competent engineer, but hopelessly out of his depth as a manager. He wielded the prestige of the Korolev Design Bureau, but his lack of organizational or leadership ability contributed directly and indirectly to many of the failures in the late '60s and early '70s. He was replaced as Chief Designer by Glushko in 1974.

For their part (for reasons associated with their national psyche that I won't go into here), the Americans did not mind being seen as the "underdog" early in the contest. This image fueled their competitive spirit and united & motivated them to strive to overcome any challenge. Interestingly, the "Zond proves the Soviets are ahead" stories that SJ referenced above spurred the US to take the bold gamble that was Apollo 8. By contrast, when you read the diaries of Kamanin (head of the cosmonaut corps) and Chertok (a rocket designer for Korolev), their response to American successes was despair, depression and finger-pointing (and Mishin going on a bender).

In the mid-'70s, the USA and USSR joined forces for the Apollo Soyuz Test Project. The Soviets got an inside-look at NASA's management practices and compared them to the shambles of their own manned programs. Subsequently, they adopted more realistic and methodical management & planning, which lead to their spectacular successes with orbital space stations.

Ironically, at the same time the Soviets were getting their act together, US space program lost direction and public support and spiraled into a decline from which it never recovered. Legendary astronaut John Young gives a scathing account of the bureaucratization and politicization of NASA in the 80s. 90s & 00s in his memoirs.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
Out of all the materials that I've looked at so far, there is a quote here from the Soviet side, that in my opinion, sort of summed up the Russian scientific method,

"The research program of the new automatic station Zond 8 is fresh evidence of the purposefulness and consistency of steps taken in the Soviet Union to explore space."

OK, so you have demonstrated your ability to quote the official Party line of one of the most oppressive and secretive police-states in history with complete credulity. Hurray for free thought!

(Snark aside, the statement isn't necessarily wrong, but I caution you to consider the source and the context)

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
The contemporary news clips offered us a totally new perspective on the steady progression of the Soviet program.

No, they offer us the 45 year-old perspective of all of us who were reading those articles (and many more) at the time they were published. A lot of people were really into the Space Race, you see, and we soaked-up all of the news and analysis we could find. Our impression, based on these articles, was that the race to the Moon was very close.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
Western experts, many of them quoted in the papers of the day, were utterly convinced that a manned lunar orbit mission was imminent - either by USA or CCCP.

Well, yeah - That's because NASA announced publicly that they were going to do a manned lunar orbital mission three months in advance. Of course, the Soviets at the time never announced missions in advance. Even after the mission, the only details available to the public was what TASS let past the censors. This is why the Zond missions were all perceived as successes, and the problems and launch-failures were unknown. Thus, both the "western experts" and the enthusiastic laymen had a highly distorted view of Soviet achievements and capabilities (and we didn't know that it was highly distorted). Consequently, our estimates of what the Soviets would do next had little basis in fact.

To put it more concisely, Our impression, "...that the race to the Moon was very close" was, in fact, wrong.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
As it turned out, the N-1, was not the reason the Soviet's stayed in low earth orbit for 49 years.

What was the reason?

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

The contemporary news clips offered us a totally new perspective on the steady progression of the Soviet program.

This statement makes no sense at all. How does looking at news articles published nearly half a century ago, which have been publicly available for all that time, offer a totally new perspective on anything?

originally posted by: Rob48
a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

The contemporary news clips offered us a totally new perspective on the steady progression of the Soviet program.

This statement makes no sense at all. How does looking at news articles published nearly half a century ago, which have been publicly available for all that time, offer a totally new perspective on anything?

If you don't like the news clips then don't read the thread. Simple as that.

Like I mentioned before - I am overwhelmed with material and it's gonna take probably another 20-30 pages at least before I run out. Those altitude records are going to be more and more significant as we go along. As will be shown the Soviet space endurance records which eclipsed Skylab. The statements of the Soviet Tass from this era will be shown to be a magnificent resource, a goldmine of information. It's important to keep in mind that those Gemini records were made using Titan II ICBM's and the Gemini missions were developing techniques of capturing enemy satellites during the Cold War. The Soviets were very suspicious of the Gemini/ICBM/military applications ... that's why they were so secretive in reporting their own space efforts. Fundamentally, both space programs relied on two things, propaganda and defense.

And when the USA met CCCP in the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the Americans commented that, the Soyuz was ten years behind in technology... it was compared to a Gemini capsule. It's the same Soyuz that "western experts" had said could take Russians to the moon before America. Now do you see why the news clips are important?

When a researcher is devoted to a subject they will always go back to the original source materials, the news articles published nearly half a century ago, and that is what is happening in my thread.... History does not come out from the NASA gift shop, Rob. You only need look at the continuous flow of new history books that are published every single year to realize that history is not concrete.

A good historian, with sufficient funding, can dig deeply through history to discover, possibly, a better more accurate narrative. What do you think historians pave new concrete over old?? Some of them do! But I don't.

There are some of us who use jack hammers to break beneath "Truth's protective layers." If you catch the meaning of my drift then you will know already what my motives are, so don't talk about my motives. Ever again. Ok Rob?

Here's a news clip that summed it up pretty well the whole 20 pages of this thread. Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Nov 16, 1969

Link to source news.google.com...

Breaking News! Russia eyes Soyuz Upgrades for Mission Around the Moon

"We're basically taking the same Soyuz that flies to the space station, making a few modifications to allow it go around the far aside of the moon, and adding an extra habitation module to make it more comfortable for the passengers," Shelley said.

The probable flight plan calls for the moon-bound crew to fly to the space station on a Soyuz rocket and spacecraft for a few days, then undock and rendezvous with a habitation module and Block DM propulsion stage launched separately atop a Proton booster.

The Block DM engine would propel the Soyuz capsule on a trajectory once around the far side of the moon and back to Earth.

If the flight includes a visit to the space station, the mission's total duration will be about 17 days, according to Shelley.

An unmanned lunar flight is planned before Russia launches a piloted mission, Shelley said, and the earliest opportunity for a tourist trip is late 2017.

Could the Russians be finally fulfilling SJ's dream?

Beregovoy says "This can be done."