The Russians never duplicated Apollo 8

a reply to: Rob48

There were early plans in the USSR for something like that. Really kind of pointless though. Kennedy laid out the goal quite clearly.

There was, of course, prestige involved with the first manned lunar orbit but the only practical reason to orbit the Moon would be as a test for the equipment to be used for a landing. The only thing missing from Apollo 8 was the lander (and only because it wasn't ready). A landing was the prize and both decided that a single vehicle approach was best.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Like I said the Soviets had mastered low earth orbit there is nothing holding them back from the moon........ are you saying the Russians are too stupid to engineer a space capsule that can humans can traverse the Van Allen Belts?

No. That's not difficult. They had one all ready to go.

Engineering a rocket that can do it is trickier though. Apparently...since four of theirs blew up.

You say that engineering a rocket is tricky? Somehow in 1968 the American's got it right and the Russians never caught up in 42 years? Meanwhile, in 2014 the Russians at this very moment have a large portion of the world rocket marketplace. Are you suggesting that the Russians cannot build good, reliable rockets?

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

I think he means that it just took them longer to get there.

Mainly because they didnt have a bucket load of German nazi scientists that had already been doing it for how ever many years before the end of the war.

In 1956, Howard Hughes Tool Company loaned Richard Nixon's brother Donald Nixon $205,000 which was never repaid., After Nixon became president in 1969, Donald Nixon traveled the world, often with controversial former Howard Hughes aide John H. Meier.. Donald Nixon Jr., went to work for Robert Vesco,owner of International Controls Corporation,,which supplied parts for Apollo

originally posted by: Biigs
a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

I think he means that it just took them longer to get there.

Mainly because they didnt have a bucket load of German nazi scientists that had already been doing it for how ever many years before the end of the war.

Wrong. According to Richard Nixon in "The Real War" 1980 quote:

"All told, Stalin carried off more than 40 percent of Germany's creative talent as well-- 6,000 scientists, engineers, and their families, 26,000 people in all, were spirited away in a single night." - Richard Nixon, "The Real War" 1980, page 204.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Well they obviously got the slower bunch LOL

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Are you suggesting that the Russians cannot build good, reliable rockets?

No. I'm suggesting that the N1 didn't work. They tried 3 times after this:


Are you familiar with the Saturn V program?

originally posted by: Misinformation
In 1956, Howard Hughes Tool Company loaned Richard Nixon's brother Donald Nixon $205,000 which was never repaid., After Nixon became president in 1969, Donald Nixon traveled the world, often with controversial former Howard Hughes aide John H. Meier.. Donald Nixon Jr., went to work for Robert Vesco,owner of International Controls Corporation,,which supplied parts for Apollo

Haha. You speak my language! What else do you know about Howard Hughes relationship to the Apollo program?

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Rob48

Is it purely the extra weight of a manned version that would have meant the same booster set-up couldn't work for a manned flyby?

Turtles don't weigh much. Or drink much. Or breathe much. Probably didn't eat anything, for that matter.
Every kilogram of payload requires more fuel. Every kilogram of fuel requires...still more fuel.

Maybe you can explain to the thread how turtles are reptiles with a natural resistance to radiation that is orders of magnitude beyond human flesh.

Maybe you can explain what the radiation flux was during Apollo 8 and how you don't need to be a turtle to cope with it fine.

(Sorry to bring up JW again but I did enjoy the way his Apollo 8 video took the maximum radiation level during a solar flare in unshielded space and then multiplied that up by the mission duration to get a rad level that would even have had Leonardo, Donatello and co feeling a bit peaky!)

a reply to: Rob48

They used less shielding i believe which meant that the turtles pod was very light compared to a human pod and that makes a massive difference to the rocket power.

smaller rockets easier to control the burn.

"I am determined to elect a president of our choosing this year and one who will be deeply indebted, and who will recognize his indebtedness. Since I am willing to go beyond all limitations on this, I think we should be able to select a candidate and a party who knows the facts of political life … If we select Nixon, then he, I know for sure knows the facts of life." – Howard Hughes,

The results of the Lunar Orbiter probes showed that the planned shielding was perfectly adequate.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Are you suggesting that the Russians cannot build good, reliable rockets?

Maybe this will help you grasp the differences which still exist between US and Russian space programs.
Just today the Russians had another failed launch.

Russia loses $275 million sat

And I quote:

"It's a very unsuccessful picture on the whole and, if you compare it with our main competitors, with Europe, their last accident was 12 years ago," Moiseyev said.

Three failed launches last year and none for Europe for the last 12 years.

a reply to: samkent

Three failed launches last year and none for Europe for the last 12 years.

That doesn't actually help us answer the question why Russia/USSR abandoned all attempts at human space flight through the radiation belts and to the moon, when they had established credibility in all other aspects of low earth orbit functions...

...the logical next step is to proceed with human flights through and beyond the earth radiation belts. Are they prevented by politics or scientific reasons?

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: samkent

Three failed launches last year and none for Europe for the last 12 years.

That doesn't actually help us answer the question why Russia/USSR abandoned all attempts at human space flight through the radiation belts and to the moon, when they had established credibility in all other aspects of low earth orbit functions...

Sure it does. The only man-rated launchers that Russian/the USSR had were members of the R-7 family, the rockets that they used to launch the manned Vostok and Voskhod capsules and the rockets they still use to launch Soyuz missions to the ISS. The other rockets that they wanted to use for manned missions - missions beyond LEO - were too unreliable to use for manned missions. The N-1 never worked properly, and the Proton (as illustrated by this week's failure) isn't reliable enough to put people on top of it.

Wikipedia (the first, best source for everything, I know...) lists 345 successful Proton launches of 390 attempted over the life of the launch vehicle (since 1965), which is a success rate of 88.4%. Russia continues to use them for satellite launches because they don't have anything else in that LV class, and they continue to get commercial contracts to launch satellites for other countries using Proton because they are, as these things go, relatively cheap.

...the logical next step is to proceed with human flights through and beyond the earth radiation belts. Are they prevented by politics or scientific reasons?

Why does it have to be one or the other? After the US won the moon race, there was no political will on the part of the USSR to continue. Why continue to spend rubles to, at best, repeat something the Americans had already done? As far as scientific reasons, the Zond program proved that the Soviets could repeat Apollo 8, just not reliably. Brilliant engineering, spotty quality control.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: eriktheawful
What is holding back other countries from doing this for 42 years?

The pointlessness of doing just a manned flyby?

Apollo 8 was a stepping stone on the way to manned Moon landings. I imagine that any space program involving a manned Moon flyby would be geared towards a manned Moon landing. A flyby, by itself, would be a rather expensive and risky exercise that wouldn't achieve anything big or unique, since it's already been done.

Why are you so bent on insisting that Apollo 8 must be copied, for its own sake? You can't separate Apollo 8 flyby from the ultimate goal of the Apollo program - to land men on the Moon.

You also insist that the beyond-orbit manned spaceflight is inseparably concerned with danger from Van Allen belts. I have seen no such concern in any documentation published after the Apollo astronauts passed those belts. The astronauts' overall exposure was dominated by solar particles once outside Earth's magnetic field. en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: Rob48

Firstly, you are saying that the Russians could have built a space capsule capable of sending Russians to the moon and back but they didn't do it.

You need to design a succesfull rocket first, then the capsule that it will carry.

The Russians had every piece of the puzzle except a capsule that could take a human being through the Van Allen Belts to the moon and back.

That is only a construct of your mind, I'm afraid. The piece of the puzzle that the Russians lacked was the heavy rocket.

Then you suggest that the Russians had difficulty bringing humans back from low earth orbit with the "large smoking crater" idea.

Coming back from the Moon doesn't place you in the same good old low earth orbit. It's much faster and more tricky.

You are suggesting that the Russians never went to the moon for propaganda reasons simply because the American's discouraged them with the moon landings?

No, at the time the Russians would have loved to go to (and ultimately land on) the Moon. They just didn't have a heavy rocket that would work for this.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter
It might be instructive to read what James Van Allen has to say about the Van Allen belts. This is from an email that he sent in response to am enquiry about the dangers of the belts in 2003:

Ø The radiation belts of the Earth do, indeed, pose important constraints on the safety of human space flight.

Ø The very energetic (tens to hundreds of MeV) protons in the inner radiation belt are the most dangerous and most difficult to shield against. Specifically, prolonged flights (i.e., ones of many months' duration) of humans or other animals in orbits about the Earth must be conducted at altitudes less than about 250 miles in order to avoid significant radiation exposure.

Ø A person in the cabin of a space shuttle in a circular equatorial orbit in the most intense region of the inner radiation belt, at an altitude of about 1000 miles, would be subjected to a fatal dosage of radiation in about one week.

Ø However, the outbound and inbound trajectories of the Apollo spacecraft cut through the outer portions of the inner belt and because of their high speed spent only about 15 minutes in traversing the region and less than 2 hours in traversing the much less penetrating radiation in the outer radiation belt. The resulting radiation exposure for the round trip was less than 1% of a fatal dosage - a very minor risk among the far greater other risks of such flights. I made such estimates in the early 1960s and so informed NASA engineers who were planning the Apollo flights. These estimates are still reliable.

Source.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: samkent

Three failed launches last year and none for Europe for the last 12 years.

That doesn't actually help us answer the question why Russia/USSR abandoned all attempts at human space flight through the radiation belts and to the moon, when they had established credibility in all other aspects of low earth orbit functions...

...the logical next step is to proceed with human flights through and beyond the earth radiation belts. Are they prevented by politics or scientific reasons?

One does not design a manned space program merely to go beyond radiation belts. One designs a manned space program to go to (and land on) the Moon, Mars, etc.

If Apollo 8 had nothing to do with landing on the Moon, or having a lunar module, why did they use the Saturn V and not a lighter rocket? According to you, it shouldn't be such a huge task designing a rocket just for a lunar flyby.

Getting beyond the low earth orbit isn't like stepping off your front porch. It's more like embarking on a trans-continental trip.

originally posted by: wildespaceThe pointlessness of doing just a manned flyby?

It wouldn't be pointless at all. A manned Soviet flyby of the moon would net the USSR enormous propaganda if they had tried it in the 1970's or 1980's or the 1990's or the 2000's. The p r o p a g a n d a value is worth more than the material cost of the mission... case in point: Apollo 8.

No doubt the Russians would have timed a moon trip to coincide with an important Soviet holiday, like April 12 "Cosmonautics Day" or May 1 "International Day of Worker's Solidarity" or November 7 "Celebrating October Revolution of 1917."

You are arguing that a Soviet lunar manned flyby must be planned in relation to a Soviet manned lunar landing expedition... this is not true.

You are arguing that the Soviet space program was not smart enough to build large rockets or man-rated capsules that could traverse the earth radiation belts, yet, without the added mass of a lunar landing configuration, 10 orbits around the moon is not a difficult objective.

A flyby, by itself, would be a rather expensive and risky exercise that wouldn't achieve anything big or unique, since it's already been done.

You also argue that the Russians didn't want to go because they would be 2nd place? That is just bad history mate. The Soviets would have send a Russian woman to the moon.... if they had a capsule, I do not agree that a large booster is required for the mission.

If we applied your argument to the American side... the Americans would have given up after Sputnik 1 and the Americans would have been discouraged by the Vanguard series of failures. By your argument, the Americans should have given up after the Apollo 1 fire.

Human psychology says the Russians would never be discouraged by coming in 2nd place. The Soviets actually leap frogged ahead of America in the low earth orbit, long durations and space stations; The Soviets, still aware of the propaganda value of space, sent cosmonauts from Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria Hungary, Viet Nam, Cuba, Mongolia, Romania, France, India, Syria, Afghanistan.... as you can see, between 1978 and 1988 the Soviet space program was still intensely interested in the propaganda value of space.

The first female space EVA was Russian in 1984. Even 15 years after Apollo 8, the Russians are still making space propaganda... but they can't get out of low earth orbit because they don't have the capsule to get through the radiation belts and survive.

TL;DR Saying the Russians didn't have a valuable reason to duplicate Apollo 8 is wrong; All that they lacked was a capsule and a sufficient booster ---- and these components do not need to be launched with the same launch vehicle.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

The Soviets would have not stopped lunar exploration... there must be some reason behind it.

Yes. Their ride didn't work.
The US ride did...very well.

I suppose the question then becomes one of why the hell didn't they steal and copy the design...since both sides were actively spying on each across the board, its certain the Soviets had assets within NASA or some of the major contractors working for the US space programme.

If their bird wouldn't fly, it would have made political sense to simply steal the other guys and fly that.

The Soviets didn't know what the hell the US was doing on the moon..could have built a nuclear missile base for all they knew, it would have been imperitive to build their own missile base as a dead mans switch, if not to just get an eyeful of what the US was up to during the lunar missions.

I too think its strange the Soviets didn't build a copy of a Saturn V...especially considering the levels of cold war paranoia and the itchy nuclear trigger fingers of that period.

Perhaps they did nick Saturn V, and flew it to the moon..and even now are keeping mum as that is where their ace in the hole is sitting waiting quietly in case it's needed?

Wonder if the 'numbers station' broadcasts are powerful enough to reach the moon...!