Deceptive subject. I know I’m not the ONLY one. I’ve talked with at least one other person who also thought so.
I remember seeing a map of the moon in some textbook with American and Soviet flags marking where each had landed. I didn’t question this until some time in college, when somehow it got brought up. I did some quick research, and damned if they hadn’t.
So, who here bought the whole Soviets-on-the-moon business for at least a short time?
Are you sure it wasn’t a dream? I have never heard of such a thing.
Haj
There’s nothing to “buy” - NASA points out Soviet achievements.
“The Soviet Lunar program had 20 successful missions to the Moon and achieved a number of notable lunar “firsts”: first probe to impact the Moon, first flyby and image of the lunar farside, first soft landing, first lunar orbiter, and the first circumlunar probe to return to Earth. The two successful series of Soviet probes were the Luna (24 lunar missions) and the Zond (5 lunar missions).” They even managed to return with lunar soil samples.
What the Soviets did not manage to do was send humans to the moon.
Oops, I meant to make more clear that I’d read claims that the USSR had PEOPLE land on the moon.
I never really heard anything about it, but I knew a kid when I was in grade school that I got in a big argument over this with. Because he said that they were the first to put men on the moon and I told him he was full of it. He said something about that his grandpa saw it on TV or something. I suspect he was just confused, and what he really heard was that they were the first to put a probe on the moon.
So anyway, no, your not the only one.
We’ve sent humans to the moon??
Paging Buzz Aldrin! Paging Buzz Aldrin!
I think I remember seeing the same book (or at least the same images) as a kid. I thought they were where them Commie pinko bastards actually landed a Cosmonaut. Whoops. . .
24 years is a short time, in the grand scheme of things. 
Tripler
Commie pinko bastards. . .
I grew up beleiving the same thing. I think I saw the same image you did, I do remember it.
Here’s a map showing the various landing sites:
Note that Pete Conrad managed to land Apollo 12 within a few hundred feet of Surveyor 3.
Eric
Why were soviet probes unsuccessful in their journeys to mars and Venus?
The Soviet probe to Venus was successful, except for the fact that no one knew that Venus was 900 degrees or so. So the probe melted after a few minutes. As for the failure of the Russian Mars probes, I don’t think that they’ve ever figured out what went wrong with them, they just stopped transmitting. Though, I do believe the current theory is that a micrometeor did them in.
Posted by Tuckerfan:
“As for the failure of the Russian Mars probes, I don’t think that they’ve ever figured out what went wrong with them, they just stopped transmitting. Though, I do believe the current theory is that a micrometeor did them in.”
Nah: Me and Tars Tarkas trashed 'em as soon as they landed. Couldn’t allow the Evil Empire to get established on Barsoom, could we?
I didn’t actually remedy this misconception until I was in graduate school. What am I studying in grad school? Astronomy.
You think you were embarrassed when you finally figured it out.
I blame the combination of a map of the Moon that hung on the wall of my childhood bedroom that showed the locations of (unmanned) Soviet landings, and that Superman movie where the evil Kryptonians showed up on the Moon and kicked some cosmonauts around.
On to actual Science Facts[sup]TM[/sup]: The Soviets successfully sent several probes to Venus. They were called the Venera series. Given that we didn’t have the first freakin’ clue what was under them clouds, I think they did a pretty respectable job. They improved each spacecraft each year, and acheived several successful soft landings. Venera 13 survived longest, clocking 127 minutes on the surface. (More on Venera.)
Total number of U.S. lander missions to Venus: 0.
The Russkies didn’t have much luck with Mars, though. Here’s a nice timline of U.S. and Soviet Mars missions.
I heard many stories that they did put men on the moon, or at least send them there, but they could not get them back. Certainly, there were no survivors if the Soviets did send them there.
The Soviets were pretty desperate to send men to the Moon ahead of the US, but not so desperate that they strapped cosmonauts into an untested rocket and shipped them off to the Moon. Up until almost the moment Apollo 11 lifted off, the Soviets were working furiously at getting men in orbit around the Moon and had built a rocket suitable for the task (at least in terms of carrying capacity), however, none of them performed in unmanned test launches, the last one exploding on take off in the closing weeks of June, IIRC. For years the Soviets tried to pretend that they never wanted to go to the Moon, but US spy satellites and documents released after the collapse of the USSR prove otherwise.
OK, so now I’m wondering–I remember the map I saw w/American and Soviet flags being places where people had landed, but is this what was really there or has my memory filled in this incorrect detail based on what I later assumed?
Talking about this once, someone said that the Soviets claimed to have landed people there (leading to the map), but this was obviously discredited after the collapse of the USSR. He’s the only one I heard say that the USSR falsely claimed to have placed people on the moon.
Does anyone remeber hearing claims that the USSR had people land on the moon (as opposed to, as in my case, possible assumptions that they had)?
Certainly, there was an UL about it floating around that I heard mentioned, but I don’t think that it was believed to be true by the vast majority of folks.
Actually, the soviets did land people on the moon and where the only ones to do so.
The NASA only faked the appollo missions. Though this secret had been disclosed ( As any well-informed doper knows, you can find many sites proving that the US missions were faked , with analysis of pictures and many other evidences) despite the nonsentical claims of the NASA, the second part of the conspiracy is still unknown to most people.
Apart from some people gifted with a good memory who remember having seen evidences of the soviet landings, all evidences have been supressed in the western world. This was a very large scale operation involving many teachers, journalists and scientists who were bribed or threatened in order to silence them. After the fall of Soviet Union, the whole cover-up became unecessary, but too many people has been involved in the conspiracy for it to be publically disclosed. The scandal would have been enormous.
Since informations began to flow out of the newly democratic Russia, the US government had to make a deal with the Russian authorities. In exchange for advantageous loans, Eltsine agreed to block any informations or reports about the soviet moon landings (even national pride has a price). They even stopped teaching about them in russian schools. Older russian people remember about the missions, though (one of them told me about it one evening…he was somewhat affraid at first, and denied it ever happened, but after 15 glasses of vodka or so, he relaxed a little and admitted having watched the landing on live TV).
You won’t find any documents (footages or pictures) since they have been destroyed. The russian cosmonauts who landed on the moon, according to some sources, died in dubious circumstances during the last ten years. However, it’s difficult to enquire about these suspicious deaths, since their names aren’t released, hence their identity is curently unknown.
I had exactly the opposite impression – I hadn’t realized that the Soviets had actually sent a successful (robotic) mission to the moon and brought back rock samples until about ten years ago, when I saw an exhibit of Soviet space hardware at the Boston Museum of Science – and saw the backup lunar lander. I certainly never heard of this device befoe, or the succesul mission. On the other hand, I certainly did know of other Soviet missions – us Space Babies who grew up in the 60s knew that they had not only gotten a man into orbit ahead of us, but they also were the first to hit the moon with a rocket, and the first to send a photographic mision to the far side of the moon. We knew they’d sent landers there, too. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that there were Russian sites on your lunar map.
