This weekend, I saw a really good documentary on the space race called Moonshot. After the US circumnavigated the moon on Apollo 8, satellite photos showed the Russians were preparing a rocket that was also believed to be going to the moon. The next shot in the documentary was of this rocket blowing up on the launch pad and a bunch of workers scrambling around in the fire trying to salvage whatever they could. Does anybody know anything about this? Was the rocket manned when it exploded? And finally, was their mission to circumnavigate the moon to catch up with us, or were they going to try to land before we could in July?
Yes, we were preparing a rocket to land on the Moon, and everything was going alright, except it was supposed to be timed to some Soviet anniversary, which was clearly too early. Scientists were warning the Big Brother of a possible catastrophe, but we launched it anyway, blowing our budget and setting ourselves back. And yes, it was manned, but of course everything was done hush-hush, so you won’t find many records of it in Russian archives. I only know it because my grandparents were scientists and followed the events closely.
A sick, sad world…
Also, another reason that the Soviets never followed the US to the Moon is that one of the brilliant scientists on the Soviet space program fell out of favor, IIRC, with the Powers That Be, and was sent into internal exile and later died of a broken jaw. Once he was removed from the program the Soviets lost the “push” to go to the Moon. (Not slandering the Soviet space program at all. They were in space waaaay more than we Americans were and still hold records we’ve yet to match, let alone beat.)
That was the N-1. No, it wasn’t manned, it was a test flight for the rocket. There were two other unmanned test launches, both failed in flight.
Check out http://www.astronautix.com for the tiniest details about the program.
Eric
If you want a detailed book about the Soviet Space program.
There is a biography about Sergei Korolev by James Harford.
Sergei was THE MAN in early Soviet Space Programs.
I can go into more detail later when I return from work.
Let me correct Tuckerfan.
The events of His death from an interview with his Daughter Natasha Sergeevna Koroleva.
“Petrovsky (the surgon) Thought it would be a simple operation, so simple that he scheduled another operation afterwards. He started at 8 am. [friday Jan 18th 1966] Used an rectoscope to remove the polyops endoscopically. My father hemorraged on the operating table, bleeding so severly that it couldn’t be stopped. Petrosky cut the abdomen to stop the bleeding, and found a cancerous tumor, which had not been visible before. He began to remove parts of the rectum to take out the tumor. This took a long time. My father had an anesthetic mask on for eight hours. They should have put some kind of tube into his lungs [intubation] but his jaw had been broken in prison so they could not use the tube. His heart was not in good condition and Petrovsky knew this. He completed the operation, but my father never revived. Another doctor, A. Vishnevsky, was called in from a resort, but nothing could be done. Petrovsky was a good surgeon so it’s not fair to criticize him. He is now eighty-three years old and is Director of the Center of Surgery.”
Interview was on Dec. 8 1991.
Natasha is an eminent lung surgeon and professor at the Moscow Medical Academy.
The broken Jaw was just a complication of the operation.
The Operation preformed was a laparotomy. It revealed a large tumor that had grown in the intestine and the pelvis wall. Petrovsky used an electric knife to do a biopsy, which confirmed the existance of a very malignant angiosarcoma. Korolev would not have lived more than a few months. even if he had not been operated on.
Check out the book it is very detailed and very interesting.
Fascinating stuff…in N.S. Kruschev’s memoirs, he relates the Soviets efforts to build a nuclear-powered rocket! The US had a similar program (Project “KIWI”), but it was abandoned when the scientists decided that (The nuclear rocket) was not possible. Anyway, according to Kruschev, the prototype of this rocket was to be tested at Tyuratam-and a bunch of high Soviet Army brass were on hand…including Marshall Nedelin (head of the Soviet rocket program). The countdown started, and the button was pushed…and nothing happened…15 minutes later, the whole complex blew up! Nedelin and many others were blown to bits!
This was the end of the Soviet’s moon shot program.
Something I never knew about until I saw some of the hardware at the Boston Museum of Science (back in 1990) was that evidently the Soviets did send a mission to the moon. It landed and actually brought back samples from the moon! It wasn’t manned, of course. But I never heard about this before, or since, and I admit I never looked into it. The cards at the exhibition didn’t say “proposed lunar lander”, or anything like that – they gave the clear impression that identical craft had actually gone to Luna and come back with the goods. But obviously with a much worse publicity team, because nobody ever heard about it.
Anybody know anything about this?
The Soviet Luna 16 lander returned 101 grams of lunar material to Earth.
It might have garnered more publicity if it hadn’t taken place in September 1970, over a year after the American Apollo 11 mission had also successfully collected samples of lunar material…
And, oh yeah, there was also that bit about the first human beings to set foot on another world.
Luna 16 was clearly a noteworthy technical achievement, though, especially given that we (the human race in general, I mean) are very interested in getting samples back from a variety of places, but have no plans to send anybody to any of those places in the near future. So in that respect Luna 16 is sort of a pioneer of what we’re trying to do today, more so, really, than Apollo 11 was.
There were a total of four N-1 launch attempts. One blew up on the launch pad (actually, took off, got a hundred or so feet in the air, then fell back), the other three blew up in flight. None were manned.
If the footage you saw showed workers “scrambling around in the fire”, it probably wasn’t of any of the N-1 launches. It might have been footage of the Nedelin Catastrophe, where a fully fueled prototype ICBM which was being troubleshooted exploded on the launch pad, killing nearly 100 of Russia’s top rocket scientists and technicians.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the US vs. USSR space race (including neat pics of there really clunky looking, one man lunar lander).
Thanks for the replys all! I checked out the Astronautics website and that had all kinds of cool things on it. A nuclear powered rocket!? Thanks also for the book suggestions. I’ve always been interested in the Space Race, but never knew where to find info on the Russian equivalent. I guess it’s time to make a trip to Amazon.com…