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What was the USSR's plan to put a man on the Moon?

posted 12 years ago by mickeyone
31 replies | jump to latest

I was just meandering about the Internet and started reading about George Pal. I heard that he made this movie and it was considered one of his better efforts and someone included a link to it on YouTube so I watched it (I remembered hearing about films like this and "When Worlds Collide" when I was a kid but I had never seen them).

After watching it, it got me to thinking. The way we (the U.S) actually went to the moon turned out to be we sent up this very tall ship (Saturn V), where the first stage drops off and then a second stage I believe. And the thrusters of those first 2 stages were used just to get into orbit. From there the third stage (the remainder of the rocket) is boosted out of orbit (basically going into an even higher orbit), one which will take them to the moon. While in transit to the moon, the Command Module (CM) turns around and docks with the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), which was sitting just beneath it in the third stage. So in this configuration they go into orbit around the moon. To land on the Moon, 2 of the 3 guys go into the LEM, undock, and then land the LEM on the lunar surface. Once done there, take off up (the top portion of the LEM leaving the base portion on the surface) into an orbit around the Moon, redock with the Command Module, and the 2 guys get back inside the CM, undock what's left of the LEM and I guess they just throw that away (it crashes back to the lunar surface). Then, all 3 now reunited in the CM, they use the main thruster to leave their orbit around the Moon to take them back to Earth. At some point, they jettison the main cylinder of the CM, which contained the fuel and thruster and consumables like oxygen, and come back down to earth just in the Apollo capsule, using heat shield to prevent burning up as they come down through the atmosphere until finally parachutes open and they splash down in the sea. Phew, quite a complicated operation!

No where did any fictional version of going to the Moon include this complicated sequence, I don't believe (not that I am familiar with all fictional versions of getting to the Moon). And I was wondering, is this the way it had to be done? What about the USSR? Those guys we were competing with. Surely they would have come up with a plan as to how to do it. I really wonder how they decided they were going to land a man on the Moon. Was the way NASA did it really the best technique to use? What about what happened in this film, "Destination Moon"? Could that have possibly worked? Just, build a huge rocket with big fins, blast off towards the Moon, turn around before landing, and land the whole thing on the Moon?

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

You pose an interesting question, mickeyone. First off, I have to say that I am not really knowledgeable about the specifics of what the Soviets planned for their prospective lunar landing. They did develop a rocket, called Energiya (Energy), even more powerful than the US Saturn V (if I recall it was supposed to be capable of a thrust of 10,000,000 pounds, vs. 5 million for the Saturn). However, the first Energiya blew up at launch, killing most of the technicians and military personnel in attendance, in 1968. Although it did eventually fly (unmanned), the Soviet space program, already falling behind America's following the death of their primary space designer, Aleksei Korolev, in 1966, never caught up.

From what I have read, the basic Soviet plan for a landing on the moon was quite similar to ours, but this isn't too surprising. The physics of spaceflight are, of course, a constant, and you're pretty limited in what means you can use to get to the moon, or do anything else in space. For example, when the Soviets introduced their own version of the Space Shuttle, the Buran, in 1980, it was virtually identical to the shuttle. Some people accused the Russians of simply copying our designs, the way they used to copy American automobile models in the 50s, but in fact the design of such a craft is dictated by what's required of it, so even US engineers said they wouldn't have expected anything significantly different. But like the Soviet moon landing that never occurred, the Buran, while it was actually built, never flew and was stored away in a warehouse.

In any event, you do need a staged rocket in order to escape the Earth's gravity -- at least, to do so efficiently. In fact, even in 1950 George Pal and Robert Heinlein knew that having a single, finned rocketship take off, fly to the moon, land, and return, was scientifically inaccurate, but Pal deemed it too difficult to depict the reality of ejecting stages and so on, and so just went with the single rocket. In most sci-fi films of the 50s, scientists were shown simply launching one big ship into space, which was easier to do (especially where they were using V-2 stock footage), and few people realized the unlikelihood of such a development.

Interestingly, Destination Moon's box-office competitor in 1950, Rocketship X-M, while generally far less scientifically accurate, did get two things right that DM didn't. First, the RXM was a staged rocket. The film shows the crew ejecting the one stage when its fuel is gone. We don't actually see the stage uncoupling, but we do see it moving away through the porthole of the main rocket. (The stage then somehow doubles back toward the RXM and nearly collides with it, but the crew fires the ship's rockets to push them out of the way.) Second, in this film the ship goes into a single orbit of the Earth before heading off toward the Moon, in order to give the ship extra boost by adding the Earth's rotation speed to the rocket's. Both these are close to what the real spacecraft did 19 years later, and so make Rocketship X-M more accurate in these respects. Again, it seems Pal knew that a ship should orbit the Earth, but for economy of narrative skipped this and just had the entire Spaceship Luna head straight for the Moon.

I can't say whether a moon flight as Pal depicted would be technically feasible or not. Quite possibly it would be, but there would be a lot of technical complications that would at the least make it far less practical, if it isn't indeed downright impossible. In the film the narrator of the Woody Woodpecker cartoon, referring to the return flight from the Moon to the Earth, states that "The V-2 rocket could do it today." So perhaps sending a single craft to and from the Moon is possible. But it's obviously not the best way to go.

Off hand, the only other 1950s sci-fi film I can think of where they have a staged rocket is From the Earth to the Moon (1958), based on Jules Verne's novel and set in 1868! But the science in that film is almost non-existent.

If you haven't seen Rocketship X-M, do so. It's actually a very different film from Destination Moon, more melodramatic, with surprising plot developments, and some very unique (for its time) ideas, its scientific inaccuracies notwithstanding. But you might also want to check out a movie called Project Moonbase, a 1953 film originally intended as a pilot for a TV series that was never made. This was also based on a Heinlein concept and depicted astronauts in 1970 flying to the Moon from a space station in orbit around Earth. The craft they use to land on the Moon is amazingly similar to the LEM actually used 16 years later. The film is silly in many ways, but scientifically it's fairly plausible, and given the design of the lunar lander, perhaps there aren't many different ways to travel to the Moon after all.

[–] graham-167 12 years ago

It's worth noting that Heinlein's ship in Destination Moon has a nuclear powered rocket. Such a rocket may well have the thrust and delta-vee to be able to fly to the moon and back in one stage. And a nuclear rocket would itself be a big heavy item, so having many of them in stages would likely not be practical.

So in fact what he depicted is scientifically accurate, he just showed a rather more advanced system than the Apollo program actually used. Or than we have now, come to that.

[–] 1shado1 11 years ago

"They did develop a rocket, called Energiya (Energy), even more powerful than the US Saturn V (if I recall it was supposed to be capable of a thrust of 10,000,000 pounds, vs. 5 million for the Saturn)."
----------------------------

FWIW, the Saturn V first stage was rated at 7.5 million pounds of thrust. :)

Also, the Soviet rocket that was the counterpart to the U.S. Saturn V was named the N-1, not Energiya. As you stated, it was capable of almost 10 million pounds of thrust.

The Energia was built as the launch vehicle for the Soviet space shuttle Buran. The Buran was flown once, in an unmanned test.

Now if that bastard so much as twitches, I'm gonna blow him right to Mars.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

I seem to recall different information on the Saturn's thrust and which rocket was the Energiya, but I won't dispute what you've written.

How could the Buran be flown unmanned? I thought it, like the Shuttle, required pilots to bring it down and land.

[–] 1shado1 11 years ago

Sorry. I should have been clearer in my reply. If memory serves, the unmanned flight of the Buran Shuttle was just a glide test, it being released from the back of one of their big honkin' cargo jets.

Now if that bastard so much as twitches, I'm gonna blow him right to Mars.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Okay, but even a glider needs pilot control. The Shuttle glided in without power, but it had people aboard to control its descent. You can't just release an unmanned craft like that and expect it to glide in and land safely on its own.

[–] 1shado1 11 years ago

Why not? A 747 is capable of landing itself without human intervention. Or the Buran may have been remotely piloted.

Now if that bastard so much as twitches, I'm gonna blow him right to Mars.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Excuse me?! A 747 can land itself? Sorry, you'll have to explain that one to me. As for the Buran, I don't believe it could be piloted by remote control. The Shuttle couldn't be. Can a glider even be remotely piloted? A powered plane, yes, to some extent and under certain circumstances.

[–] 1shado1 11 years ago

http://travel.usatoday.com/experts/cox/story/2011-11-14/Ask-the-Captai n-Can-a-passenger-plane-land-itself/51171680/1

Now if that bastard so much as twitches, I'm gonna blow him right to Mars.

[–] 1shado1 11 years ago

P.S. Radio controlled model plane enthusiasts remotely control gliders all the time.

Now if that bastard so much as twitches, I'm gonna blow him right to Mars.

[–] 1shado1 11 years ago

P.P.S. Did a little research, and found this at a Buran F.A.Q. website:

Is the Buran that was on display in Sydney a real space Buran?

No, it is the aerodynamic tester Buran OK-GLI. It never flew in space nor was it designed to. It was, however, used to conduct tests on the automatic landing system for the eventual space orbiters, as such it flew in the low atmosphere. That's what it needed the engines for - so that it could get up to a height of around 5000 metres and practice landing approaches. It’s back in Moscow now btw.

How many full size tester Burans were built?

Eight - seven static and one flight tester (OK-GLI (BST-02)).

I read on a newsgroup that Buran was heavily damaged on reentry on its first flight, resulting in warping of the airframe, is this true?

No. There is no evidence at all to support this. Looking through Google I managed to trace this rumour back to one misinformed newsgroup post about five years ago. Buran in fact survived reentry very well, losing a remarkably small amount of tiles. It’s heat tolerance levels are actually better than the US shuttles.

Also found this:

The information gained using these test articles culminated in the first successful flights of the Energia and Buran in the late 1980s. The Energia flew its first operational mission on 11 May 1987, and the launch vehicle performed flawlessly. This success spurred the Soviet's to attempt the first flight of the complete Buran-Energia system the following year. The launch occurred at 0600 on the morning of 15 November 1988 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in what is now Kazakhstan. Unlike American Shuttle missions, this flight was conducted without a single human aboard the vehicle. The first mission was launched unmanned since the life support system was still not certified or fully installed and software for cockpit displays was incomplete. Moreover, the primary goal of the flight was to test the automated launch, orbital maneuvering, and landing systems developed for the orbiter. It was considered unnecessary to risk a human crew on a shakedown flight.

Though the first flight occurred more than four years behind schedule, the mission was a complete success. The automated launch sequence performed flawlessly, and the Energia booster lifted the vehicle into a temporary orbit before the Buran separated as designed. After boosting itself to a higher orbit and completing two circuits around the Earth, the Buran automatically fired its retrorockets to begin the descent back into the atmosphere. Exactly 206 minutes into the mission, the Buran orbiter successfully landed at Baikonur, having lost only five of its 38,000 thermal tiles over the course of the flight. The unmanned flight marked the first time in history that a spacecraft of such size and complexity had been launched, completed maneuvers in orbit, re-entered the atmosphere, and made a precision landing under completely automatic control. As an encore to its successful flight, Buran made a triumphant appearance at the 1989 Paris Air Show while mounted atop its An-225 Mriya transport.

Now if that bastard so much as twitches, I'm gonna blow him right to Mars.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Thanks very much for providing the link.

The article said that the 747 could indeed land on autopilot, but only specially designed models being constantly monitored by specially trained ground control personnel and a similarly-trained crew on board the aircraft. That's impressive, but the plane can't truly "land itself without human intervention". Human oversight is still required.

Now, I've looked into some of the stuff we've been talking about, and you're quite correct. The Buran's sole flight was indeed unmanned, and it made an almost precise landing back on Earth, a very impressive achievement for the Russians. And it was of course launched by an Energiya rocket; the N1 was developed primarily for the USSR's unrealized lunar mission 20 years later. The thrust figures for these rockets and the Saturn V were as you described.

So I thank you for correcting my errors and contributing some interesting extra information to this thread!

[–] 1shado1 11 years ago

I still maintain that these 747s (and not only 747s, actually)CAN land automatically without human intervention once the equipment is set to do so. The procedure is only MONITORED by ground personnel and the onboard crew in case of any malfunction. It is a hands-off affair if none occurs. Splitting hairs, I guess, LOL.

Glad I could add to the discussion. :)

Sorry if my memory of the Buran flight(s) wasn't entirely correct.

Now if that bastard so much as twitches, I'm gonna blow him right to Mars.

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Well, human monitoring isn't being unmanned or landing remotely. Let's split those hairs and say it's mechanically automatic but requires human oversight.

Model gliders can be piloted remotely but that isn't a full-sized plane. Still, there may be no real difference in the procedures involved.

The issue isn't the feasibility of piloting any craft remotely but rather getting it down safely and on target.

The sections you cited from the Buran site read much like the articles I found on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

All interesting stuff, but let's remember where we are. Neither the Buran, a 747, or any glider I know of ever made it to the moon!

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Thank you for the information.

Of course, spacecraft such as the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were different in conception and design, as well as purpose, from the Shuttle. The earlier craft could not be "piloted" back into the atmosphere. By their nature, they had to be fully automated in the descent, as well as for most of the flight. Obviously the Shuttle used automation to complete most of its flight -- even airliners do this today -- but the pilot isn't simply a passenger at the mercy of his craft as was bascially the case with astronauts launched into space atop a rocket, particularly during the descent.

Even in this movie (let's not forget this is the Destination Moon site!), most of the trip was automated (for its day). Barnes says "The take-off is fully automatic," which it isn't quite the case since Sweeney has to trip a switch to fire the engines, and so is the (unseen) landing, whose method is described in the cartoon and mentioned by Barnes near the end -- gliding in and descending using multiple parachutes. Whatever the practicalities of these means, they pointed toward reliance on machine over man. In fact, the moon landing in the film eerily mirrored the real-life experience of Apollo 11. Computer descent was costing them time and fuel, and finally Neil Armstrong had to switch to manual control, landing with just a few seconds' fuel left. Not very different from what's shown in the film, although there manual control is more prevalent. Luckily the LEM retained enough fuel for the men to lift off. I can't quite see Buzz Aldrin giving Joe Sweeney's sacrificial speech.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

I've heard of that book but never read it. Although I'm a science fiction film fan, my reading tastes tend heavily toward non-fiction. The only Heinlein books I've read are "Rocketship Galileo" and "The Man Who Sold the Moon", both of course the forebears of Destination Moon. But "Stones" sounds interesting and I may get hold of it. Thanks again.

Oh, the more interesting aspect about one of Apollo 11's astronauts having to stay behind to lighten ship would have been the sight of Armstrong kicking Aldrin down the ladder and locking the door on him. NEEIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!

[–] graham-167 12 years ago

Your description of the process is essentially accurate.

As to why it had to be done, it's a question of how big you want your rocket. The Saturn V burned through most of its fuel just to get into Earth orbit. So once you reach orbit, the large majority of that giant rocket is just empty dead weight. You would have to expend fuel to get it to the moon, making your whole rocket far bigger.

And then you're bringing all that dead weight back, so that's now an even bigger rocket. And then you have to lift that weight in the first place, so it's even bigger still. If the Saturn V had been built to fly all the way to the moon and back in one piece, it would have to be at LEAST ten times the size that it was.

So the approach they take is to throw away bits of the ship as soon as they have used them. One stage to get you off the ground - and when it's done, dump it. One stage to get you into orbit of the Earth - and when it's done, dump it. And so on.

The Russian version of going to the moon was somewhat similar in general terms, but different in detail. Their plan was to launch a single man. Rather than undocking and redocking along the way, he would suit up and spacewalk to get into the Lunar lander; then he'd land, do his thing, take off again, and spacewalk back to the ship for the return journey. A small, simpler ship (in theory), but it was pretty doubtful that one man could have coped with that workload!

This is an idea that wasn't common in science fiction. Most writers thought of spaceships in terms of navy ships or aircraft. You build a machine that can do the job, come back, and then be refuelled and go again. It just didn't occur to them that you would deliberately be throwing away chunks of your ship all along the way.

For one that did get it close, see "Conquest of Space". Their ship is a Mars mission that is launched from Earth orbit and has an initial booster stage that's a lattice of fuel tanks with a rocket on the back, a Mars landing stage that's a big flying wing for atmospheric work, and then a little Earth return rocket that folds up out of the wing for the trip back. Not bad for 1955!

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Your explanation is more detailed and on-point than mine, so thank you for adding this information.

Per your other post, you're right to point out the differences between the fuels used for "Spaceship Luna" (nuclear power) and the chemical-fuel technology we actually used and still depend on. A nuclear-powered ship that turned water into steam used to power the rocket would indeed need to be one great, un-staged ship. How practical that might be is another matter -- the "dead weight" issue. Of course, in the film they were told to dump their remaining fuel except for 70 hours' flying time, and to turn the rest of their "reaction mass" into drinking water for the trip home, as they also had to dump their food. So having such a ship, and propulsion system, turned out to be the crew's salvation!

Rocketship X-M did rely on a chemical rocket fuel for its power -- the source for a crucial plot point -- so in this respect also it turned out to be more accurate than Destination Moon.

I vaguely recall the Soviet concept of a one-man lunar mission, and I have to agree it sounds completely impractical, if not downright impossible. Imagine space-walking in lunar orbit to and from the lander with no human being on the other end of your lifeline. I can just imagine all the things that could go wrong -- especially given what we now know of the titanic risks the Soviets ran in their space launches in the 60s, and how close many of their cosmonauts came to being killed in Earth orbit (including on the first space walk). Safety was not their primary concern, and their technology was never as good as the United States'.

I'd thought about Conquest of Space before but for some reason didn't bother to bring it up. As you said, the Mars rocket in that film does eject its stage in Martian orbit, and then of course leaves the extraneous portions of the lander behind when it takes off for Earth. So that ship is one of the rare cinematic staged ones, though used in different ways than an Apollo. It was impressive for 1955 (as was the film's depiction of the surface of Mars, a not-bad guess), but then, it also came from George Pal (with Chesley Bonestell and Werner von Braun), so its technological insights aren't too surprising. COS tried to do for Mars what DM did for the Moon, but it didn't quite have the same impact. So to speak.

Anyway, great posts, graham-167.

[–] graham-167 12 years ago

Thanks!

I do love these kinds of films. It's fascinating that film technology got to a point where we could put depictions of these voyages up on screen just a handful of years before they were made for real. I always thought it must have been a very heady experience at the time, so see a film like Destination Moon as a young man and then watch it happen for real less than 20 years later.

I suppose that trend peaked with the film 2001... coming out in 1968, it was a grand vision of what the future may bring. And how far short of that vision the reality fell, alas. And now, will we even return to the moon within our lifetime? It seems not.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Will we ever return to the moon within our lifetime? Well, if we elect Newt....

Heck, we'd even get a 51st state to boot.

Destination Moon is one of my very favorite movies. It's hard to put ourselves in the state of mind of a viewer in 1950, who had never seen anything like Destination Moon, and to whom spaceflight was at best a fantasy that no one took seriously or believed possible. But judging from newspaper accounts of the time, the movie was SRO in show after show, with lines wrapped around the block and extra screenings laid on by theaters.

Years back I read many of the magazine articles put out as advance publicity prior to the release of DM, in one of which (I think it was Popular Mechanics) George Pal joked that he wanted to get his movie into theaters "before the newsreels beat me to it!" His point was to make people realize that his film was showing a future that would actually happen, not some piece of fiction. I always wondered what Pal actually thought of the real Apollo mission, but I suppose no one in 1969 thought of interviewing the man whose film inspired a lot of young people to go into engineering, astrophysics and other fields where they worked on the real space program a decade later -- a fact acknowledged by the official history of NASA, which specifically cites Destination Moon for the part it played in making the idea of a lunar flight real to many people.

Little did he know, of course, that by 1969 the most fictional part of the moon landing was the idea it'd be covered in newsreels!

[–] mickeyone 12 years ago

Actually, after I wrote my OP I went and did some research on the Soviet moon program. Yes, they did decide to do pretty much what was done with Apollo, with some technical details different. One thing I found particularly interesting was, they were going to have this extra stage (Block D engine) on the bottom of their lunar lander, which would be used to slow down the craft as it approached the lunar surface and then jettisoned. Here is a CGI model of the lander (called LK): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MondlanderLK.jpg and here is Soviet lander next to U.S. lander http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Landef%C3%A4hren.jpg You are incorrect in stating they planned it to use a single man. From my reading, the mission to the moon would include 2 cosmonauts, only 1 of which would do the final decent to the moon in the LK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Moonshot

But now this leads to my next question. Let's say the U.S. had decided to continue to go to the moon over and over, at near the same rate they did for Apollo missions 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. What would they have done? I understand the logic of doing it the way they did, throwing off depleted components as you went, as a, as the British say, one-off (or more accurately, a six-off). But really, this is not something that could be considered good practice, throwing all this space junk all over the place as you go. If we had done this enough times, the surface of the moon would have ended up being covered with trashed LEMs! Now, with the shuttle, at least the main component for space travel was used over and over, but they still had those main engines that were discarded (although its true the solid boosters were reused). I still don't like any of this way of doing things, throwing off used up parts. What I want to know is, what kind of technique could they use if they wanted to, say, colonize the moon. A system of getting there and back, over and over again. The Space Shuttle? No, you can't land on the moon with that.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

If and until actual colonization of the Moon had begun, there was probably no alternative to replicating the basic elements of the Apollo program -- in this particular, dumping space junk to get there and back. Even the shuttle -- which at one point early in its conception was indeed breifly mentioned as a possible craft to travel to the Moon -- discarded used and excess components after its launch (though some, like the strapped-on fuel tanks, were reusable).

An interesting aspect to all the stuff left on the lunar surface is that, when colonization does finally occur (assuming), the areas of the six landings will certainly be treated as something akin to National Parks, preserved as they stand, "junk" and all, because they're historic testaments to the greatest adventure of mankind (to paraphrase Jim Barnes). The Apollo 11 site in particular will be almost a shrine to human achievement, as it should be. And given the immutable nature of the lunar surface, no one has to worry about its components or soil being changed, or how to keep them in their original state. Barring a direct hit by an asteroid or comet, everything will stay as it is for millions, perhaps billions, of years more. The only difficulty would be to prevent visitors from tramping up the place and altering it forever.

Interesting also that a key element of the DM plot line has the crew jettisoning excess items -- space junk -- in order to lessen the ship's weight so they could take off from the Moon. More Pal/Heinlein prescience?

I believe the Soviets did at least initially contemplate a one-man lunar mission, but that this early thinking was discarded because of its obvious difficulties. I'm speaking of the early 60s, around the time Yuri Gagarin was launched into space. The events we mentioned from about 1966 on demoralized the Soviet space program and made its planning haphazard and unsure. I don't know whether you were alive at that time, but for years most Americans were convinced the Soviets, who had done all the significant space "firsts", would beat us to the Moon. Of course, back then no one knew the harsh realities of the program that were undermining it even as, on the surface, it seemed so organized and relentless in its early, superficial, successes. But after 1965, the Soviet space program fell increasingly deeper into second place, as all of us eventually realized.

[–] graham-167 12 years ago

Quite a few works set on the moon have mentioned the Apollo landing sites as being turned into monuments in one way or another. If we ever do establish colonies on the moon I've no doubt that exactly that will happen.

As for the Soviets, much of what they do seems to be driven by great pride and an almost desperate drive to be looked on as a great modern power. It's been said that the Soviet leadership had a policy that in as many fields as possible they must have the first, the biggest, the strongest. Trouble was that this was often achieved at the expense of practicality and safety.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

I wonder who'll be the first to apply for the job of Superintendent of, say, Apollo 11 National Park? Can you imagine them setting up all those "interpretive trails" around the sites? Especially having to keep visitors from bouncing off the elevated boardwalk in 1/6 gravity.

You remember it was once said that the USSR was a Third-World country with nukes. The Soviets were always jealous of the success of the West. I've read many accounts of ordinary Russians, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, seeing a westerner with some new gadget unknown in the Soviet Union, who, out of envy and pride, would shout out, "We have those, too!" even though they had little or no idea what the thing was. (One journalist recounted an identical experience, in which his young Soviet injector then sheepishly added, "What is it?") The Soviets -- like the Russians before and since the USSR -- were desperate to be looked on not only as a great power, but an infallible one. It's this last proclivity that led to such catastrophes as Chernobyl, as well as the disasters of the latter part of the Soviet space program. The Soviets never even admitted to airplane crashes (to the point of not even informing the families of victims), unless foreigners were aboard, which left them with no choice. But such things were always kept secret from their own people.

To the Russian, the word "big" signifies something invariably good. Even their premiere ballet company, the Bolshoi, means "big", and that's taken in the most complimentary sense. (Their word for "red", krasniy, is much the same -- it even forms the root of their word for "beautiful", prekrasniy.) With this kind of deep-rooted cultural mind-set, it's no wonder they regard anything big -- like their country -- as also perfect.

[–] graham-167 12 years ago

Lol, love the story about the gadgets. I've read a lot of stories about how desperately they wanted to pretend they were as good as the west at everything; not only did they like to claim that they had the biggest and best of everything, but a good portion of their propaganda output tried to convince their own people that we had it just as bad in the west. They'd claim, for instance, that the scenes in western movies that showed thousands of cars in the streets were all staged, and the reality was that few westerners owned a car. It all shows a bit of an insecurity problem, really.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Yes, few things are more comforting than an insecure ideologue armed with nukes.

The pity is that, throughout the Cold War, we always imagined the Soviets (or the entire Communist world, really) to be ten feet tall, striving resolutely ahead of us while we languished in hedonistic pursuits, consumerism and confusion. Few people saw the reality, or dared say anything about it. Despite all the evidence in measurements like industrial output, product quality, scarcity and inefficiency, and just plain looking at the lines of people everywhere to buy even the most basic things, we kept thinking the "Reds" were ahead of us simply because they concentrated their few resources in military and, for a time, space production.

Still, a few spectatcular feats did leave an indelible impression for a time, and that counts for something. Some big space "firsts" -- first satellite in orbit, first live creature in space (Laika the dog), first man in space, first woman, first rendevous, first space walk -- had a huge psychological effect on the world. But it did spur us to great things and, ultimately, victory in the race to the Moon. And when the full truth of the riskiness and chronic problems of the Soviet space program eventually became known, the Russian star fell further.

Speaking of cars, though, the Soviets used to propagandize about American workers going into debt to buy a car. Unfortunately this backfired, since most Russians would have been only too happy to have gone into debt, if only there had been cars to buy! Not to mention that Soviet cars were always rip-offs of American models. In the film One, Two, Three Billy Wilder made fun of this when the Russian trade representatives try to get James Cagney's sexy secretary by trading him their brand new 1961 Moskvitch automobile. As the chief Soviet delegate says, "Is wonderful car -- is exact replica of 1937 Nash!"

[–] iceagehiker 12 years ago

There were three methods that were considered for getting to the moon: Direct Flight (essentially the classic single-rocket-to-and-back), Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR, separate rockets meeting in orbit to send a combined craft to the moon), and Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR, a single rocket sending a craft to the moon, where it would detach a separate lander). The LOR method was the one that was used for the Apollo program, as it was deemed the most practical and fastest way to meet JFK's end-of-decade deadline. As mentioned, a direct flight would have required a truly monstrous rocket, something way bigger than the Saturn V, and the EOR method was, I think, considered too complicated to accomplish in the time period, requiring two launches, and if one of them failed, the whole mission was screwed.

Yup, the LOR method as done in Apollo is NOT the "proper" i.e most efficient way of getting to the moon. The proper way would have been to first develop a reuseable manned spacecraft for getting to earth orbit (i.e, a shuttle, though one that just carries people, and not the cargo-carrying monster that was developed later), then put a small space station in orbit, then develop a reuseable craft for going between the station and the moon (a lunar shuttle), and preferrably a separate reuseable lunar lander craft that would go between the lunar shuttle and the lunar surface. Unfortunately, JFK's famous deadline turned the moon program into a race which stopped this natural development cycle, with the result that we buult a massive rocket that was completely disposed of after each lunar mission.

Arthur C. Clarke even addressed this very subject, and he gave the same explanation that was previously posted: no one ever conceived that we would buold a huge complex rocket and then throw it away. Most SF writers (him included) had the lunar landing taking place in the '70s at the earliest, all th way to the '90s or even later, figuring it would take some time to build all the necessary infrastructure. The Apollo program caught all of them by surprise. It sure saved a lot of time, but it wasn't sustainable in the long run.

Oh, the Soviet equivalent to the Saturn V was the N-1, which was to have been their moon rocket. There were three launch attempts, all failures. After the last one, the Soviets quietly abandoned the moon race and shifted to developing orbital space stations. The first ones were relatively crude and simple, but they eventually ended up with Mir.

[–] [email protected] 11 years ago

And I was wondering, is this the way it had to be done?

Given the time constraints it was the best available option. The others would have required either a much larger launcher or multiple launches with assembly in earth orbit.

Surely they would have come up with a plan as to how to do it. I really wonder how they decided they were going to land a man on the Moon. Was the way NASA did it really the best technique to use?

The Soviet approach was similar to the NASA approach and for similar reasons. There were detail differences.

What about what happened in this film, "Destination Moon"? Could that have possibly worked? Just, build a huge rocket with big fins, blast off towards the Moon, turn around before landing, and land the whole thing on the Moon?

That can be made to work but it requires an advanced-design nuclear rocket beyond the capabilities of 1960s technology. The spacecraft in the movie was depicted as being nuclear powered IIRC. Nuclear rocket research was dropped in the mid '60s and most of the people who worked on it are either ancient or dead, so if we wanted to do that today we'd be pretty much starting over.

Note by the way that von Braun and company originally planned to construct a multipurpose space station with spin for gravity simulation, and use that as a base to support construction in orbit of the spacecraft that would go to the Moon. That proved to be economically unfeasible at the time and would not have had the slightest chance of making Kennedy's "by the end of this decade" objective.

[–] dodgercodger 9 years ago

Three years plus after the original post -- but something I hope helps. For an excellent history of the Soviet space program of the 50s-70s, I suggest James Oberg's Red Star in Orbit (ISBN 978-0-394-51429-1). Yes, they had planned on a single Cosmonaut trip to the moon, aiming for a late 1968 launch. However, the death of the "Chief Designer" Sergey Korolyov in 1966 along with the tragic loss of Vladimir Komorov in Soyuz 1 in April 1967 doomed the plan. Once it was obvious the Americans would meet Kennedy's 'decade' goal, the Soviets 'officially' denied any desire to send men to the moon.

Many of the space spectaculars of the 50s and 60s were politically motivated (on both sides of the Iron Curtain). It really was a (non-PG13 euphemism deleted) contest between Kennedy and Khrushchev.