Abstract
From 1961 to about 1965 the Soviet Union seemed to be ahead of the United States when it came to human spaceflight. Yuri Gagarin established this when he became the first man to orbit Earth (April 1961) followed by the first human to stay in space for 24 hours (August 1961), the first mission involving two spacecraft and two humans (August 1962), the first woman in space and the first 5-day mission (June 1963), the first three-man crew in space (October 1964) and the first spacewalk (March 1965).
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- 1.
Dual use = of interest for both military and civilian use
- 2.
Note that camera film had to be processed chemically in order to see the images until the emergence of digital cameras in the 1970s that produce images that could be sent by radio link to ground and which didn’t “run out of” film. Russia continued to use “wet film” cameras that have to be returned to Earth to be processed well into the 21st century, when most other countries had already switched to digital technology.
- 3.
Both Chelomey’s design and that of Yangel and Glushko used unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine as the fuel. Chelomey used nitrogen tetroxide as the oxidizer, while that of Yangel/Glushko used a nitric acid/nitrogen tetroxide mix. All of these chemicals are toxic and corrosive.
- 4.
The Soviets publicly stated that Gagarin and Titov stayed in their capsules all the way to the ground so that they could unambiguously claim the first launch of a human from Earth into space and his safe return to Earth.
- 5.
Ten times the weight of gravity – a 150-lb man feels as if he weighs 1,500 lbs (\( \raisebox{1ex}{$2$}\!\left/ \!\raisebox{-1ex}{$3$}\right. \) of a ton).
- 6.
There are at least three different weights that are pronounced “ton.” For brevity, we use the word “ton” to signify a weight of 1,000 kilograms (about 2,205 lbs) instead of “tonne” or “metric ton”. Note that in the United States and Canada, “ton” usually means 2,000 pounds, while in the rest of the world it usually means 2,240 pounds.
- 7.
At that time the Aral Sea was the third or fourth largest lake in the world (Lake Victoria in Africa was about the same size); now it is less than a tenth that size due to the rivers that feed it being diverted for irrigation.
- 8.
The fuel was unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and the oxidizer was nitrogen tetroxide, both very poisonous to humans.
- 9.
Three months before the more famous Apollo 8 photos.
- 10.
The previous intention had been for Apollo 8 to be another Earth orbiting mission, with the main mission of checking out the Apollo Lunar Module in space, to be followed in about March 1969 with Apollo 9 heading to the Moon.
- 11.
Apollo 8 was launched on December 21, 1968, and returned to Earth on December 27.
- 12.
There were four attempts to send a probe to the vicinity of the Moon in 1958, all failing because of launcher problems. There were four more launches in 1959 with three reaching the Moon – in January Luna 1 flew past at a distance of 6,000 km, Luna 2 impacted the Moon as planned in September, Luna 3 took photos of the far-side of the Moon in October and the fourth experienced a launcher second stage failure (June)
- 13.
Four failed to reach orbit, two failed to get from Earth orbit out towards the Moon, two missed the Moon and three crashed into the Moon’s surface.
- 14.
The intermediate Luna missions 10, 11 and 12 were placed in orbit around the Moon to photograph its surface and measure its gravitational field and other physical parameters. Luna 10 was another Soviet “space first” – becoming the first artificial satellite of the Moon on April 3, 1966. America’s Lunar Orbiter 1 became the second artificial moon of the Moon on August 13th and the first probe to photograph the Moon from orbit – Luna 11 was the first Soviet probe to photograph the Moon while in orbit around it arriving there just 2 weeks after Lunar Orbiter 1. There were five U. S. lunar orbiter spacecraft in total photographing the surface to help locate suitable landing sites for the Apollo missions to come.
- 15.
The first U. S. soft landing on the Moon was Surveyor 1 in June 1966, four months after Luna 9. Between then and January 1968 there were four more successful Surveyor soft landers and two failed ones.
- 16.
Even if Luna 15’s mission had gone exactly to plan it would have returned to Earth two hours after Apollo 11 splashed down.
- 17.
The right-hand edge of the Moon as seen from northern latitudes on Earth; the left-hand edge from southern latitudes; the top as seen from the equator.
- 18.
Officially called Mare Imbrium, this is the largest dark area on the front side of the Moon and perceived (at least in northerly latitudes) as the left hand eye of the Man in the Moon.
- 19.
11 kilograms of Polonium 210.
- 20.
Each team was comprised of a commander, driver, navigator, engineer and radio operator. Crimea is now under Russian control, although still claimed by Ukraine.
- 21.
About two and a half seconds for the radio signals to travel to and from the Moon plus delays in the control panel executing the lever movements of the “drivers.”
- 22.
On the edge of Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity), the right hand eye of the Man in the Moon for those in northerly latitudes, and about 110 miles (180 km) north of the Apollo 17 landing site.
- 23.
Its official name is Le Monnier crater.
- 24.
Apollo cost nearly $3 billion in 1966-67; N1-L3 $1.5 billion in 1967-68 (using an exchange rate of $3 = 1 rouble).
- 25.
LK details mainly from Siddiqi ([1], pp 488-493) and [3] 735-736. Further technical and historical details plus excellent interior photos can be found at http://www.astronautix.com/l/lk.html. Accessed 9 Oct 2018.
- 26.
The nuclear fuel source (Polonium-210) inside the lunar rover wasn’t found among the debris. The rumor is that soldiers “rescued” it and used it to heat their barracks throughout the winter.
References
Siddiqi, A., Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, University Press of Florida, 2003.
Norris, P., Spies in the Sky, Springer Praxis (Chichester, UK), 2007.
Siddiqi, A., The Soviet Space Race with Apollo, University Press of Florida, 2003.
Harvey, B., Zakutnyaya, O., Russian Space Probes, Springer Praxis (Chichester, UK), 2011.
Siddiqi, A., Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration 1958-2016, NASA SP-2018-4041, Sep. 2018.
Available at https://fas.org/irp/cia/product/sovmm69.pdf accessed October 9, 2018.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft.html accessed October 9, 2018.
Lardier, C., L’Astronautique Soviétique, Armand Colin (Paris, France), 1992 (in French).
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Norris, P. (2019). The Other Competitor in the Race. In: Returning People to the Moon After Apollo. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14915-4_8
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