The Russians never duplicated Apollo 8

originally posted by: Saint Exupery
a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

Because duplicating your rivals achievements just shows everyone that you are trailing behind them.

If you consider the propaganda value of sending a woman around lunar orbit in the 60's 70's or 80's or even the 90's... well, the price tag is the least consideration. The Soviets, and the Americans, know the value of space propaganda. The Russians stopped going at 475km 50 YEARS AGO.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

I know what the question is. Why do you think they didn't?

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter

originally posted by: choos
at what point were the russians able to prove their missions would have a survivable re-entry acceleration??

They don't need to. Example: Komarov. A hero of Russian space exploration. Komarov was willing to die for it.

he was killed when the Soyuz 1 space capsule crashed after re-entry on April 24, 1967 due to a parachute failure.[1] However, because he died when the capsule crashed into ground, he is not considered the first human fatality in outer space. Source Wiki

en.wikipedia.org...

thats evaluating risk..

from earth orbit a survivable re-entry had been performed many times, from lunar orbit not one survivable re-entry had been yet demonstrated all the way to zond-5..

whats the demonstrated g level during re-entry from earth orbit?? whats the demonstrated g levels during re-entry for lunar missions upto zond-5??

originally posted by: JimOberg

Sayonara, listen to wildspace and others giving you sound advice.

The Gemini-10 and 11 higher altitudes were possible only using Agena boost stages, which were not part of the Apollo mission architecture. That's the reason the Soviets never duplicated them.

Thanks for the free advice Jim! Are you a Soviet space history expert? What else can you tell us to help us learn about the space race?

The Russians stopped going up into space at 475km that was 50 YEARS AGO.

Don't deny the truth, seek it.

originally posted by: mrwiffler
a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

I know what the question is. Why do you think they didn't?

I don't know how to answer it exactly. But it appears that the Russians have been accumulating human spaceflight data in LEO for 50 years and they have not ever exceeded a 475km maximum altitude.

I interpret this to mean that the Russians are exceedingly cautious and absolutely diligent in the accumulation of science data related to human biology in low earth orbit from 1965-2014.

It only takes 3 days to get to the moon and 3 days to get back. What is the goddamn difference if a Soviet woman goes to lunar orbit in 1980 or 1985? Would Ronald Reagan accept a Soviet accomplishment like that without responding to it??

The Soviets sent turtles in September 1968 (3 months before Apollo 8) yet they never sent a man or a woman to the moon. The truth is in this thread. All readers are welcome to review the historical facts. All readers are entitled to their opinions. This is ATS where we DENY the IGNORANCE

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter

originally posted by: JimOberg

Sayonara, listen to wildspace and others giving you sound advice.

The Gemini-10 and 11 higher altitudes were possible only using Agena boost stages, which were not part of the Apollo mission architecture. That's the reason the Soviets never duplicated them.

Thanks for the free advice Jim! Are you a Soviet space history expert? What else can you tell us to help us learn about the space race?

Oh I may just pull up a chair and get some popcorn in for this one...

originally posted by: onebigmonkey

Oh I may just pull up a chair and get some popcorn in for this one...

Oh yeah? What movie are you watching? 2001 or Marooned?

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter

originally posted by: JimOberg

Sayonara, listen to wildspace and others giving you sound advice.

The Gemini-10 and 11 higher altitudes were possible only using Agena boost stages, which were not part of the Apollo mission architecture. That's the reason the Soviets never duplicated them.

Thanks for the free advice Jim! Are you a Soviet space history expert?

I think he would qualify as an expert, yes.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
Thanks for the free advice Jim! Are you a Soviet space history expert?

YES.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
What else can you tell us to help us learn about the space race?

Find out for yourself:

Red Star in Orbit by James E Oberg
Uncovering Soviet Disasters: Exploring the Limits of Glasnost by James E Oberg
Star-Crossed Orbits: Inside the U.S.-Russian Space Alliance by James E Oberg
Space Probes: 50 Years of Exploration from Luna 1 to New Horizons by Philippe Seguela and James Oberg

To name a few of his titles. He's also been written about:

"James Oberg was one of the main advocates of the then-controversial view that the Soviets had been in the race to the Moon, and used his new position as an associate editor of the US magazine Space World to pen several lengthy articles on the subject. These were later refined into the essay 'Russia Meant to Win the Space Race', which went on to win the National Space Club's prestigious Robert Goddard Space History Award..."
Cold War Space Sleuths: The Untold Secrets of the Soviet Space Program by Dominic Phelan

He has also been featured in several documentaries, including the three-part series that took its name from his first book:
Red Star in Orbit - The Invisible Spaceman
Red Star in Orbit - The Dark Side of the Moon
Red Star in Orbit - The Mission

If he gives you advice, listen to it.

a reply to: Saint Exupery

If he gives you advice, listen to it.

Technically, Jim Oberg did not me give any advice. He said listen to others "sound advice". We don't know what Oberg's advice would be - because he didn't offer any.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: Saint Exupery

If he gives you advice, listen to it.

Technically, Jim Oberg did not me give any advice. He said listen to others "sound advice". We don't know what Oberg's advice would be - because he didn't offer any.

Technically the advice he gave you was to listen to what others had already said.

The popcorn is salted and the film is "Idiocracy".

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: Saint Exupery

If he gives you advice, listen to it.

Technically, Jim Oberg did not me give any advice. He said listen to others "sound advice". We don't know what Oberg's advice would be - because he didn't offer any.

Then why did you say,

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
Thanks for the free advice Jim!

?

"Technically", I didn't say he did give you advice.

russia didn't have one of the most important pieces of technology to get you to and from the moon

How do you fly to the moon with 1960s technology? Just aim and fire the rockets? Nope. You need a sophisticated navigation computer, and in 1963, when NASA got serious about going to the moon, such devices filled entire rooms.

But the agency was undaunted, and forged a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Instrumentation Laboratory to design the Apollo guidance computer. The result was the first integrated-circuit digital flight computer ever made. The Apollo astronauts used the computers to fly from the Earth to the moon and back nine times, with six successful landings.

The computer could navigate from the Earth to the moon, from lunar orbit to the surface, then back to lunar rendezvous and a return to Earth … all on 2 kilobytes of RAM and 36 kilobytes of programming running at one megahertz. It was far less intelligent than a modern washing machine, but so very much more capable, and was the underpinning of today's compact digital computers.

see #5 here
www.livescience.com...

that was the innovation semiconductor computers. size and weight

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
Here was one of my questions, as stated in the OP:

"Why didn't the Soviets, after Apollo-Soyuz, proceed to the next step, which would be, to duplicate Apollo 8?"

[...]

Why didn't the Soviets, after Zond 5, proceed to the next step, which would be, to duplicate Apollo 8?
Why didn't the Soviets, after Intercosmos, proceed to the next step, which would be, to duplicate Apollo 8?
Why didn't the Soviets, after BION, proceed to the next step, which would be, to duplicate Apollo 8?

I'd like to see your reasons for why duplicating Apollo 8 would be the next logical step after any of those missions.

And you still haven't answered my question - what would be the purpose of getting humans progressively higher and higher above Earth? Even the Americans didn't do it; after getting to 1370 km with Gemini 11, they went straight to the Moon. Getting to, say 3000 or 4000 km serves no practical purpose, or even much propaganda purpose after Apollo 11.

My main advice in dealing with Russian space stuff is to keep re-evaluating what you think you know, because their information release has always been partial, and on occasion crafted to deceive. That's what sayonara is doing, and that's the way to approach the subject.

The second foundation of useful reevaluation is familiarity with spaceflight fundamentals. Sayonare is familiar with the historical facts, a significant accomplishment. To enhance his utility, some more spaceflight 'theory and practice' is needed. But he's getting the help, and it's well invested, because there's only a handful of free-lance Russian spacewatchers out there and new ideas are always needed.

From what I've seen, here are a few comments:

There was little interest in Russia in flying other women after Tereshkova, they had made their propaganda splash and misled the impressionable about equality of Soviet women -- they didn't need to actually live up to that phony image. They only resumed women's flights to twice upstage American women on shuttle missions.

Going for altitude records is airplane-think, not spaceship-think. No manned earth orbit mission has ever carried sufficient fuel to get much higher than the operational limits, payload capability is used for more important cargo. Only the bonus delta-V from the Agena stages made the GT-10 and 11 pop-ups possible, and that was more by accident than design. Gemini-11 also opportunistically did tethered dynamics tests, simply because the Agena happened to be there for other reasons. Ditto the double Agena rendezvous on Gemini-10.

The records the Russians valued, correctly, were mission duration, not miles high. Ditto the US side. Not one NASA worker in ten could tell you which Apollo mission holds that altitude record, it is meaningless in operational terms.

The absence of higher-altitude Soviet/Russian manned flights was never a source of puzzlement to historians, up to now, but as I said, we're open to suggestions we overlooked something, because we know we have in the past.

Popcorn time all around.

Just out of curiosity, what was the reason for Gemini 11 high altitude boost using Agena? Sources simply say that "after two orbits the Agena was fired again for 22.5 seconds to lower the Gemini-Agena back down to a 287 x 304 km orbit." Was it for some tests, or just to achieve a record? Or was it to test the ability to boost manned spacecraft to high altitude for trans-lunar injection?

I had never heard of this record before, which probably shows that such altitude records in space don't have that massive propaganda effect as SJ wants us to believe.

a reply to: wildespace

The record itself was well commented on at the time, but from what I've just been researching the exact reasons for it are probably a mixture of Conrad spotting an opportunity for a bit of bragging rights and scientists spotting a chance to get some useful data (while they were up there they did do some photography experiments) and to rehearse some procedures.

The idea of going to the moon using a Gemini wasn't Conrad's - it had been kicking around for a while as a possible means of getting there and he liked the sound of it. The first link below has some interesting info on the idea, which basically modified the existing Gemini kit and stuck it on a Saturn.

The Gemini XI press kit and mission transcript describe the procedures and give the numbers, but nowhere do they say specifically why they are doing it.

amyshirateitel.com...

history.nasa.gov...

www.ibiblio.org...

www.jsc.nasa.gov...

a reply to: onebigmonkey

Good stuff, humongous primate. Thanks for the memory lane pilgrimage.

Another recollection: Gemini-11 and 12 were the last manned spaceflights shown on newsreels in theatres on the big screen, which was awesome, especially the EVA sequences. With TV news catching on, the theatrical newsreels just sort of petered out at the end of 1966, and it wasn't until IMAX showed up a few decades later that people could again visually experience the vastness of space. I've often wondered if that contributed to the loss of public interest over the next several years.

originally posted by: JimOberg

Going for altitude records is airplane-think, not spaceship-think.

No manned earth orbit mission has ever carried sufficient fuel to get much higher than the operational limits, payload capability is used for more important cargo. Only the bonus delta-V from the Agena stages made the GT-10 and 11 pop-ups possible, and that was more by accident than design. Gemini-11 also opportunistically did tethered dynamics tests, simply because the Agena happened to be there for other reasons. Ditto the double Agena rendezvous on Gemini-10.

The records the Russians valued, correctly, were mission duration, not miles high. Ditto the US side. Not one NASA worker in ten could tell you which Apollo mission holds that altitude record, it is meaningless in operational terms.

I'd like to point out that Gemini astronauts were not airplane-thinking military pilots - they were test pilots. The glory of all test pilots is to fly higher and faster than any of the rest. Making "firsts" and "world records" was important to them. I found this quote from Lt. Col. "Shorty" Powers which conveys his attitude about the test pilots. It seems to be the prevailing attitude in the western media that space records, world records, altitude, duration, etc helped to hype up the space race to the general public.

In the Gemini 11 the Agena "boost" they made the decision to do it, so it must have been meaningful, not meaningless. How can you say part of the Gemini 11 mission be considered meaningless in operational terms?? I don't get you on the point.



"It's not a matter of them wanting to be heroes, but an aviator wants to fly farther and faster than anyone else." - Lt. Col. "Shorty" Powers

Breaking new space records was very important to the USA and the Soviets in the 1960's. The western media at the time boasted no less than 10 new records were made by Gemini 11. 10 new records!! Obviously it was important to make new records. It sells newspapers and everybody gets hyped up for the homeland. It is propaganda*, the Americans were not one iota different from the Russians.

* I have studied the philosophy of propaganda from George Orwell to Jacques Ellul. I know how the process works. Yuri Gagarin is the quintessential example of how propaganda works. It can be subtle or it can be over the top, unbelievable. Another perfect example is the Christmas Eve Bible reading from Apollo 8.

The Russian did not give up on space propaganda (see Salyut, Intercosmos, Mir) but they did IN FACT stop going up in space way back in 1965. Something smells here, Jim. And it smells like burned pop corn.