Why didn't the Soviet Union land a man on the moon?

Early in the US space program, the US was lagging severely and the USSR was far ahead.

After a number of failures, the US let the "nazi" side (Wehner von Braun and his team) give it a shot, and the rockets worked.

The important issue is that von Braun and his team were already planning out the engineering of the Saturn V back in 1960 or 1961, even as they were planning all their predecessors.

It certainly takes at least 7-8 years to put together something like that.

The key man in the Soviet rocket program Koloryev died in 1966.

Overall, the 1960's were the height of US technological and economic superiority. The US had the institutional competence that has been lost.

Today; the functioning of the US government and political class is far more dysfunctional in technical and most social matters. It is stuck on sterile ideological debates, far more like the USSR. (witness energy and climate)

Already, it will take twice as long to resurrect the Ares (NASA is literally digging up Apollo plans and computations from dusty archives) to replicate somethign which was once new and done right the first time.

There is enough material not to make the subject too mysterious and open for "alternative speculations."

www.astronautix.com...

Surely, you're all missing an important point. If we're going to talk about pride, Russia would have had a HUGE amount to gain from going to the moon and proving that the US never did - more valuable than the loss they'd suffer by only being in second place.

So this tells me 1 of two things:
- Russia haven't, because they aren't able to - which suggests that the U.S. is and was equally incapable of the mission.
- Russia know, beyond any doubt, that the U.S. DID land on the moon and that there's nothing to be gained by them following suit.

Either way, I think we can draw some useful speculation from Russia's lack of moon-visit.

In Soviet Russia Moon lands on you.

They didn't go as far as we know

Perhaps they got inside knowledge from all of their data on UFOs and ETs and simply asked their recovered alien folk what's up there.

Originally posted by Rabmal
Every documentary you watch on the Apollo missions, they use the phrase "the race for the moon". When the USA started the mission to reach the moon we were well behind the Soviets in the "race for the moon". As history played out the USA was the first country to reach the moon, but this begs a question.

Why did the Soviets not land a man on the moon as well even if it would have been second? Not in the 60's, not in the 70's and not in the 80's. I know they landed a rover on the moon but not a man.

One would imagine that if the Soviets had been the first to place a man on the moon we would not have stopped trying to get there and certainly still would have put our own man on the moon.

You would think that the Soviets would want to know first hand what it is like there and also check out if we put anything there as well. (Especially, considering the paranoia we had for each other at the time.) I understand they may be able to do this remotely, but you would think they would want to put "boots on the ground" as well.

This would be akin to the Spanish coming to the New World and the English deciding to just stay home and listen to stories about it.

In the 30 years past you would have thought that some country would have wanted to land a man on the moon for themselves. I would be interested in hearing anyone's insight on this.

I would have thought that this is quiet obvious, it could only be one of two reasons.

1) There's absolutely nothing on the moon worth anything to anyone, it's simply a waste of money. Only benefit would be that your country gets to claim it landed on the moon and hence the prestige of it.

2) The moon is either inhabited, used as a stopover, or is actually not a planet at all but rather some sort of purposefully terra-formed hollow device made and used by someone other than us, for God only knows what purpose. Hence why the first who landed realised they were practically tresspassing.

1 seems to be more logical and occams razor-esque, but we cant rule 2 out as ludicrous, I have a feeling in the near future we're about to find out just how normal some of our most far-fetched ideas about things are, and then some!

J

They didn't have the infrastructure for the long haul. The Soviet space program was state sponsored. There was no competition. Meanwhile, the US space program employed both the public and private sector. The competition for NASA contracts forced contractors to develop higher quality products, thereby continuosly improving the technology and making it more durable. Communism hurt the Soviet space program in the long run. It wasn't flexible enough to allow for the continuous technological progression and durability needed to put a man on the moon. They have a better chance at doing it today than they did back in the 60s and 70s.


But that's just my opinion.

ok i must ask this..how can any of you say that after the US made it thay knew there was no signifigance to go there when as it was stated,the moon is a lage place, with that said..if infact the US even did land a man there thay spent how much time there? that seen what like 10% of it maybe? surely there could be so much more to it just over the next rock! in my oppinion though we never actualy got on the moon with man but stadged that to make ourselfs look better than thay were,more advanced! and the russians eventualy learned that there are many more complications to the entire thing.

Why didn't the Russians complete a manned moon shot? In a word(s).....capitalism, freedom, education and democracy.

I could explain further, but if one doesn't understand without further explanation I fear my logic would not be understood.

reply to post by mbkennel


The USSR only needed this race for technology for creating the most devastating earth crushing nuclear weapons in the world. Modern times proves that they will be the one true power of world domination. Bombardments of hell fire will rain down on the top of the puppet show in Washington.

And what chance does NASA have when the USSR relinquishes its armada of juggernauts and takes back this planet? That's right. Wave bye bye mouse because the hammer and sickle are the true might of the people. They are not the deceivers. The evil doers in this world with their lies and phoney baloney.


Nuclear Deflection Shield Technology will never stop Plasma Infusion. Too bad for China they were once a great country.




Next time we keep the monkey and send George Bush to the moon.

Originally posted by IgnoreTheFacts
Why didn't the Russians complete a manned moon shot? In a word(s).....capitalism, freedom, education and democracy.

I could explain further, but if one doesn't understand without further explanation I fear my logic would not be understood.

This is a very good point. The fact that in Soviet Russia, it wasn't good enough to just be a great engineer and scientist, one also had to be "vetted" by the Party leaders, went a long way to completing their failure in the Moon Race. When the best minds you have are holed up in a gulag after "falling out of favor" your chances of success quickly dwindle.

As for capitalism, well, that has consequences as well--now that the US is becoming a fascist state where the corporations run the government, innovation is just as stifled as it was under the Soviet regime.

Does anyone really believe the Ares program is that far behind because we just can't figure out the tech? I mean, come on, people--Burt Rutan created what is essentially a miniature Space Shuttle on a shoestring budget. The most complicated equipment in the Apollo program was the computers, and most Americans' cell phones are more sophisticated than the computers that took us to the Moon.

You're honestly telling me that NASA, with billions of dollars at their command, can't do what small private groups are doing now? That they can't do so even though they did it before with a lower technology base? You don't "lose" that knowledge. It's not hard to look at what you did before and take it a step further.

I contend that the real reason for NASA's delays with the new projects have little to do with an understanding of the technology, and everything to do with corporate graft and too many "favors" owed both ways in the procurement process. Same thing with military procurement--during WWII we could design a new fighter and have it flying over the front line in less than a year using slide rules and elbow grease. The F-22 Raptor went through a design and testing process so long the war it was meant to fight will never come, and its "air superiority" role effectively no longer exists. Why? Again, I say chicanery in the procurement process.

Soviet Russia, during the Moon Race, had the same problem in reverse.

Of course having better Nazi war criminals around to work out the bugs helped a lot too.

USSR's vision for their space program was centered around exploration, rather than colonization. They had huge plans (that were copied by the NASA) to launch tons of space probes everywhere in the solar system and the neighboring solar systems as well. THey might have realized before the Americans that it was less problems to pursue such projects, more cost-effective, while it allowed them to gather a vast and deeper knowledge of deep space, rather than spending billions and years of hard work for vacant, boring planets such as the Moon and Mars (if they are really vacant, of course

Originally posted by Cythraul
Surely, you're all missing an important point. If we're going to talk about pride, Russia would have had a HUGE amount to gain from going to the moon and proving that the US never did - more valuable than the loss they'd suffer by only being in second place.

this was something I thought about. It doesnt really add anything as far as an answer for the OP, but his post did get me thinking about it:

IF - if, we did fake the moon landing, as many on ATS seem to believe (and I am NOT a fake landing conspiracy believer), then isn't it likely that after all these years and the cold war over, that the then-soviet spies and others would have been able to uncover this secret? And if so, surely it would have been leaked to discredit the USA...

so, thats another reason, and IMO, a damn good one, to close the book on the fake moon landing conspiracy.

Originally posted by IgnoreTheFacts
Why didn't the Russians complete a manned moon shot? In a word(s).....capitalism, freedom, education and democracy.

I totally agree. One only needs to look as far as Soyuz 1 to see the difference between freedom and communism. Practically nothing worked on the vehicle, forcing an early abort of both that mission and the Soyuz 2 mission that was supposed to rendezvous with it. It's rumored that he said goodbye to his wife before reentry and that flight controllers told him he'd be buried at red square as a high honor. He had practically no control left on reentry, yet managed to keep his spacecraft in one piece till impact - the parachute didn't open due to a faulty pressure sensor that no one bothered to check at manufacture and his attempt to manually deploy the reserve failed when it became entangled in the drogue chute which had failed to release. The final retrothruster firing failed to occur and he died when his spacecraft slammed into the ground at 40 meters/sec, having done everything humanly possible to save his own life. Had any of the systems in the final seconds of his flight actually worked the way they were supposed to he might have had a chance to survive. Later inspections revealed the same flaws were present in the Soyuz 2 parachute system. Had they attempted a rescue both crews would have perished due to poor manufacture.

The N1 rocket that was supposed to take the soviets to the moon was a spectacular failure. It never completed a single launch test successfully. Getting all 30 of its 1st stage engines to work simulatenously without fault proved impossible. Something always went wrong with at least one of the engines, destroying the vehicle. By comparison, the Saturn series of rockets never suffered any catastrophic flight failures.

National pride and even pride in one's own work will only get you so far. Pride in any form is useful to a certain degree, but it's not enough of a foundation for society. If your workers are not motivated by a free market system that rewards hard work and promises a better life to those who succeed, then they will not work hard to produce a quality product; they get their government handouts regardless of how hard they work. Humans are not robots, we need competition to motivate us to work hard.

[edit on 9-7-2008 by ngchunter]

Originally posted by The Nighthawk


As for capitalism, well, that has consequences as well--now that the US is becoming a fascist state where the corporations run the government, innovation is just as stifled as it was under the Soviet regime.

Actually I feel innovation is only stifled when it's hamstrung by government regulations. Some businesses may be promoting those regulations because it stifles competition, but the free market in itself is not the problem; in fact it's what some larger corporations with huge lobbies (the largest corporate lobby is actually GE, believe it or not) are hiding from.

Does anyone really believe the Ares program is that far behind because we just can't figure out the tech? I mean, come on, people--Burt Rutan created what is essentially a miniature Space Shuttle on a shoestring budget.

Actually spaceshipone is much closer to an X-15 than a space shuttle. The x-15 was another suborbital rocket powered winged vehicle that require a piggyback to a high altitude before launch and could reach the edge of space. NASA built the X-15 before we even had a single spaceflight under our belt (though it didn't reach the internationally agreed upon edge of space until 1963). Burt Rutan's accomplishment is incredible, but it is much more like the earliest days of NASA flight than it is modern orbital spaceflight. The reason the Ares program is taking so long has a lot more to do with the amount of funding than the tech. That said, I have little doubt that a private organization with the same resources could get it done better and faster. The sad fact of the matter is that there just isn't enough profit motive to go beyond earth orbit just yet.

The most complicated equipment in the Apollo program was the computers, and most Americans' cell phones are more sophisticated than the computers that took us to the Moon.

Most innovative perhaps, but without a doubt the most difficult, complicated part were the massive engines. There has never been as powerful a booster as the Saturn V, from a payload standpoint. The little launch escape rockets alone were more powerful than the redstone rocket that made Alan Shepard the first american in space. The powerful F-1 engine of the Saturn V took 7 years to perfect. The completed rocket contained 3 million parts. The apollo guidance computer, although it represented a leap in technology, can be recreated in your own basement by yourself if you have the skill:
klabs.org...

reply to post by Rabmal


Looking for untold soviet stories...well heres one for ya ...enjoy...www.abovetopsecret.com...


Good Day
Skept!cal

reply to post by Rabmal


The soviet union would of rather spent the money on more important things.
Aka the war machine.

The space budget was already well over spent by the time america landed on the moon (if they did). So why spend even more money on a wasted project?

NO GOOD REASON TO GO TO THE MOON?!

I'm surprised nobody has brought this up:

www.technologyreview.com...

There was also a special on the Scinence Channel not long ago. It was fascinating!

It was a historical race for the moon and the winners not only got the right to plant their flag on the lunar surface but also won the support of the terrestrial/interdimensional bretheren. Those that have inhabited Earth for eons and share it with humanity operate from higher dimensions most humans cannot detect. The United States has assumed control of the New World Order and has gained the highly classified backing from indigenous, supernatural beings. This heralded the collapse of the Sovet Union and the best hope for humanity now rests with the U.S. No other country in the world is allowed access to certain areas unless it is granted the right by the NWO. There was much more involved than meets the eye when it came to the race for the moon.

The simple answer to why the Russians did not continue with the space race is because they knew it could not be done at that time with the technology available. With the Americans losing the race to put a satelite or man into space the best they could come up with is hoax Moon landings to get one over on the Russians which exactly what they did.

Anyone saying the Americans got to the Moon is a liar. One thing and one thing alone put a stop to that and its called radiation. Even now most of the manned missions are in near Earth orbit well below the van allen belts. I have no doubts that the US tried to land men on the moon and their bones could be lying there as I write but the footage show was just a TV show and thats it.

By the laws of advancement if we could have landed men on the moon in the sixties by now we should have a thriving colony up there but we dont because there is no method to deal with the sterilizing radiation levels that any human would be exposed to.

The levels of radiation that any astronaut would have been exposed to in the van allen belts would have fried them in no time at all. The Moon landing is probaly the biggest lie ever fabricated in the history of mankind. Its a shame really because I would like to think we could leave Planet Earth to explore the universe but as yet we have not mastered the technology to do so.