Russian spacecraft landed on moon hours before Americans

Very good question.

Perhaps jkrog could take that topic to a new thread.

[edit on Sun Jul 5 2009 by Jbird]

Like others have said, if the Russians needed their N1 launch vehicle to work before getting people to the Moon -- and ever they got the N1 working, they would have proudly told the whole world (and they didn't).

People seem to be missing the interesting real story here of the first-hand history Sir Bernard and his experienced while listening in to the Russian and American space programs at Jodrell bank. It must have been very interesting for them to have that front-row seat in listening to the history being made by the Americans and the Russians.

If the Luna 15 was manned, the people at Jodrell Bank would have noticed from the radio chatter.

As I said in another post, I'm sure their are things about the Russian space program that we don't know about, including the deaths of Cosmonauts of which the world has yet to be informed. Nobody here is denying that. We are only saying that Luna 15 -- the subject of this thread -- was unmanned.

I'm a little confused about the headline in the first article posted by the OP:

www.telegraph .co.uk

The headline reads:
"Russian spacecraft landed on moon hours before Americans"
but the narrative of the article says that Luna 15 crashed after Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon -- the moon walk was on July 20th (actually 02:56 UTC on July 21st), and Luna 15 crashed at 15:50 UTC on July 21st.

So the Russian craft crash landed about 13 hours after Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon. The article itself has it right, but the article's headline is misleading.

[edit on 7/5/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

The odd thing about the soviet/us "race to the moon" is that there never was one.
Our(us) information about the soviet space program was so sketchy in those days that we though the soviet pogram was much farther along than it was.
Even though the soviets had built a lander, and made modifications to a soyuz to get the two to the moon, they never had a viable launch vehicle.
The july 3rd 1969 test of the N1, was just that, an unmanned test, and it failed.
In fact each of the four launches of an N1 vehicle ended in failure, most in the first minutes of flight, the longest flight of an N1 reach an altitude of about 150,000' , before going out of control.
The 1969 attempt didnt even make it off of the launch pad before blowing up.

In the years immediately after the break up of the USSR, there was an amazing openness between russia and the us. Military and scientific advisors from both countries were given acess to formerly classified military and scientific equipment and programs.
A documentary on PBS followed a group of US airforce personel as they were given a tour of russian bases and getting to look at current russian aircraft. But thats for a thread all in and of itself.
Any way, on an off day, the russian host told them he had something very interesting to show them. You could tell the officers though they were
going to be shown some sort of experimental aircraft, but they had no idea what.
The guy took them to a wharehouse and among the crates and stuff was the soviet lander the LK.
The US airforce officers were stunned, at that point its actual existance was still a rumor out side of russia.
I was amazed at how similar the us and soviet vehicles were, although the soviet hehicle was much small they look very much alike.
A testament to function driven engineering.

The N1 had 30 engines -- thirty! It must have been a huge engineering nightmare to get all of the plumbing to each engine working properly.

Here is a link with a picture of the first stage of the N1 and its 30 engines (you need to scroll down a little to see the picture). This article also chronicles some aspects of the 'race' to the moon:
www.aerospaceweb.org...


[edit on 7/6/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

---

The complexity of the N1 was its downfall.
Imagine the complexity of the plumbing alone for those 30 engines.

Since the launch facility was land locked it was only served by rail.
The N1 vehicle was so large that it had to be pre assembled then dissaembled for shipping to the launch complex, then re-assembled at the launch site.
The 1969 failure was attributed to a fuel pump ingesting a loose bolt.

The Soviets tried for a manned circumlunar mission carrying one
cosmonaut for round the moon flight to beat the US.

en.wikipedia.org...

Called ZOND (Probe) consisted of modified Soyuz capsule - using only
2 of the 3 modules, the re-entry module containing the heat shield and
parachutes, the service module with the solar panels, batteries and maneuvering engines/thrusters. Deleted was the orbital module where
crew would live/work while in space.

The Zond used a "double dip" re-entry maneuver to reduce heat and
aerodynamic stress on the system.

The capsule would begin re-entry over the south pole and skip back 400
miles into space where it then do a normal re-entry as gravity pulled it back.

Boosted by D class (Proton) booster could fly Figure 8 trajectory around
moon and back to earth.

en.wikipedia.org...(rocket)

The idea was to beat the US to the moon and score a propoganda victory

Numerous Zond missions were lauched through 1967-69, experiencing many failures with the rocket booster. Other mission which successfully
made the moon journey only to experience failure on re-entry or in
other systems - failure which would have killed any human passenger.

The Apollo 8 mission was result of the Zond missions - NASA and US government officials were concerned that the Soviets pull off another
propoganda mission upstaging Apollo. In Mid 1968 US had Saturn V
launch booster ready, sucess of Apollo 7 (Sept 1968) had proved out
hardware. Lunar Module redesign was still lagging - NASA said what the
hell, just take shot at moon to prevent Soviets from upstaging us.

Proton rocket
en.wikipedia.org...
payload: 22 tonnes

N1 rocket
Failed all 4 test flights
5 stages
44 engines
en.wikipedia.org...
payload: 74 tonnes


Saturn V
3 stages
11 engines
en.wikipedia.org...
payload: 118 tonnes

Cool montage of all Saturn V flights




[edit on 22-7-2009 by conar]