The Russians never duplicated Apollo 8

a reply to: mrwiffler

Great job turning this thread into a anti-Jarrah White circle jerk. Good going buddy. It's your thread now....

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: mrwiffler

Great job turning this thread into a anti-Jarrah White circle jerk. Good going buddy. It's your thread now....

Er, you might want to check who was the first person to bring up JW in this thread. It wasn't him, it was pianopraze in this post.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

You dragged the poor fellow into this mess. I'm only commenting on the evidence you are presenting.

a reply to: Phage

Spot on, Americans kicked ass when it came to space. Russians were no where near creating something this advanced at this time.




But, that was 50yrs ago. We're still using the same technique. Whens someone going to find a way to do it without needing such large fuel!

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: mrwiffler

Great job turning this thread into a anti-Jarrah White circle jerk. Good going buddy. It's your thread now....

We can stop talking about Jarrah White now, and get back to your topic.

What can you say about the fact that no space agency has yet attempted an in-orbit assembly of a rocket/spacecraft destined for a beyond-orbit mission, even an unmanned one? Perhaps getting the whole thing from the ground is simpler, more reliable, and cheaper short-term?

As for the Russian attempts to get to the Moon, perhaps if Korolev lived on for another 10-20 years they would eventually get there. But he didn't.

"Sayonara, Logic":

A police state with a poorly-organized secret program that fails to achieve a goal is evidence that it cannot be done...

...but a free country with an open space program that succeeds is somehow not evidence that it can be done.

The moon race wasn't about orbiting the moon. It was about landing a person and bringing them back.

If you want to orbit the moon with a small payload (IE probe or a single person), your lift vehicle will not be that massive as you are not having to lift a very large mass into orbit.

However, the object was to get someone to the moon, land them, and get them back. That required a much larger amount of mass (a command ship, a lander of some sort, the men, the food, water, air and fuel). Having a much larger mass requires a much larger lift vehicle.

Even if you separate things, and put them together in orbit, each part of the entire payload masses a lot. You still need to lift the lander into orbit, then lift the command ship into orbit, and then lift the fuel that is going to be burned for creating a lunar intercept orbit. (so it would have been 3 launches).

The US and the USSR both decided to go with a single launch vehicle. Both had to design a massive rocket to lift that payload. Once a design had been worked out, both countries committed to their designs.

At that point, both sides knew it was all or nothing. Meaning that who ever got theirs built first, tested first, and successfully launched first would win that race.

The Soviet's N1 failed. The Saturn V worked. When Apollo 8 was launched, the writing was on the wall: the US was going to get humans to the moon and back first. The Soviets knew at that point that they had lost the race because their rocket kept blowing up and ours instead worked. They knew that there would be not enough time to redesign and make another heavy lift vehicle.

It could have been the other way around, and would have ended up being the same. The Saturn V could have kept blowing up and the N1 working......if that had been the case, it would have been a USSR flag sitting on the moon.

The Soviets still ended up "one upping" the US when it came to the moon though. Even though we landed the first people......they landed the first rover.

A rover does not need food, water or air. Nor did it need to come back safely. Instead it can stay on the moon and explore for as long as it keeps working.

30 finicky engines is just asking for trouble.
When I first heard of the SpaceX design the N1 came to mind.

Didn't the Soviets have a design where the astronaut rode down to the lunar surface exposed? No pressure hull around him.

and both of the shuttle failures were due to administration mistakes driven by politics. in the first case they knew the O rings were problems in cold weather but launched because a delay would "look bad." in the later one the administration decided to obey a EPA ban on the earlier protective coating for the external tank (rather than getting a waiver) and go with a "green" insulation. this later insulation was more brittle and prone to breaking off creating a debris hazard. it was a chunk of this "green" insulation that created the hole in the shuttle itself which allowed the shuttle be holed. while the shuttle was expensive and risky due to being so complex it was not a design flaw that brought her down ever.

originally posted by: AlphaHawk
a reply to: pheonix358

Well now your comparing apples with oranges.

The Russian N1 rocket had 4 launches and failed 4 times, this rocket was the equivalent to NASA's Saturn V.

The shuttle flew 135 missions with 2 failures, you want to compare fairly, then compare how many missions the Buran flew..if you don't know what the Buran is, it was the Russian equivalent to NASA's shuttle.

the space x rocket can still get to orbit or at least abort mode with multiple engine failures. i believe i read about that in various articles on the thing.

originally posted by: samkent
30 finicky engines is just asking for trouble.
When I first heard of the SpaceX design the N1 came to mind.

Didn't the Soviets have a design where the astronaut rode down to the lunar surface exposed? No pressure hull around him.

Surely they don't have to eject the water or very little. The back pack would work like a ground source heat pump in cooling mode. With no water in the atmosphere. No condensation

originally posted by: druid1
Surely they don't have to eject the water or very little. The back pack would work like a ground source heat pump in cooling mode. With no water in the atmosphere. No condensation

Are you talking about the cooling systems on the space suits, as mentioned in Jarrah's video (not that this is really relevant to Apollo 8)?

The PLSS backpack cools the suit by sublimation. The cooling water is frozen onto a porous plate and then sublimates, ie passes directly from the solid to the gaseous phase, which is of course invisible. You won't see any condensation because the water vapour does not condense! It stays in the gaseous phase and diffuses off into space.

The volume of cooling water required works out at approximately 600ml per hour at full design cooling rate, which is a little over an imperial pint. In other words, at most about 10ml (two teaspoons) of liquid water per minute is being lost as invisible water vapour.

That video claims that water should be visible, by comparing it to a dump of a large volume of liquid water from the capsule, which is nonsense. If you chuck liquid water out into space, some will instantly evaporate, cooling the rest into little particles of ice. That ice will then gradually sublimate. In the PLSS, the ice is contained on the sublimator plate, and no liquid water ever escapes.

(I did explain all this in the comments to that YouTube video, but of course it was deleted!)

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
The Russians sent turtles to outer space and back, but those are reptilian creatures with greater resistance to radiation than human flesh.

Uh, the first in orbit was a dog. Laika the Dog was the first to orbit. We used monkeys. Why didn't they go on to the moon? We beat them to it, simple as that. Did WE go, heck yeah, we HAD to go. It's very interesting to KNOW that one inch of water/most liquids will stop radiation from the Sun. You don't have to believe me, but it's science fact. The missions to the Moon were safe from MOST radiation, because of fuel tanks/coating/materials that prevented normal solar wind from killing the astronauts. They were more vulnerable ON the moon in their spacesuits than in the spacecraft.

originally posted by: GeekOfTheWeek

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
The Russians sent turtles to outer space and back, but those are reptilian creatures with greater resistance to radiation than human flesh.

Uh, the first in orbit was a dog. Laika the Dog was the first to orbit. We used monkeys.

Laika and the monkeys only went into earth orbit though. The turtles went all the way round the moon on Zond 5 (along with some worms and insects as well as plants and seeds), thus showing that crossing the Van Allen belts was survivable.

As you say, you don't need loads of shielding, unlike what the hoax crowd like to think.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Even if you separate things, and put them together in orbit, each part of the entire payload masses a lot. You still need to lift the lander into orbit, then lift the command ship into orbit, and then lift the fuel that is going to be burned for creating a lunar intercept orbit. (so it would have been 3 launches).

However one does not need the lunar landing module or a massive N1 booster;to duplicate the Apollo 8 one only needs a crew module and a booster stage for TLI. The Soviets had great success in launch systems, very reliable. They also built a space station which demonstrates the capability of launching humans and unmanned payloads into space... demonstrated ability automatic docking... they held the long durations in space etc.

The Russians also demonstrated the ability to send a payload of turtles to the moon, and back. They had everything they needed to duplicate Apollo 8... except for a human rated space capsule that could leave low earth orbit. Russians had every piece of the puzzle and yet they were puzzled by Apollo 8 for some reason. And the moon remains a puzzle to all of us, including the scientists. FULL MOON TONIGHT btw

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter
Have you any evidence that the Russians were "puzzled" by Apollo 8, other than that you think they ought to have been? They knew what the US was doing, and they planned to do it in 1968 to beat them to it, but the Zond (L1) concept wasn't up to the job.

Zond 5 may have carried turtles, but it pulled 20g on re-entry which would almost certainly have killed any human occupants.

Once Apollo 8 went successfully, Russia started to lose interest in the Zond missions (ie the L1 craft launched with the Proton rocket, which could only achieve flyby, not landing), and concentrated on the L3 craft, which was designed for landing. If they couldn't be first with men in lunar orbit, perhaps they could still beat the US to a landing?

However, the L3 needed the bigger N1 rockets to launch, and as we know Russia is 0 for 4 when it comes to the N1.

And the moon remains a puzzle to all of us, including the scientists.

Not that much of a puzzle. We have much better knowledge of the surface of the moon than we do of the sea bed here in Earth.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: eriktheawful

Even if you separate things, and put them together in orbit, each part of the entire payload masses a lot. You still need to lift the lander into orbit, then lift the command ship into orbit, and then lift the fuel that is going to be burned for creating a lunar intercept orbit. (so it would have been 3 launches).

They had everything they needed to duplicate Apollo 8... except for a human rated space capsule that could leave low earth orbit.

The ultimate goal was to land men on the Moon, not to just fly them around. And the Soviets didn't have a reliable rocket system for that. They didn't want to use Proton rockets for manned fly-arounds because they were very new and prone to accidents.

Rather than talking about history, you're deliberating things like "they could" or "what if", which is a moot point. What happened - happened, you can't rewrite history. You sound like, were you born in that period of time, you'd promptly take lead of the Soviet Moon program and do things your own way.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
a reply to: eriktheawful

Even if you separate things, and put them together in orbit, each part of the entire payload masses a lot. You still need to lift the lander into orbit, then lift the command ship into orbit, and then lift the fuel that is going to be burned for creating a lunar intercept orbit. (so it would have been 3 launches).

However one does not need the lunar landing module or a massive N1 booster;to duplicate the Apollo 8 one only needs a crew module and a booster stage for TLI. The Soviets had great success in launch systems, very reliable. They also built a space station which demonstrates the capability of launching humans and unmanned payloads into space... demonstrated ability automatic docking... they held the long durations in space etc.

The Russians also demonstrated the ability to send a payload of turtles to the moon, and back. They had everything they needed to duplicate Apollo 8... except for a human rated space capsule that could leave low earth orbit. Russians had every piece of the puzzle and yet they were puzzled by Apollo 8 for some reason. And the moon remains a puzzle to all of us, including the scientists. FULL MOON TONIGHT btw

Again: The goal was not to orbit the moon, it was to LAND and RETURN from the moon.

More than likely they could have gotten a single Soviet into a one person capsule to orbit the moon and get back. But that feat would have been over shadowed by who ever got there and landed first.

Both the USSR and the US knew that, and they knew that they would need a heavy lift vehicle to do that.

So that is what it boiled down to: whoever was able to build a successful heavy lift vehicle first, that worked, would be the first to get to the moon, land and return.

Even the Saturn V had some issues that had to be worked on during the Apollo program.

You've posted in my Kerbal Space Program Thread, and like I told you there: even messing with it, having a simulator with stuff that's already built, and I can just slap stuff together, I end up with a lot of launch failures, especially when I build heavy lift vehicles. Engines overheat, rockets fall apart under heavy thrust, etc.

Now think about how it works in reality: have to invent those rocket engines, build them, test them, etc. But even then: it can all fall apart on you, sometimes for just a simple or small reason.

When the Soviets realized that the N1 was not going to work, that they were going to have to come up with a different design, they knew that by the time they did that, got it built and tested: the US would be on the moon.

I think they should have continued to pursue it. But the Soviets were used to being the first in the space race: first satellite, first human in orbit, first to land and return lunar samples. They really wanted to be the first to land a human there too.

I've never seen any evidence that makes me take the moon landings being a hoax seriously.

However.......if you wanted to pursue theories (good ol conspiracy theories) on how the US sabotaged the Soviets........that........yah, that I would pay more attention too.

originally posted by: eriktheawful

However.......if you wanted to pursue theories (good ol conspiracy theories) on how the US sabotaged the Soviets........that........yah, that I would pay more attention too.

Well, I have it on good authority that in late 1965 an American mole stole the soft cushions in Sergei Korolev's office, meaning that the chief Soviet rocket engineer had to sit on a hard wooden chair during the freezing Moscow winter. This aggravated his haemorrhoids to the point that he required surgery. Meanwhile, Russia's top pile doctor had been paid off (with a shipload of black-market Preparation H) to botch the operation and make it look like an accident.

Result: Korolev's "accidental" death in January 1966 and the consequent major disruption to the Soviet rocket programme.

If anyone is interested in contemporary views on Apollo 8, as opposed to revising history several decades later, here are Life Magazine and National Geographic's reports on it.

Both are scans of my personal original copies, not electronic versions from the publishers.

www.dropbox.com...

www.dropbox.com...

Just in case anyone isn't aware of it, my study of Apollo 8's views of Earth in comparison with satellite images can be found on my site, linked in my sig.