Soviet point of view on American manned lunar lading

[Pawelk198604]

I heard that Soviets, brand manned landing on Moon as needless risks of human life, that lunar sample can be obtained by unnamed probes without risk of human of life.

I wondering does exist any articles presenting Russian opinion on Apollo programme missions.

[stargazer1235]

I doubt you will find any articles on the moon landing from a soviet point of view, this is because in the 60s the soviets were really conservative and didn't really allow outside stuff in, so most people in the Soviet Union wouldn't have known of the moon landing had happened and I guess the government would have also censored it since it glorified the US and made the Soviets the losers in the race. So no would be my answer.

[Pawelk198604]

I doubt you will find any articles on the moon landing from a soviet point of view, this is because in the 60s the soviets were really conservative and didn't really allow outside stuff in, so most people in the Soviet Union wouldn't have known of the moon landing had happened and I guess the government would have also censored it since it glorified the US and made the Soviets the losers in the race. So no would be my answer.

In Poland was live transmission of Neil Armstrong lunar lading, my mom watch it in my aunt house, because she had TV, mom also told my that loot of my aunt neighbors come to her to watch Lunar Landing, so talking that in eastern block not showing Live from moon, it's not true

[jwenting]

The Soviets actually produced mockups and prototypes of components for a manned moon mission. They only abandoned it after the US landed there first and there was no further propaganda capital to be gained from what was considered not a good investment of funds that could go towards more ICBMs, bombers, and missile submarines.

Having several of the intended N1 boosters blow up on the pad, killing hundreds of skilled workers, can't have helped convince the Politburo that it was a program that was going to lead to success soon either.

[satcharna]

The opinion of the Soviet researchers was actually that unmanned exploration was superior all along, but the politicians knew that the US were going to do a manned landing, and recognized the propaganda purpose of that, and so the Soviets began researching a manned lunar lander, going as far as sending a prototype into orbit to test it (it later deorbited over Australia). When they realized that they wouldn't be able to land a cosmonaut before the US did so, the politicians changed their minds to what the actual scientists and engineers had been saying all along, that is, that a manned landing was a foolish and pointless risk of human life. Nevertheless, the Eagle lander was shown and celebrated through most of the Soviet Union, even if the fact that the US had gotten to the moon first wasn't.

They continued doing this later on as well, with their space stations. Whereas the scientists and engineers tried to convince the military that unmanned spy satellites were more logical, the leaders wanted spy-space stations, and the Salyut series was complemented by the military Almaz variants. Eventually, the military realized that such space stations were outshined by the US-A (Upravlyaemy Sputnik-Aktivnyj) series of nuclear reconnaissance satellites, made for observing western ocean activity with radar, that were complimented by the two larger TOPAZ-equipped Kosmos 1818 and 1867, which allowed a longer service life at a higher altitude. Nuclear satellites, Soviet-style!

[rezm]

I doubt you will find any articles on the moon landing from a soviet point of view, this is because in the 60s the soviets were really conservative and didn't really allow outside stuff in, so most people in the Soviet Union wouldn't have known of the moon landing had happened and I guess the government would have also censored it since it glorified the US and made the Soviets the losers in the race. So no would be my answer.

US moon landing was actually mentioned in sovient press. Here is the example

Actually this article is positiv. It describes US astonauts as heroes and admits great success of US space mission. But the greatest thing is the ending of this article. It can be translated something like this:

"Though world press cheers great success of Appolon-11 mission, it (world press) is once agains question US government about unsolved social problems such as removing gettos and feeding starving poor people"

I think in scientific sovient magasines there were much less propoganda then in mass press

So, there were articles in press, and my parents knew about Appolon-11 mission.

P.S. A lot of people in USSR also listen to BBC on radio, so it was impossible for sovient press to just ignore US moon mission success.

Edited June 22, 2013 by rezm

[rdfox]

By all accounts, the Soviets covered the mission nearly as thoroughly as the US did (Pravda had, the day before the landing, famously called Armstrong "the Czar of the ship"), with two goals--the Soviet government knew that everyone WOULD hear about it through the BBC World Service and other media, so not covering something potentially so historic would make them seem like a huge joke... plus, if the mission failed, it could then be used for propaganda purposes, "oh, look, the capitalists tried to make their landing too quickly and now they've killed their brave heroic crew, whereas the Soviet Union has taken a more conservative path and will not launch a Moon landing mission until we are sure it will be successful..."

The N1 never blew up on the pad. Of four launches, the first (early 1969) suffered engine failure just after liftoff and fell back onto the pad, the second (late 1969) tumbled and broke up about 30 seconds after launch, the third (early 1972) suffered another fallback crash, and the fourth (late 1972) was proceeding normally but had first stage burnout earlier than expected due to higher-than-anticipated fuel consumption--a problem it could have compensated for with the upper stages, at least for this initial Earth orbital test, but an overzealous range safety officer sent the destruct command anyway. N1 had great potential, though limitations in Soviet metallurgical technology meant that it was a plumber's nightmare (30 engines in the first stage alone!), but the heavy secrecy surrounding the Soviet program meant that they couldn't conduct "all-up" static test firings (hard to hide the test stands, much less keep people from noticing such a large booster being test fired) of the stages, instead relying on test firings of individual engines. The US suffered a similar number of failures in the Saturn V program; it's just that they happened on static test stands rather than in flight, meaning A) they could make an emergency shutdown immediately upon detecting a problem and thus save the stage from blowing up, and even if it DID blow up, it wasn't in flight. (Note that every single Saturn V stage was fired for a duration equal to that of its full operating cycle on a test stand before being cleared for flight, AFTER final assembly, to prove it was assembled correctly--this was a major factor in the booster having that unprecedented 100% mission-success rate.) "All-up" static firings of the N1's first stage would have revealed any design flaws on the ground, and would have revealed individual stages' workmanship flaws before launch, too.

Equally, the Soviet program was handicapped--ironically--by the fact that the Soviets had three competing private space programs, whereas the US had a single centralized government program. Normally, I'm all for competition and the private sector (competition improves the breed, and the private sector is invariably more efficient than the government), but when you're trying to meet a specific goal in a short timeframe on limited resources, central coordination is critical. It keeps the funding flowing to where it's needed, when it's needed, and it avoids parallel development (as much as possible) that wastes effort and funds, by assigning each contractor to a specific role and having them work pretty much exclusively on that role.

The Soviets, on the other hand, had three separate design bureaus all competing for space funding. One of them quickly decided to concentrate solely on military projects and thus was largely a non-issue in terms of competing for civilian projects, but the other two--including Sergei Korolev's bureau that ended up being behind just about all Soviet manned missions that actually flew--were going at it hammer and tongs for the dominant position, resulting in much wasteful parallel development, funding being split between the two that could have been better spent by concentrating it on one of them, and a general lack of overall direction to their program, resulting in progress in fits and starts towards no overall objective, instead concentrating on a series of spectacular "firsts" that looked good to the political masters who controlled the funding.

Sergei Korolev's death in 1965 did nothing to improve matters, as his successor as the head of his bureau was nowhere near as politically adept as Korolev, making him less able to keep his bureau the one that got the lion's share of the funding, exacerbating the problem of the parallel research and split funding.