[X] My Assistant

[ronatu]

Do you know that Russains could be on Moon first?
This is how:

http://site.voila.fr/space-models/model/n1/n1_miss.htm

[RNeuhaus]

I found additional information about Russia's manned Lunar program (1940-1980)

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_manned_lunar.html

Interesting article. Previously I was so ignorant abut it

Rodolfo

[tedstryk]

My understanding is that the Russians had just about everything ready to go but no ride for this moon landing mission. In other words, the N-1 just never worked right. So in other words, they were so close and yet so far away. It would be like Apollo had the Saturn V not worked. They probably, from what I understand, gotten it to work by the mid 70s, but since their landing was still smaller scale than Apollo, they considered it embarassing, and moved on to building space stations, an area where they could claim "firsts." I wish they had continued the effort....it might have provided the push needed to keep Apollo going a while longer.

[GregM]

My understanding is that the Russians had just about everything ready to go but no ride for this moon landing mission.  In other words, the N-1 just never worked right.  So in other words, they were so close and yet so far away.  It would be like Apollo had the Saturn V not worked.  They probably, from what I understand, gotten it to work by the mid 70s, but since their landing was still smaller scale than Apollo, they considered it embarassing, and moved on to building space stations, an area where they could claim "firsts."  I wish they had continued the effort....it might have provided the push needed to keep Apollo going a while longer.

Well, yes it true that the main sticking point in the Soviet lunar program’s inability to get the job done was the launch vehicle, when speaking in the strictest of terms. However, the whole Soviet scheme was VERY weak when compared to Apollo, and there were many other places besides the booster in the Soviet Lunar mission plan that might (or likley would) have caused a mission failure. The booster was just the largest of many weak points. With a few exceptions, everything in the Soviet program was much more primitive than Apollo in terms of technology development and robustness, yet was excessively complicated in areas that would not gladly tolerate such things (such as two separate descent propulsion stages for the lander). To look into the interior of the Soviet lander or mothership (a beefed up Soyuz) is to look into something more akin to a 1930’s submarine rather than a late 1960’s spacecraft. I half expect to see Captain Nemo flying the LK instead of Alexi Leonov – who might have been the first person on the Moon in a different timeline had everything gone perfectly for them. In terms of sophistocation, robustness, redundency, and technical development, Apollo looked like the starship Enterprise compared to these spacecraft. Mr. Leonov would have been a very brave man indeed if he had got the chance to succeed instead of Neil Armstrong.

I strongly suggest learning more on the subject for anyone interested – it is a fascinating subject on what was the riskiest and most longshot manned space mission design ever conceived. But boy, it would have been really cool to have seen them actually pull it off.

Good links for any who are interested:

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/sovpart2.htm

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/soy7klok.htm

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/lk.htm

http://www.myspacemuseum.com/eurolk.htm

http://www.deepcold.com/deepcold/lk_main.html

[ronatu]

Well, yes it true that the main sticking point in the Soviet lunar program’s inability to get the job done was the launch vehicle, when speaking in the strictest of terms. However, the whole Soviet scheme was VERY weak when compared to Apollo, and there were many other places besides the booster in the Soviet Lunar mission plan that might (or likley would) have caused a mission failure. The booster was just the largest of many weak points. With a few exceptions, everything in the Soviet program was much more primitive than Apollo in terms of technology development and robustness, yet was excessively complicated in areas that would not gladly tolerate such things (such as two separate descent propulsion stages for the lander). To look into the interior of the Soviet lander or mothership (a beefed up Soyuz) is to look into something more akin to a 1930’s submarine rather than a late 1960’s spacecraft. I half expect to see Captain Nemo flying the LK instead of Alexi Leonov – who might have been the first person on the Moon in a different timeline had everything gone perfectly for them. In terms of sophistocation, robustness, redundency, and technical development, Apollo looked like the starship Enterprise compared to these spacecraft.  Mr. Leonov would have been a very brave man indeed if he had got the chance to succeed instead of Neil Armstrong. 

The LOK spacecraft was roughly equivalent to the Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) "mother ship". Basically a souped-up Soyuz, it served as transport vehicle & living quarters for the 2 man lunar crew to and from the moon. The middle section, just like Soyuz, was used during launch and reentry, and for most of the vehicle control functions. Also note the rear instrument section, which has been elongated from the basic Soyuz design to allow for extra propellants, and the fact that no solar panels were used (for those readers who like to track Soyuz variants). Electrical power was supplied by fuel cells.
The odd looking apparatus on the nose of the vehicle was used for reaction control and docking. 4 small metal fingers were used to guide the docking probe, which could snap into any one of 108 small hexagonal holes in the "Kontact" docking plate on the top of the LK ascent stage. This enabled a docking to take place no matter where on the LK docking plate the LOK managed to make contact.


The LK was the Soviet functional equivalent of the American Lunar Module, but with certain notable differences: the LK would have carried only a single Cosmonaut to the lunar surface and he would have had to "space walk" from the LOK to the LK; the LK would have used the same engine for both final descent to the lunar surface and ascent back to orbit.

[dvandorn]

A slight etymological aside, here -- just as LM stood for Lunar Module, LK was an acronym. It stood for (if I'm remembering the spelling right) Luniy Korabl. The O in LOK stood for the Russian word for "orbiting," I forget the word right now...

In the Soviet spacecraft designation game, "Korabl" (which best translated into "cabin") was used most frequently to refer to unmanned tests of manned spacecraft. Several test flights of the Vostok were given the name "Korabl-Sputnik." And while it was flown under the more generic "Cosmos" name, the LK was indeed test-flown twice in Earth orbit.

The LK would have ridden a crasher stage down for the majority of its descent, and had about 100 seconds between separation from the crasher and ignition of its terminal braking rockets to when it had to touch down. It had very, very limited ability to redesignate its landing point, and the braking engines were throttled using a manual throttle-arm which reduced or increased fuel flow into the combustion chamber. Because the odds were fair that an LK would land on a slope (craters being omnipresent), it had "settling rockets" attached to the leg struts which ignited upon lunar contact to push the LK *down* into the dust, ensuring that it would sit upright, even on slopes of more than 30 degrees.

And yes, the Soviets were very concerned about a person being able to walk properly on the Moon, and what might happen if he fell over. With only one landing crewman, if someone fell over and turned turtle, he might die without ever being able to get back up (at least that was the Soviets' fear). They had a contraption that looked like an elderly person's walker, that the moonwalking cosmonaut would carry with him to lean on. There was also a plan for a Lunokhod to scout out a landing area and provide television coverage of the landing of the LK. The cosmonaut would then attach a seat to the Lunokhod and drive it around the landing site, taking pictures and collecting rocks from the comfort of his "travel chair."

I believe the Lunokhod was to be more than just transportation, it would have contained an emergency oxygen supply in case of a backpack failure -- generally, it was a way of making up for there only being one guy out there, with no one within a quarter of a million miles to help him.

There is also a speculation (discussed at Mark Wade's excellent Encyclopedia Astronautica) that, when they were certain that the N-1 wouldn't be ready in time to fly an LOK/LK flight prior to Apollo's first landing attempts, the Soviets may have gotten close to giving the green light to an alternate mission, assembling the entire N-1 TEI package in LEO from separate Proton and Soyuz booster launches. It was during this period, in early 1969, that the LK was first test-flown. But the LOK variant of the Soyuz hadn't yet flown, the Kontakt docking system had not been flight-tested, and the LOK heat shield and return trajectory hadn't been tested successfully (the Zond tests having failed in some crucial manner each time). The best "guess" is that the Soviets were assembling the pieces and might have attempted such a multi-launch LOK/LK flight had Apollo failed to land by the end of 1969 -- but they knew there was a great amount of risk, with so many of the components and flight operations untested.

My best guess is that, if the Soviets had indeed tried to fly a multi-launch LOK/LK mission, it had no better than a 50/50 chance of getting its crew back alive, and probably less than a 20% chance of actually achieving a manned landing and return.

-the other Doug

[dvandorn]

One more little note of interest -- since the LOK/LK was set up such that there was no connecting tunnel between the orbiter and the lander, the LK crewman had to transfer to and from his craft via EVA. That's why the very first Soyuz mission was planned to demonstrate EVA transfer between two vehicles. It wasn't accomplished until the dual Soyuz 4/5 flight, but it was originally the plan for Soyuz 1/2 to perform a crew transfer.

-the other Doug

[ronatu]

One more little note of interest -- since the LOK/LK was set up such that there was no connecting tunnel between the orbiter and the lander, the LK crewman had to transfer to and from his craft via EVA.  That's why the very first Soyuz mission was planned to demonstrate EVA transfer between two vehicles.  It wasn't accomplished until the dual Soyuz 4/5 flight, but it was originally the plan for Soyuz 1/2 to perform a crew transfer.

-the other Doug

It was planed for Soyuz 2/3

[dvandorn]

It ((Soyuz crew transfer)) was planed for Soyuz 2/3

Actually, it was planned for Soyuz 1/2 -- after Komarov's launch on Soyuz 1, a three-man crew was set to launch in Soyuz 2 within two days. A rendezvous and docking, followed by transfer of two of the Soyuz 2 crew into Soyuz 1, was planned. (This is documented in several different places, and is also inherent in the Soviet announcement of the launch of Soyuz 1 -- the Sovs never gave a number to the first flight of a new spacecraft. The announcement of the vehicle as Soyuz 1 was a confirmation to the West that a second Soyuz was planned to fly within a few days.)

After one of Soyuz 1's solar panels failed to deploy, the planned launch of Soyuz 2 was canceled and the Soviets began to plan for Komarov's early return (although, apparently, some Soviet mission planners argued for Soyuz 2 to fly, and its EVA crewmen to go out and fix the solar panel problem). It's a *very* good thing they didn't launch Soyuz 2, since it shared the same problem Soyuz 1 had with the "sticky" parachute canister. Had Soyuz 2 flown, it would have crashed and killed its crew, as well.

As for the Soyuz 2/3 mission, I'm pretty certain that it was always designed to be a rendezvous and docking between a manned Soyuz and an unmanned Soyuz. (We're talking about the Soyuz 2/3 flight as it was designed after the Soyuz 1 accident.) I don't think the lone Soyuz crewman was going to transfer to the unmanned vehicle had the docking worked (which it didn't).

-the other Doug