Like I said before the Russians were first on the moon.
But humans never made it there on either side.
Just like over the Cuban Missile Crisis the Yanks retreated and this
was only announced to the world years later...
Space Race Lost: Russians Remember.
By Adam Tanner
posted: 03:58 pm ET
12 July 1999
KOROLYOV, Russia (Reuters) - When sending a rocket ****p to the moon
became possible, Soviet scientists proposed setting off a nuclear
blast there to show off its scientific prowess.
"In 1958 there was a plan to send an atomic bomb to the moon so that
astronomers across the world could photograph its explosion on film,"
said Boris Chertok, 87, a leading rocket scientist from the earliest
days of the Soviet space program.
"That way no one would have doubted that the Soviet Union was capable
of landing on the surface of the moon," he said in an interview. "But
the idea was rejected as physicists decided the flash would be so
short-lived because of the lack of an atmosphere on the moon that it
might not register on film."
The Soviet leader****p eventually set its sights on sending a man to
the moon, setting off on a decade-long race with the United States
that ended with an American taking the first step on the moon 30 years
ago, on July 20, 1969.
For engineers and cosmonauts involved in the Soviet effort, the
anniversary revives often-bitter memories of their loss and
contradictory explanations of what went wrong. Vasily Mi****n, 82, who
headed the Soviet moon program from 1966 to 1974, says it was an
unfair contest, pitting the vast financial resources of the United
States against a far weaker Soviet Union.
"It was not a fair race," he told Reuters. "First of all, America was
richer than we were, especially then, and Russia was weakened by the
fight against German fascism and weakened by the costs of the arms
race. As soon as American began the moon race, we understood we could
not win."
Despite these disadvantages, the Soviets achieved impressive results
in putting their mark on the moon. They were the first to hit the moon
with a probe in 1959 and to land an unmanned spacecraft in 1966. The
unmanned Soviet Luna 10 first orbited the moon later that year,
broadcasting the "Internationale" to the Communist Party Congress in
Moscow.
In 1968 the Soviet Union sent the first space ****p to orbit the moon
with life aboard, returning turtles back to Earth.
The U.S. space agency NASA took the Soviet challenge very seriously,
and in 1968 sped up its program as a result.
THE GIANT LEAP
When the day came that Neil Armstrong was ready to step out of the
lunar module Eagle and make his historic walk on the moon, top Soviet
scientists and cosmonauts gathered to view the event via a bootleg
cable hook-up from Europe.
"We were delighted as engineers as they had done wonderful work," said
Chertok, deputy for 20 years to Sergei Korolyov, the father of the
Soviet rocket program. "But on the other hand we felt disappointment.
Why them and not us? It was bitter."
Soviet television did not broadcast live images of Armstrong on the
moon and Soviet daily Pravda carried only a brief mention of the
historic walk on the front page. Inside, after extensive coverage of
25 years of Polish socialism, the paper offered another article and a
fuzzy photo taken from a television image of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
on the moon.
Soviet authorities explained they were not first to the moon by
denying they had been trying to get there. The secrecy surrounding the
moon effort at the time was such that Mi****n was often airbrushed out
of photos. The official line also said America took needless risks to
put a man on the moon.
Mi****n, who is now fini****ng an updated memoir, says he no longer
remembers the day the Americans landed on the moon but still feels the
blow of losing. "Of course it pains me," he said. "We made mistakes."
After the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, secrets of the moon quest began to emerge, including the atomic
blast idea Chertok described in an interview this month.
ROCKET SCIENTISTS PONDER WHY
Those involved in the Soviet moon program still disagree -- often
strongly -- about what went wrong. Rocket scientists say they were not
even close to landing a man on the moon as they lagged in devising a
way of getting a cosmonaut from the moon's orbit to the surface and
back. They were close to flying a man around the moon but lost that
race to Apollo in December 1968.
Alexei Leonov, the cosmonaut who might have been the first human on
the moon if Mi****n's efforts had succeeded, is still bitter three
decades later about the program's failures.
"Some people today say there wasn't enough money. Nothing of the kind.
We had the money but we only needed to spend it properly," Leonov told
Reuters. "Mi****n says the Defense Ministry didn't give us money. This
is not true. We did not properly analyze things. ... That was his
mistake."
Mi****n's response? "Leonov is a mouse. He doesn't understand
anything," he said.
In addition to money woes, Mi****n says he lost time with rocket design
mistakes and said the Soviet leader****p wasted resources by running
competing space programs. Soviet rocket scientists, unlike their NASA
counterparts, also had the burden of building nuclear missiles as well
as space rockets.
Leonov and others say the Soviet moon effort never recovered from the
death of Korolyov in 1966.
"We had everything to fly around the moon. We had the rockets, the
space ****p, the crew was ready, but we didn't have Korolyov," said
Leonov, who keeps small framed U.S. and Soviet flags flown on Apollo
11 on his office wall. "But even with Korolyov, we would not have
beaten the Americans to be the first on the moon."
The men who took over from Korolyov still live in his shadow. Mi****n
has a home in a town near Moscow named after the scientist and Chertok
lives on a Moscow street honoring him. For the cosmonauts who trained
for moon missions, the Soviet failure could not erase their longing to
take a closer look.
"Sometimes I take out binoculars and look at the moon, and of course
the thought arises: could it have happened that I would have flown
close by?" said Vitaly Sevastyanov, who trained to make a trip around
the moon.
"I don't allow myself to say perhaps I could have landed on the moon,"
said the former cosmonaut, who is now a member of parliament. "That
couldn't have happened, but perhaps I could have flown around the
moon. But it didn't work out. Of course there is a certain regret."
=A9 Imaginova Corp. All rights reserved.
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