Were our astronauts on the moon. So who is the first on the moon? Cosmic radiation should kill everyone

At the end of last week, American scientists released data according to which the majority of participants in manned flights to the moon died from severe cardiovascular diseases, while other astronauts have this cause of death much less frequently. According to researchers, this is a consequence of the dose of radiation received in space. The news caused a mixed reaction, and the debate about the reliability of NASA's lunar program flared up again. At the request of the editors of Life, the popularizer of astronautics and the press secretary of the Dauria Aerospace company, Vitaly Egorov, spoke about the main misconceptions and stereotypes that constantly accompany many discussions about people on the moon.

1. Lunar landing was filmed in the pavilion

NASA, of course, had pavilions with a mock-up of the lunar module and an imitation of the lunar surface. There was a test site where lunar craters were simulated. But all this was created and used to train astronauts so that unusual conditions were more familiar to them and allowed them to work more efficiently. This is a normal stage in the preparation of any mission. In the same way, Soviet drivers of the lunar rover trained at the training ground in the Crimea and on the volcanoes of Kamchatka. And not to fake pictures from the moon, but to be prepared for what awaits them there. Those images that are officially listed as lunar are actually taken on the Moon and can be analyzed for compliance with satellite images of the lunar surface.

The myth "was filmed in a pavilion" is held by many Russian cosmonauts and space specialists, who have no doubts about the authenticity of the American flights to the moon. Our cosmonauts say: "They flew, but some details of the landing could have been filmed already on Earth and shown just for clarity - how it was there." In my opinion, such a position is partly forced, as our specialists protect themselves from the need to explain all sorts of controversial moments of photo and video shooting with a waving flag or the absence of stars in the sky, and the like.

2. The flag is waving, but the stars are not visible

A frequently encountered argument in discussions, which, according to its asserters, should prove a conspiracy. But, firstly, actually flying to the moon and filming a landing on the moon are two different things, and one does not exclude the other. Secondly, you need to know the conditions on the surface a little better and watch videos and photos more carefully. As for the flag, everything is simple there, the astronaut just waves it with his hand. If you watch not five seconds of filming the installation of the flag, but take a longer recording - they are now all published on the YouTube video service - you can see a direct connection between the "draft" and the astronaut who approaches the flag. He grabbed the flag - the wind rose, let go of the flag - the wind died down. And so several times.

As for the stars that are not in the photo from the Moon, this is also explained simply: they sat down in the afternoon. Although the sky on the Moon is black, the cameras were set up for shooting in daytime conditions, because the brightness of the Sun on the Moon is even higher than on Earth. If you look at the shots taken on the International Space Station, then there are also no stars in the black sky, if the shooting was carried out on the sunny side of the Earth.

3. The tapes of the first landing were missing.

This myth has some grounds, although it does not fully correspond to reality. All photographs and videos that were filmed on cameras on the surface of the Moon by the Apollo 11 expedition have been preserved and are now published. The footage of the live television broadcast, which was conducted from the Moon to the NASA receiving station and distributed to various television studios, was rewritten. Since everyone saw the broadcast anyway, and the recordings of these frames were stored in television studios, NASA did not particularly value the magnetic coils with the broadcast in their archives and re-recorded them with a light soul when such a need arose in the 80s.

They realized it only in the 2000s: as it turned out, the recordings on television studios were left with a big loss of quality, and at NASA stations they received a better signal. The broadcast sources were never found, so they tried to improve the quality with the help of specialists from Hollywood. Therefore, now Hollywood officially took part in the preparation of the records of the lunar landing, and this was openly written on the NASA website. However, this does not cast doubt on the fact of the first landing and five subsequent ones, the records of which were no longer lost.

4. After the completion of the lunar program, the Saturn-5 rocket disappeared without a trace

A myth based on the fact that it is no longer possible to resume the production of this rocket, since all the performers and contractors of this system have long disappeared or changed their direction of activity. In addition, the difference in the capabilities of the rocket of the 60s, which put 140 tons into low earth orbit, and modern rockets, whose record is only 28 tons, is very surprising.

Saturn-5 itself has not disappeared, NASA has two samples of the rocket, which are located in the museums of the Space Center. Johnson (Houston) and Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral). Plus, there are several dozen F1 engines that provided outstanding rocket capabilities. Now NASA has a small group that is engaged in reverse engineering (reverse engineering): based on surviving samples, it is developing a new version of the engine using modern technologies. But this work does not have a high priority, since NASA has engines that are superior to the F1 in a number of ways.

The Soviet H1 and Energiya missiles "disappeared" in a similar way. Now, if in Russia there is a conversation about creating a super-heavy rocket, then they are talking about work practically from scratch, and not a return to the Soviet legacy.

The most important contribution of the lunar program remained in the form of the colossal experience of the US space technology developers, who were able to translate it into the Space Shuttle program. If the entire NASA lunar program took place in Hollywood, then America simply would not be physically able to implement the space shuttle program. Let me remind you, if you count with the shuttle itself, the Space Shuttle system launched up to 90 tons into low Earth orbit.

5. Now America does not have its own rocket engines, which means that it did not exist before

The successful sale of Russian RD-180 and RD-181 engines to the United States has led some Russians to believe that America has forgotten how to make rocket engines, if not.

Here, too, it is easy to dispel doubts with two simple facts: the most powerful Delta IV Heavy rocket to date is American, and American RS-68 engines are installed on it.

These engines are oxygen-hydrogen and are inherited from the Space Shuttle program. Their problem is high cost, so it is more profitable for the United States to buy Russian ones.

The most powerful rocket engines of our time - more powerful than the F1 and RD-171 - are solid-propellant SRBs, which are also left over from the shuttle. The SRB is now being installed on the new SLS super-heavy rocket, which is supposed to launch 70 tons into low Earth orbit. It was the SRBs that became the reason why NASA did not resurrect the F1.

For more applied tasks, such as launching satellites or supplying the ISS, both Russian engines and SpaceX's American Merlins are used in the United States.

6. To take off from the moon, you need a rocket and a spaceport, and they were not there

Actually they were. The lunar landing module was not only a means of soft landing, but also a take-off device. The upper part of the module was not only a cabin for astronauts, but also a launch rocket, and the lower part of the landing module acted as a cosmodrome.

To launch from the surface of the Moon and enter the circumlunar orbit, much less energy is required than to launch from the Earth, since there is less gravity, there is no atmospheric drag, a small payload mass, and therefore large rockets can be dispensed with.

7. All lunar soil is missing or carefully hidden by NASA

During six moon landings, astronauts were able to collect and deliver 382 kilograms of lunar samples. Most are now stored at the Lunar Sample Laboratory in Houston. About 300 kilograms are now really inaccessible for research: they are stored in a nitrogen atmosphere so that terrestrial conditions, primarily atmospheric oxygen, do not lead to a change and destruction of the samples. At the same time, about 80 kilograms of samples are available for study by scientists around the world, including Russian ones, and if you wish, you can find scientific publications that compare lunar meteorites, samples from Soviet stations and samples delivered by Apollo astronauts.

In Russia, anyone can see a few grains of lunar soil at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow. There is both Soviet and American lunar soil.

Some soil samples delivered under the Apollo program were indeed stolen or disappeared from the vaults of museums and institutes, but this is an insignificant percentage of the total amount of moon rocks and dust delivered.

For those interested in the topic, I can recommend a photo report by a young Russian cosmonaut Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, who visited the Lunar Sample Laboratory tours and posted photos on his blog.

8. Cosmic radiation should kill everyone

Today, the press often discusses cosmic radiation along the way. In the context of these conversations, the question is raised of how people flew to the moon if radiation is so dangerous.

To understand the difference in flight conditions, it is worth remembering that a flight to Mars is a year and a half, and a flight to the Moon under the Apollo program is less than two weeks. If you carefully study the results of studies of the effect of cosmic radiation during a flight to Mars, you can find out that in 500 days of flight an astronaut will receive a dose that is approximately one and a half times higher than the permissibleexposure level. If for astronauts this level corresponds to a 3 percent increase in the threat of cancer, then a flight to Mars already gives 5 percent of such a threat. By comparison, smokers increase their cancer risk by 20 percent.

The design of the spacecraft should also be taken into account. The lunar module did not have additional radiation protection, but its skin included an aluminum case, a sealed shell, and multilayer thermal protection, which created an additional shield from cosmic particles. At the same time, only 40 percent of the area of ​​​​the lunar module directly protected the pilots from space conditions. In other areas of the surface, they were additionally covered by a multi-meter service compartment with equipment and rocket fuel and a landing module.

Do not forget about the Soviet and then Russian experiments on the study of cosmic radiation. Now the Phantom and Matryoshka experiments are being implemented on the ISS, and the Phantom flew to the Moon in Zonda-7, which made it possible to assess the degree of human damage by cosmic particle flows. In general, the conclusions are encouraging: if there are no solar flares, then you can fly. If it were not possible, then Roskosmos probably would not have been working on the lunar program at the end of the 2020s and would not have made plans to build a lunar base.

The political leaders of the USSR immediately congratulated the United States on the successful lunar program, and Russian cosmonauts and scientists still express confidence in the reality of landing people on the moon. The conspirators have to explain this somehow in order to remain committed to their idea. And so the idea was born that the USSR was also in a conspiracy. As arguments in favor of a conspiracy, facts from the history of our countries are usually cited, which belonged to the period of detente of international tension: arms limitation, trade cooperation, the Soyuz-Apollo program.

Despite the fact that the Soviet Union no longer exists for a quarter of a century, there is, of course, no documentary evidence of any of its participation in the Lunar conspiracy. Moreover, there was not a single piece of evidence from contemporaries that could confirm the fact of such a conspiracy. Although now, it would seem, nothing is preventing the withdrawal of the Americans to clean water.

10. No one has seen traces of astronauts on the moon, and the "landing site" is forbidden to be viewed and studied.

Earth's most powerful modern telescopes are unable to see traces of the lunar landing. They can see surface details as large as 80-100 meters, which is much larger than the size of the lunar module. The only way to see the lunar modules and astronaut footprints is to send a satellite to the moon or a rover to the surface.

Over the past 15 years, satellites from Europe, India, Japan, China, and the USA have been sent to the Moon. But only the NASA LRO satellite could see more or less qualitatively. Detailing his images - up to 30 centimeters, it allows you to see the lunar modules, scientific equipment on the surface, paths trodden by astronauts, and traces of lunar rovers.

The satellites of India and Japan tried to examine the traces of the American landings, but the detail of their cameras at 5-10 meters did not allow them to see anything. The only thing that was possible was to identify the so-called halos - a spot of light soil, which arose from the impact of rocket engines of the landing stages. Using stereo imaging, Japanese scientists were able to recreate the landscapes of the landing sites, and they showed full compliance with what is seen in the astronauts' photographs: large craters, mountains, plains, faults. In the 60s, there was no such technique, so it would not have been possible to model the landscape in the pavilion.

In 2007, the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition was announced for the development of a private lunar rover, which must reach the moon and overcome a certain distance. The winner should be paid up to $30 million. As part of the competition, there is an additional $2 million Legacy Award for the team whose lunar rover can photograph one of the Apollo lunar modules or Lunokhods. Fearing that crowds of private robots will rush to the sites of historic landings, NASA has published recommendations not to get too close to the landing sites, so as not to trample on the astronauts' tracks and ruin historical monuments. Currently, only one of the contest teams has announced that they are going to take a look at the Apollo 17 lunar landing site.

In 2015, a group of space engineers appeared in Russia, which undertook to develop a microsatellite capable of reaching the moon and filming the Apollo landing sites, the Soviet Moons and Lunokhods with a quality exceeding NASA LRO. Funding for the first part of the work was sought through crowdfunding. There are no funds yet to continue the work, but the developers do not intend to stop and hope for the support of large private investors or the state.

Our country was the first to fly around the moon and photograph its far side, the delivery of the first samples of lunar soil to Earth, the first lunar rover. It seemed that a little more - and the USSR cosmonaut would set foot on its surface, and the Americans landed on the moon. Why? The media explained: we have a different program - the exploration of deep space by machine guns. We protect people. Earnestly? Seems Yes. How about really?

In 1986, at the International Book Fair in Moscow, K. Getland's encyclopedia "Space Technology" was on the shelf. The book is like a book. But it shocked our scientists and engineers. On its pages, next to the huge American Saturn-5 carrier, there was a Soviet lunar rocket! The same H1 rocket, the development of which was carried out in the strictest confidence.

The casket just opened. In the 60-70s. a giant rocket was taken out several times to the starting positions of Baikonur. American spy satellites photographed it, and NASA specialists determined the destination.

Meanwhile, the H1 rocket can be called the "last love" of S.P. Korolev. The chief designer dreamed not only of conquering near-Earth space, but also of flights to other planets.

The resolution on the creation of the H1 rocket, capable of lifting up to 40-50 tons into space, was adopted in 1960. But only in 1966 (??) the state commission under the leadership of Academician M.V. Keldysh approved the project of a lunar expedition. According to the plan, she was supposed to land one astronaut on the moon. Another would be waiting for his comrade in lunar orbit.

Candidates for a lunar flight were also named - V. Bykovsky, A. Leonov, N. Rukavishnikov, V. Kubasov. It took almost two years to prepare for the flight. And when everything was almost ready, the program was canceled! What happened? Everyone knew that the Americans would launch to the moon in 1969. In the USSR they started work in February 1967. There was little time. Correspondence race unnerved everyone. And, unfortunately, V.P. Glushko and S.P. Korolev quarreled to the nines. Both academicians, generals cursed each other.

Two talents, maybe geniuses, did not agree on the concept of rocket fuel. It was clear that kerosene and liquefied oxygen had exhausted their possibilities. Korolev proposed switching to liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Glushko thought liquid fluorine and nitric acid would be the best ingredients. Glushko's logic: such fuel will take up a smaller volume. But any person who remembers a school chemistry course will be horrified. How to maintain such a "poisonous" engine? And what will happen to the environment? After all, these components are extremely toxic. Subsequently, Glushko himself changed his views: the Energia rocket created in his design bureau flies on hydrogen. But at that time...the arguments and swearing continued.

Korolev, reluctantly, transferred the order to the “purely” aviation design bureau of N.D. Kuznetsov in Kuibyshev (Samara). Excellent aircraft engines were built there (both military and civilian aircraft were equipped with them: Tu-16, Tu-95, Tu-104, Tu-114). Having departed their resource on an airplane, they served on the ground, pumping gas at gas compressor stations. (I personally serviced the automation of the NK-12ST engine myself. This is an excellent engine that worked on the ground sometimes for 2-3 months in a row without stops and failures in the harsh Ural conditions.)

But rocket engines were not made there! We started from scratch, but the Kuznetsov Design Bureau coped with the task. The rocket turned out to be higher than the famous Ivan the Great Kremlin bell tower. At the base of the "tower" was a bunch of 30 engines that provided thrust and controlled the flight. There were also many novelties in the launch vehicle. Control systems, measuring technology, many design solutions were at the highest level. In a word, even after 35 years, we are not ashamed of this rocket.

But trouble lay ahead. S.P. Korolev died unexpectedly. And then the pushing from above began.

At one of the meetings held by D.F. Ustinov, the question was posed as follows: “In two months, the holidays will fly to the USA again. What have we done? In a hurry, flight tests began. First launch February 21, 1969. 70 seconds after launch, a fire broke out in the tail section of the rocket.

In July 1969 - an attempt at a second launch, and again a failure. Due to a malfunction of the oxygen pump, an explosion occurred that destroyed the launch complex. It took two years to restore it, analyze the accident and build a new rocket.

The third launch took place on June 27, 1971. The rocket had already risen above the ground, but ... suddenly losing control, fell on the test site.

On the fourth attempt, the rocket flew. The fifth start was scheduled for August 1974, and for December 1974 - the sixth. But the H1 rocket did not go into production. First, the program was frozen. And then the understanding came: we were late for the moon!

All the resources of the country were thrown into the next "great construction site" - BAM. And two or three expensive programs were too expensive for the economy of the USSR.

The dream of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev about flying to the moon never came true.

Or maybe it's too early to put an end to it ?!

Literature

1. Astronomy and astronautics. - Kiev, 1967.
2. Memoirs of a Rocket Designer. - Young Guard, 1999, No. 4, 5.

Comments

Anatoly Kolpakov

There is nothing worse than jet space exploration. It requires too much material, fuel, money; it is excessively wasteful - its efficiency is less than that of a steam locomotive; structurally complex and unreliable - it is a real destroyer of the state budget and astronauts; cumbersome - her rockets are huge monsters, and the benefits are worth a penny; besides this, it has dozens of other negative qualities.
The basis of the CBD is made up of supportless propellers - levitators, which do not need fuel and can create thrust for as long as you like - forever because they are devoid of wear and tear. Levitator spacecraft (LC) can go out into outer space hundreds of thousands of times and return back to Earth without dangerous overloads, move in space with a constantly acting thrust, i.e. continuously and for as long as necessary to make an active flight with an acceleration equal to the acceleration of the earth's gravity, excluding weightlessness and overloads. Achieve colossal speeds of movement in space, thereby significantly reducing the time of flights over long distances - from one planet to another.

Anatoly Kolpakov

There is nothing worse than jet space exploration. It requires too much material, fuel, money; it is excessively wasteful - its efficiency is less than that of a steam locomotive; structurally complex and unreliable - it is a real destroyer of the state budget and astronauts; cumbersome - her rockets are huge monsters, and benefits - for a penny; besides this, it has dozens of other negative qualities.
The time has come to abandon jet space exploration. Everything is ready for the new Unsupported Propulsion Cosmonautics (CBD).
The basis of the CBD is the unsupported propellers invented by me - levitators, which do not need fuel and can create thrust for as long as you like - forever because they are devoid of wear and tear. Levitator spacecraft (LC) can go out into outer space hundreds of thousands of times and return back to Earth without dangerous overloads, move in space with a constantly acting thrust, i.e. continuously and for as long as necessary to make an active flight with an acceleration equal to the acceleration of the earth's gravity, excluding weightlessness and overload. To achieve colossal speeds of movement in space, thereby significantly reducing the time of flights over long distances - from one planet to another.

To the 40th anniversary of the flight of the American spacecraft "Apollo-11"

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"Thatisonesmallstepforaman,onegiantleapfor mankind) - these words were said by Neil Armstrong when the first man stepped on the surface of the moon. This landmark event took place 40 years ago, on July 20, 1969.

1. Twice two questions

As the decades passed, many legends and speculations developed around the topic of human visitation to the Moon. The most famous and sensational of them is that American astronauts did not land on the surface of the moon, and all television reports about the landing and the Apollo program itself were a grandiose hoax. Some wisecrackers have even twisted Armstrong's phrase about "humanity's giant leap" into "humanity's giant swindle." The “irrefutable argument” in favor of the fact that people were not on the moon is already devoted to extensive literature and dozens, if not hundreds of films shot in different countries and in different languages.

Almost simultaneously with this, at the end of the 1980s, in the (then still) USSR, information was made public about the presence in the 1960s-1970s. Soviet program of manned flights to the moon. It became known that in the USSR it was also planned to first fly around the moon by astronauts, and then land on the surface of our natural satellite.

However, the leadership of the USSR, as well as the United States, saw only political meaning in landing on the moon.

After the flight of Apollo 11, it became clear that the Soviet Union was hopelessly behind the United States in the implementation of the lunar program. According to the leaders of the CPSU, the flight of Soviet cosmonauts to the moon under such conditions would not have had the desired effect in the rest of the world. Therefore, the Soviet lunar program was frozen at a stage already close to manned flight, and it was officially announced that the USSR had never had such a program. That the USSR moved in an alternative way and paid main attention not to political prestige, but to scientific research of the moon with the help of automatic devices, in which our cosmonautics, indeed, has achieved great success. This is the most popular explanation for why Soviet cosmonauts never repeated the achievements of their American rivals.

So, in the historiography (if I may say so) of the lunar problem, two differently solved questions now dominate:

1. Did the Americans land on the moon?

2. Why was the Soviet lunar program not completed?

If you look closely, then both questions are interrelated, and the very formulation of the second is, as it were, the answer to the first. Indeed, if the Soviet lunar program really existed and was already close to being realized, why can't it be assumed that the Americans were able to actually bring their Apollo program to life?

Another question that follows from here. If Soviet space specialists had even the slightest doubt about the authenticity of the fact of the American landing on the moon, would the Soviet leadership, proceeding precisely from the political goals of the lunar program, not bring it to the end only in order to convict the Americans of the universal lie and inflict the most mortal blow to the international prestige of the United States, while simultaneously raising the authority of the USSR to an unprecedented height?

Although these two questions already contain the answer to the very first one, let's deal with everything in order. Let's start with the official version of the history of the Apollo program.

2. How a German genius took the Yankees into space

The successes of American rocket science are associated primarily with the name of the famous German designer Baron Wernher von Braun, the creator of the first combat ballistic missiles V-2 (V-2). At the end of the war, Brown, along with other German experts in the field of advanced military technology, was taken to the United States.

However, the Americans did not trust Brown to conduct serious research for a long time. While working at the Huntsville, Alabama arsenal on short-range rockets, Brown continued to design advanced launch vehicles (LVs) capable of reaching space velocity. But the contract for the creation of such a rocket and satellite was received by the US Navy.

In July 1955, US President Dwight Eisenhower publicly promised that his country would soon launch the first artificial Earth satellite (AES). However, it was easier said than done. If we have the genius of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev quite quickly created fundamentally new missile systems, then the Americans did not have home-grown masters of this level.

Several unsuccessful attempts by the Navy to launch its invariably exploding rocket prompted the Pentagon to treat the former SS Sturmbannfuehrer, who became a US citizen in 1955, more favorably.

In 1956, Wernher von Braun received a contract to develop the Jupiter-S intercontinental ICBM and satellite.

In 1957, the news of the successful launch of the Soviet satellite sounded like a bolt from the blue for the Americans. It became clear that the United States was significantly behind the USSR in terms of penetration into space. After another failure of the Navy with the launch of its launch vehicle, the main work on the creation of promising launch vehicles and satellites was concentrated in Brown's hands. This area of ​​activity was withdrawn from the Pentagon. For her, in 1958, a special structure was created - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the US federal government.

Brown headed the John Marshall Space Center, which became NASA's Space Flight Center in 1960. Under his leadership, 2 thousand employees worked (then more), concentrated in 30 departments. All of the department heads were originally German, former employees of Brown's V-2 program. On February 1, 1958, the first successful launch of the Jupiter-S launch vehicle and the launch of the first American satellite Explorer-1 into orbit took place. But the crown of Wernher von Braun's life was his Saturn V rocket and the Apollo program.

3. On the way to the moon

The year 1961 was marked by a new triumph of Soviet science and technology. On April 12, Yuri Gagarin made the first flight on the Vostok spacecraft (SC). In an effort to create the appearance of covering the backlog from the USSR, on May 5, 1961, the Americans launched the Redstone-3 launch vehicle from the Mercury spacecraft along a ballistic trajectory. The first officially recognized American astronaut, Alan Bartlett Shepard (who later walked on the Moon), spent only 15 minutes in space and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean just 300 miles from the launch site at Cape Canaveral. The cosmic speed of his spacecraft never reached. The next quarter-hour suborbital flight of Mercury (astronaut Virgil E. Grissom) took place on July 21, 1961.

As if in mockery, on August 6-7, the second full-fledged orbital flight of the Soviet spacecraft took place. Cosmonaut German Titov on Vostok-2 spent 25 hours and 18 minutes in space, making 17 revolutions around the Earth during this time. The first normal orbital flight for the Americans turned out only on February 20, 1962 (astronaut John H. Glenn) thanks to the new, more powerful Atlas launch vehicle. The spacecraft "Mercury" made only 3 revolutions around the Earth, having spent less than five hours in orbit.

In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy proclaimed a kind of "national project" designed to put an end to the US lagging behind the USSR in the space field and overcome the inferiority complex that arose among the Americans.

He promised that the Americans would land on the moon before the Russians, and that this would happen before the end of the 1960s. From now on, any manned space flight programs in the United States (the next was the Gemini project) were subordinated to one goal - the preparation of a landing on the moon. This was the start of the Apollo project. True, Kennedy did not live to see its implementation.

Landing on the moon required the solution of two very difficult technical problems. The first is maneuvering, undocking and docking of spacecraft modules in near-Earth and near-lunar orbits. The second is the creation of a sufficiently powerful launch vehicle capable of giving the payload, consisting of a two-module spacecraft, three astronauts and life support systems (LSS), the second space velocity (11.2 km / s).

In the course of the flights of the Gemini spacecraft around the Earth, there has already been a tendency to overcome the backlog of the United States from the USSR in solving complex problems for spacecraft and man in space. Gemini 3 (crewed by V.I. Grissom and John W. Young) on ​​March 23, 1965, made the first maneuver in space using manual control. In June 1965, astronaut Edward H. White left Gemini 4 and spent 21 minutes in outer space (three months earlier, our Alexei Leonov - 10 minutes). In August 1965, the crew of Gemini 5 (L. Gordon Cooper and Charles Conrad) set a new world record for the duration of an orbital flight - 191 hours. For comparison: at that time, the Soviet record for the duration of an orbital flight, set in 1963 by the pilot of Vostok-5, Valery Bykovsky, was 119 hours.

And in December 1965, the Gemini 7 crew (Frank Borman and James A. Lovell) completed 206 orbits in 330 and a half hours! During this flight, Gemini-6A (Walter M. Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford) approached at a distance of less than two meters (!), and in this position both spacecraft made several revolutions around the Earth. Finally, in March 1966, the Gemini 8 crew (Neil A. Armstrong and David R. Scott) made the first orbital docking with the unmanned Agena module.

The first spacecraft of the Apollo series were unmanned. On them, the elements of the flight to the moon were worked out in automatic mode. The first test of the new powerful Saturn-5 launch vehicle was carried out in November 1967 in a block with the Apollo-4 spacecraft. The third stage of the launch vehicle gave the module a speed of about 11 km / s and put it into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 18 thousand km, after which the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere. On "Apollo-5" in February 1968, different modes of operation of the lunar module were simulated in an unmanned satellite orbit.

"Saturn-5" is still the most powerful launch vehicle in history.

The launch weight of the launch vehicle was 3,000 tons, of which 2,000 tons was the weight of the first stage fuel. The weight of the second stage is 500 tons. Two stages took the third with a two-module spacecraft into the satellite orbit. The third stage gave the spacecraft, consisting of an orbital compartment with a sustainer engine and a lunar cabin, divided into landing and takeoff stages, the second space velocity. Saturn-5 was capable of launching a payload weighing up to 150 tons (including the weight of the third stage with full tanks) into near-Earth orbit, and 50 tons into a flight path to the Moon. At the cosmodrome, this entire structure rose to a height of 110 m.

The first manned flight under the Apollo program took place in October 1968. Apollo 7 (Walter M. Schirra - the first man to fly into space three times, Donn F. Eisele, R. Walter Cunningham) made 163 revolutions around the Earth lasting 260 hours, which exceeded the calculated one when flying to the Moon and back. On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 (Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, for whom this was the third space flight, and William A. Anders) set off on the first manned flight to the Moon in history. In fact, at first it was planned to work out by the crew all the elements of a flight to the Moon in satellite orbit, but the lunar descent vehicle (lunar cabin) was not yet ready. Therefore, it was decided to first fly around the moon on the orbital module. Apollo 8 made 10 orbits around the moon.

According to some reports, it was this flight that became decisive in the freezing of the Soviet leadership of its own lunar program: now our lagging behind the Americans has become obvious.

The crew of Apollo 9 (James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, Russell L. Schweikart) in March 1969 performed all maneuvers in near-Earth orbit related to the undocking and docking of modules, the transition of astronauts from one compartment to another through a sealed joint no spacewalk. And Apollo 10 (Thomas P. Stafford and John W. Young - for both it was the third flight into space, Eugene A. Cernan) in May 1969 did all the same, but already in lunar orbit! The orbital (command) compartment made 31 revolutions around the Moon. The lunar cabin, having undocked, performed two independent revolutions around the Moon, descending to a height of 15 km above the surface of the satellite! In general, all stages of the flight to the moon were completed, except, in fact, landing on it.

4. The first people on the moon

Apollo 11 (commander - Neil Alden Armstrong, lunar module pilot - Edwin Eugene Aldrin, orbital module pilot - Michael Collins; for all three it was the second flight into space) launched from Cape Canaveral on July 16, 1969. After checking the onboard systems, during one and a half turns in near-Earth orbit, the third stage was turned on and the spacecraft entered the flight path to the Moon. This journey took about three days.

The design of the Apollo required one major maneuver during the flight. The orbital module, docked with the lunar cabin with its tail section, where the sustainer engine was located, was undocked, made a 180-degree turn and docked to the lunar cabin with its nose section. After that, the spent third stage was separated from the spacecraft rebuilt in this way. The other six flights to the Moon followed the same pattern.

When approaching the Moon, the astronauts turned on the main engine of the orbital (command) module for braking and transfer to a lunar orbit. Then Armstrong and Aldrin moved to the lunar module, which was soon undocked from the orbital compartment and went into an independent orbit of the artificial satellite of the moon, choosing a landing site. On July 20, 1969, at 3:17 p.m. Eastern United States time (23-17 Moscow time), the Apollo 11 lunar cabin made a soft landing on the Moon in the southwestern part of the Sea of ​​Tranquility.

Six and a half hours later, after putting on spacesuits and depressurizing the lunar compartment, Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the surface of the moon. It was then that he said his famous phrase.

Live television broadcast from the surface of the moon was carried out to hundreds of countries of the world. It was watched by 600 million people (out of a then world population of 3.5 billion) in six parts of the world, including Antarctica, as well as the socialist countries of Eastern Europe.

The USSR ignored this event.

“The lunar surface at the time of landing was brightly lit and resembled a desert on a hot day. Because the sky is black, one could imagine being on a sand-strewn sports field at night, under the spotlights. Neither stars nor planets, with the exception of the Earth, were visible, ”Armstrong described his impressions. About the same thing he said to the TV camera and shortly after reaching the surface: “Like a high-mountainous desert in the United States. Unique beauty! “Great loneliness!” echoed Aldrin, who joined Armstrong 20 minutes later.

“The ground on the surface is soft and loose,” Armstrong reported of his impressions, “I easily raise dust with the toe of my shoe. I only sink an eighth of an inch into the ground, but I can see my footprints.” “The grayish-brown soil of the Moon,” wrote the November (1969) issue of America magazine, published in the USSR, “turned out to be slippery, it stuck to the soles of the astronauts. When Aldrin inserted the pole into the ground, it seemed to him that the pole entered something damp. Subsequently, these "terrestrial" comparisons began to be used by skeptics to confirm the idea that the astronauts were not on the moon.

Returning to the lunar cabin, the astronauts pumped up oxygen, took off their spacesuits and, after resting, began to prepare for takeoff. The spent landing stage was undocked, and now the lunar module consisted of one takeoff stage. The total time the astronauts spent on the Moon was 21 hours and 37 minutes, of which the astronauts spent just over two hours outside the lunar cabin.

In orbit, the lunar compartment joined the main one, piloted by Michael Collins. He was destined for the most unenviable, but also the safest role in the lunar expedition - circling in orbit, waiting for his colleagues. Moving into the orbital compartment, the astronauts battened down the transfer hatch and undocked what was left of the lunar cabin. Now the spacecraft "Apollo 11" was one main block, which headed for Earth. The return trip was shorter than the trip to the Moon and was only two and a half days - falling to Earth is easier and faster than flying away from it.

The second moon landing took place on November 19, 1969. Apollo 12 crew members Charles Peter Conrad (the third flight into space; he made four of them in total) and Alan Laverne Bean stayed on the surface of the Moon for 31 hours and a half, of which 7.5 hours outside the spacecraft for two exits. In addition to installing scientific instruments, the astronauts dismantled a number of instruments from the American Surveyor-3 automatic spacecraft (ASA), which landed on the lunar surface in 1967, for delivery to Earth.

The Apollo 13 flight in April 1970 was unsuccessful. In flight, a serious accident occurred, there was a threat of failure of the LSS. Having forcedly canceled the landing on the Moon, the Apollo 13 crew flew around our natural satellite and returned to Earth in the same elliptical orbit. The commander of the ship, James Arthur Lovell, became the first person to fly to the moon twice (although he was never destined to visit its surface).

This seems to be the only flight to the moon that Hollywood has responded to with a feature film. Successful flights did not attract his attention.

The near-disaster with Apollo 13 made it necessary to pay increased attention to the reliability of all spacecraft onboard systems. The next flight under the lunar program took place only in 1971.

On February 5, 1971, American astronaut veteran Alan Bartlett Shepard and newcomer Edgar Dean Mitchell landed on the moon near the Fra Mauro crater. They went to the lunar surface twice (more than four hours each time), and the total time spent by the Apollo 14 module on the Moon was 33 hours and 24 minutes.

On July 30, 1971, the Apollo 15 module landed on the lunar surface with David Randolph Scott (the third flight into space) and James Benson Irvine. For the first time, astronauts used a mechanical vehicle on the Moon - the "moon car" - a platform with an electric motor with a power of only 0.25 horsepower. The astronauts made three excursions with a total duration of 18 hours and 35 minutes and traveled 27 kilometers on the Moon. The total time spent on the moon was 66 hours 55 minutes. Before starting from the moon, the astronauts left a television camera on its surface, which worked in automatic mode. She transmitted to the screens of terrestrial television the moment of takeoff of the lunar cabin.

The Lunar Vehicle was used by members of the next two expeditions. On April 21, 1972, Apollo 16 commander John Watts Young and lunar module pilot Charles Moss Duke landed at Descartes Crater. For Young, this was the second flight to the moon, but the first landing on it (in total, Young made six flights into space). Almost three days SC spent on the Moon. During this time, three excursions were made with a total duration of 20 hours and 14 minutes.

The last people to have walked on the moon to date, December 11-14, 1972, were Eugene Andrew Cernan (for whom, like Young, this was the second flight to the moon and the first landing on it) and Harrison Hagan Schmitt. The crew of Apollo 17 set a number of records: they spent 75 hours on the Moon, 22 of them outside spacecraft, traveled 36 km on the surface of the night star and brought back 110 kg of lunar rock samples.

By this point, the total cost of the Apollo program had exceeded $25 billion ($135 billion in 2005 prices), prompting NASA to curtail its further implementation. Scheduled flights on Apollo 18, -19 and -20 were cancelled. Of the three remaining Saturn-5 launch vehicles, one launched the only American Skylab orbital station into orbit in 1973, and the other two became museum exhibits.

The liquidation of the Apollo program and the cancellation of some other ambitious projects (in particular, a manned flight to Mars) were a disappointment for Wernher von Braun, who became NASA's deputy director of space flight planning in 1970, and may have hastened his death. Brown retired from NASA in 1972 and died five years later.

Having initially stimulated the start of the lunar programs of the USA and the USSR, the Cold War then directed the development of space technologies into the narrow channel of the arms race.

For the United States, the Space Shuttle program of reusable use became a priority, for the USSR - long-term orbital stations. It seemed that the world was heading irresistibly toward "star wars" in near-Earth space. The era of cosmic romance and the conquest of spaces was fading into the past...

5. Where does the doubt come from?

After several years, doubts began to be expressed: did the Americans really land on the moon? Now there is already a fairly large layer of literature and a rich film library proving that the Apollo program was a grandiose hoax. At the same time, there are two points of view among skeptics. According to one, the Apollo program did not carry out any space flights at all. The astronauts remained on Earth all the time, and the “moon shots” were filmed in a special secret laboratory created by NASA specialists somewhere in the desert. More moderate skeptics recognize the possibility of real flybys of the moon by the Americans, but the landing moments themselves are considered fake and film editing.

Adherents of this sensational hypothesis have developed a detailed argument. The strongest argument, in their opinion, is that in the footage of the landing of astronauts on the moon, the lunar surface does not look like (again, in their understanding) it should look like. So, they believe that stars should be visible in the pictures, since there is no atmosphere on the moon. They also pay attention to the fact that in some pictures, supposedly, the position of the shadows indicates a very close, within a few meters, location of the light source. They also note an excessively close and, as it were, cropped horizon line.

The next group of arguments is related to the "wrong" behavior of material bodies. So, the US flag set by the astronauts waved as if under gusts of wind, while there was a vacuum on the Moon. Pay attention to the strange movement of astronauts in spacesuits. They argue that under conditions of gravity six times less than the earth's astronauts had to move huge (almost a dozen meters) jumps. And they assure that the strange gait of the astronauts just imitated, under the conditions of terrestrial gravity, a “hopping” movement on the Moon with the help of ... spring mechanisms in spacesuits.

They suggest that almost all the astronauts who flew, according to the official version, to the Moon subsequently refused to talk about their flights, give interviews, or write memoirs. Many went crazy, died mysterious deaths, and so on. For skeptics, this is proof that the astronauts experienced terrible stress associated with the need to hide some terrible secret.

It is curious that for ufologists, the strange behavior of many astronauts of the “lunar detachment” serves to prove something completely different, namely, that on the Moon they allegedly made contact with an extraterrestrial civilization!

Finally, the last group of arguments is based on the thesis that the technologies of the late 1960s and early 1970s did not allow three people to make a manned flight to the Moon and return to Earth. They point to the insufficient power of the then launch vehicles, and most importantly (an irresistible argument in our time!) - to the imperfection of computers! And here the skeptics contradict themselves. Thus, they are forced to admit that in those days there were no opportunities for computer-graphic simulation of the course of the lunar expedition!

Supporters of the authenticity of the landings of man on the moon have an equally detailed system of counterarguments. In addition to pointing out the internal contradictions of the skeptical theory, as well as the fact that its arguments can be used to prove several mutually exclusive points of view at once, which is logically considered an automatic refutation of all of them, they provide a physical explanation for the noted "oddities".

The first is the lunar sky, where no stars are visible. Try looking up at a clear sky at night from the bright light of a street lamp. Can you see even one star? But they are there: as soon as you move into the shadow of the lantern, the stars will show through. Looking at the lunar world in the brightest (in a vacuum!) light of the Sun through powerful light filters, both the astronauts and the “eye” of the TV camera, of course, could only capture the brightest objects – the lunar surface, the lunar cabin and people in spacesuits.

The moon is almost four times smaller than the Earth, so the curvature of the surface there is greater, and the horizon line is closer than we are used to. The effect of proximity is enhanced by the absence of air - objects on the horizon of the Moon are visible as clearly as those located near the observer.

Fluctuations of the foil flag occurred, of course, not under the influence of the wind, but according to the principle of a pendulum - the shaft was stuck with force into the lunar soil. In the future, he received more impulses for oscillations from the steps of the astronauts. The seismograph installed by them immediately caught the ground shaking caused by the movement of people. These oscillations, like any others, had a wave nature and were accordingly transmitted to the flag.

When we see astronauts in space suits on TV screens, we are always amazed at their clumsiness in such a bulky design. And on the Moon, despite a sixfold lower gravity, they would not be able to fly with all their desire, which for some reason was expected of them. They tried to move by jumping, but then they found that the earth step (in spacesuits) is also acceptable on the Moon. On the screens, Armstrong easily lifted a heavy (on Earth) toolbox and said with childish delight: “This is where you can throw any thing far!” However, skeptics claim that the scene was feigned, and that the box from which the astronauts then took out scientific equipment was ... empty at that moment.

The hoax would have to be too grandiose and long-term, and more than one thousand scientists would have to devote more than one thousand scientists to the secret!

It is unlikely that even a totalitarian state is capable of exercising such strict control over such a mass of people and preventing information leakage. The crew members of Apollo 11 installed a laser reflector on the Moon, which was then used for laser ranging from the Earth and determining the exact distance to the Moon. Was the location session also fabricated? Or were the reflector and other devices that transmitted signals to Earth until the 1980s all installed by machines?

The astronauts of all six expeditions that landed (according to the official version) on the Moon brought to Earth a total of 380 kg of samples of lunar rocks and lunar dust (for comparison: Soviet and American AKA - only 330 grams, which proves a much higher efficiency of manned flights on compared with AKA for studies of celestial bodies). Were they all collected on Earth, and then passed off as lunar ones? Even those whose age is 4.6 billion years, what has no recognized analogues on Earth? However, skeptics say (and they are partly right) that there are no reliable methods for accurately determining the age of such ancient rocks. And all these centners of lunar soil were allegedly brought to Earth by machine guns. Then why is their weight three orders of magnitude higher than that brought by all other AKAs combined? And if they are terrestrial, then why is their composition identical to the lunar soil delivered by automata to Earth or analyzed by our Lunokhods on the Moon itself?

It is also noteworthy that skeptics concentrate their efforts mainly on refuting the authenticity of the first landing of a man on the moon. Whereas, in order to confirm their theory, they need to separately refute the authenticity of each of the six officially occurring landings. What they don't do

As for the imperfection of the then technologies, the “deadly” of this argument reflects the inferiority of the consciousness of modern civilized humanity, which has put itself in a fatal dependence on computers.

Just at the turn of the 1960-1970s. civilization began to drastically change the paradigm of its development. The attitude to conquer space was replaced by the attitude to the production and use of information, moreover, for utilitarian, consumer purposes. This caused a surge in the development of computer technology, but at the same time put an end to the external expansion of mankind. Along the way, in the same years, the general attitude towards scientific progress began to change - from enthusiastic it first became restrained, and then negative began to prevail. This change in public sentiment was well reflected (and perhaps, to a certain extent, shaped) by Hollywood cinema, one of the textbook images of which was a scientist whose experiments and discoveries become a terrible threat to people's safety.

Most modern people, brought up in the categories of linear progress, find it difficult to imagine that even 40-50 years ago our civilization was in some respects higher (I would even say loftier) than it is now, more idealistic. Including in the field of technologies related to penetration into extraterrestrial space. This was facilitated by the competition of alternative socio-economic systems. The virus of self-satisfied all-consuming consumerism has not yet completely killed the romance and heroism of struggle and expansion.

Therefore, all references to the impossibility for the Americans to build a lunar spacecraft in the 1960s are simply untenable. In those years, the United States really overtook the USSR in many areas of space research. So, another triumph of the overseas power was the AKA Voyager program. In 1977, two vehicles of this series were launched to the distant planets of the solar system. The first flew near Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, the second explored all four giant planets. Thousands of stunning images were transmitted to Earth, which bypassed the pages of all popular science publications. The result was sensational scientific discoveries, in particular, dozens of new satellites of the outer planets, the rings of Jupiter and Neptune, and others. Is this also a hoax?! By the way, communication with both ASCs, which are now at a distance of 90 astronomical units (14.85 billion km) from the Earth and are already exploring interstellar space, is still maintained.

So there is no reason to deny the ability of the civilization of the second half of the last century, including the United States, to make a series of manned flights to the moon. Moreover, a similar program was carried out in the USSR.

Its presence and the degree of its development serve as the most important proof of the authenticity of the event that took place 40 years ago.

6. Why did our astronauts never go to the moon?

One of the answers to the question posed is that the Soviet leadership, unlike the American one, did not concentrate its main efforts on this direction. The development of cosmonautics in the USSR after the successful launches of satellites and the first manned flights became "multi-vector". The functions of satellite systems were expanded, spacecraft for near-Earth flights were improved, ASCs were launched to Venus and Mars. It seemed that the first successes in themselves created a fairly solid and long-term backlog of Soviet leadership in this area.

The second reason is that our specialists failed to solve many technical problems that arose during the implementation of the lunar program. Thus, Soviet designers were unable to create a sufficiently powerful launch vehicle, an analogue of Saturn-5. The prototype of such a missile is the RN N-1 (on the picture)- suffered a series of disasters. After that, work on it, in connection with the already completed flights of Americans to the moon, was curtailed.

The third reason was that, paradoxically, it was in the USSR, unlike the United States, that there was real competition between the options for lunar programs between the joint design bureaus (OKB). The political leadership of the USSR was faced with the need to choose a priority project, and due to its scientific and technical incompetence, it could not always make a good choice. Parallel support of two or more programs led to the dispersion of human and financial resources.

In other words, in the USSR, unlike the USA, the lunar program was not unified.

It consisted of various, often multifunctional projects that never merged into one. The programs for flying around the moon, landing on the moon, and creating a heavy launch vehicle were implemented largely separately.

Finally, the leadership of the USSR considered the landing of a man on the moon exclusively in a political context. For some reason, the lag behind the United States in the implementation of a manned flight to the moon was for some reason assessed by him as a worse admission of defeat than an “excuse” that the USSR did not have a lunar program at all. Few people believed in the latter even then, and the absence of a hint of at least trying to repeat the achievement of the Americans was perceived both in our society and throughout the world as a sign of a hopeless lag behind the United States in the field of space technology.

The project LK-1 ("Lunar ship-1"), which provided for a flight around the moon with one astronaut on board the spacecraft, was signed by the head of OKB-52 Vladimir Nikolaevich Chelomey on August 3, 1964. It was guided by the UR500K launch vehicle developed in the same design bureau (a prototype of the subsequent Proton launch vehicle, successfully tested for the first time on July 16, 1965). But in December 1965, the Politburo decided to concentrate all the practical work on the lunar program in Sergei Korolev's OKB-1. There were presented two projects.

The L-1 project provided for a crew of two to fly around the moon. Another (L-3), signed by Korolev back in December 1964, is a flight to the Moon of a crew of two people, with one astronaut landing on the surface of the Moon. Initially, the term for its implementation was appointed by Korolev for 1967-1968.

In 1966, the Chief Designer dies unexpectedly during an unsuccessful operation. Vasily Pavlovich Mishin becomes the head of OKB-1. The history of the leadership and scientific and technical support of Soviet cosmonautics, the role of individuals in this is a special topic, its analysis would take us too far.

The first successful launch of the Proton-L-1 complex was carried out from Baikonur on March 10, 1967. A model of the module was launched into the orbit of the satellite, which received the official designation "Cosmos-146". By this time, the Americans had already conducted the first Apollo test in automatic mode for almost a year.

On March 2, 1968, the prototype L-1 under the official name "Zond-4" flew around the Moon, but the descent in the earth's atmosphere was unsuccessful. The subsequent two launch attempts were unsuccessful due to failures in the operation of the launch vehicle engines. Only on September 15, 1968, L-1 was launched on the flight path to the Moon under the name "Zond-5". However, the descent took place in an unplanned area. The atmospheric descent systems also failed Zond-6 upon its return in November 1968. Recall that already in October 1968, the Americans switched from automatic to manned flights under the Apollo program. And in December of the same year, the first triumphant flyby of the moon was made by Apollo 8.

In January 1969, the RN started to feel down again at the start. Only in August 1969 did the successful unmanned flight of Zonda-7 take place with a return to Earth in a given area. By this time, the Americans had already visited the moon ...

In October 1970, the Zonda-8 flight took place. Almost all technical problems have been solved. The next two devices of this series were already prepared for manned flights, but ... the program was ordered to be curtailed.

The L-3 project, intended for landing on the moon, had significant differences from the American one. The flight principle was the same. However, the more powerful LK engine did not require the cabin to be divided into landing and takeoff stages. Another difference was that the astronaut's transition between LOK and LK had to be carried out through open space. This was due to the fact that by that time, domestic cosmonautics had not yet solved the technical problems associated with the hermetic docking of two spacecraft. The first successful experience of this kind was made by ours only in 1971 when launching the Soyuz-11 spacecraft to the Salyut-1 orbital station. And already in March 1969, the Americans on Apollo 9 performed the first hermetic docking and undocking in history and the transition from one space module to another without a spacewalk. The need to create a lock chamber in the Soviet LOK and the presence of a pilot in a spacesuit there sharply limited the useful volume and payload of the entire lunar complex. Therefore, only two people were planned for the expedition, and not three, as with the Americans.

Tests of individual elements of the flight to the moon were initially carried out within the framework of the Soyuz and Cosmos projects. On September 30, 1967, the first docking of the Kosmos-186 and -187 unmanned vehicles in orbit was performed. In January 1969, Vladimir Shatalov on the Soyuz-4, Boris Volynov, Alexei Eliseev and Yevgeny Khrunov on the Soyuz-5 made the first docking of manned vehicles and the transition from one to another through outer space. The development of undocking, braking, acceleration and docking of the LK in near-Earth orbit continued even after the decision to cancel the manned flight was made in the early 1970s.

The main obstacle to the lunar project was the difficulty in creating the H-1 launch vehicle.

Her preliminary design was signed by Korolev back in 1962, and the Chief Designer made a note on the sketch: “We dreamed about this back in 1956-57.” With the creation of a heavy launch vehicle, hopes were associated not only with a flight to the Moon, but also with long-distance interplanetary flights.

The design of the H-1 launch vehicle was a five-stage (!) initial weight of 2750 tons. According to the project, the first three stages were supposed to bring a load with a total weight of 96 tons to the flight path to the Moon, which included, in addition to the lunar ship, two stages for maneuvering near the Moon, descending to its surface, lifting from it and flying away to Earth. The weight of the lunar ship itself, which consisted of the orbital compartment and the lunar cabin, did not exceed 16 tons.

The N-1 rocket, the first test of which took place in January 1969 (after the first flyby of the moon by the Americans), was plagued from beginning to end by fatal failures caused by engine failure. Not a single launch of the H-1 was successful. After the catastrophe during the fourth launch in November 1972, further work on the H-1 was stopped, although the causes of the accidents were identified and completely subject to elimination.

Back in 1966, Chelomey proposed an alternative project for a lunar expedition based on the creation of the UR700 launch vehicle (a further development of the UR500, that is, the Proton, which was never carried out). The flight pattern for this program resembled the original American project (which they later abandoned). It provided for a single-module lunar ship, without division into orbital and takeoff and landing compartments, with two astronauts on board. However, OKB-52 gave the green light only to the theoretical development of this project.

If it weren’t for the hasty political decision of the Soviet leadership, it can be argued that, despite all the technical problems, our cosmonauts would quite realistically be able to carry out the first flight around the moon in 1970-1971, and the first landing on the moon in 1973-1974. .

But at this time, after the successful flights of the Americans, the leaders of the CPSU cooled off towards the lunar program. This indicates a drastic change in their mentality. Is it possible to imagine that if the United States managed to get ahead of us in the development of the first satellite or the launch of the first cosmonaut, the Soviet space program would have been curtailed at an early stage? Of course not! In the late 50s - early 60s. this would be impossible!

But in the 70s, the leaders of the CPSU had other priorities. The need to pay special attention to the military component served only as a pretext for curtailing the lunar program (especially since the beginning of the 70s is characterized by a détente of international tension). From now on, the prestige of Soviet cosmonautics was based only on constantly updated records of flight duration. In 1974, as a result of corporate intrigues, Mishin was fired from the post of head of OKB-1. He was replaced by Valentin Glushko, who not only stopped all work on the H-1, even theoretical ones, but also ordered the destruction of copies of this launch vehicle ready for testing.

The question posed in the title of this section is quite appropriate to supplement with another one: why weren't our astronauts on Mars? More precisely, near Mars.

The fact is that the H-1 project was calculated as a multi-purpose one. This launch vehicle (which was planned only as the first in a family of heavy carriers) was developed in the future not only for a lunar ship, but also for a “heavy interplanetary ship” (TMK). This project provided for the launch of spacecraft into a heliocentric orbit, which made it possible to fly several thousand kilometers from Mars and return to Earth.

The development of the LSS of such a ship was carried out on Earth. Volunteer testers Manovtsev, Ulybyshev and Bozhko in 1967-1968. spent a whole year in a sealed chamber with an autonomous LSS. Similar experiments of much shorter duration began in the United States only in 1970. Subsequently, the many months spent by a number of Soviet crews on the Salyuts formed suspicions that the leadership of the USSR was preparing to carry out the "Martian program". Alas, it was only speculation. Such a program did not exist in reality. Work on the TMK was terminated at the same time as work on the H-1.

In principle, a manned flight around Mars with a return to Earth would have been quite realistic for the USSR already in the early to mid-1980s.

Of course, provided that all elements of the lunar program suitable for use in flight to Mars continued to develop and work on them did not stop in the 70s. The morale of such a flight would be comparable to the landing of the Americans on the moon, if not more. Alas, the later Soviet leadership once again missed a historic chance for a great country...

7. Is there a future for lunar expeditions?

This requires, first of all, a radical change in the mentality of modern civilization. Despite the occasional promises by the leaders of the United States or the leaders of our cosmonautics to organize a manned flight to Mars, it is clear that they are no longer perceived by society with such enthusiasm as 40-50 years ago the promises of the first flights into space and to the moon. George W. Bush announced the goal of returning Americans to the moon by 2020 and the subsequent flight to Mars. By that time, several presidents will already be replaced, and Bush, in case of non-fulfillment of his "destiny", as they say, bribes will be smooth.

In our time, space research and the conquest of world spaces have decisively shifted from priorities to the periphery of public interest in literally all countries of the world.

This is clearly seen in the proportion of messages of this kind in the general media stream. If in Soviet times almost every citizen of the USSR knew whether our cosmonauts were now in orbit and who exactly, now only a small minority knows for sure whether cosmonauts are currently on board the International Space Station. However, most probably do not even know what it is.

Meanwhile, the effectiveness of manned flights for scientific research was proved by the same Apollo expeditions. During the three days of their stay on the Moon, two astronauts managed to do the volume of scientific work, which exceeded by orders of magnitude those that were carried out by both of our lunar rovers in 15 months! The Apollo program was essential to scientific and technological progress. Many of her achievements were then used in a variety of projects. Testing the latest equipment in the conditions of deep space flights is a completely unique opportunity, fraught with a sharp leap forward in all scientific and technical fields. The multibillion-dollar costs of the Apollo program eventually paid off and made a profit thanks to the introduction of new technologies.

However, despite the projects of long-term manned stations on the Moon that appear from time to time, the governments of the leading powers of the world, either individually or together, are in no hurry to fork out for such programs. The point here is not only in stinginess, but also in the lack of ambition. Extraterrestrial spaces have ceased to excite and attract people. Mankind clearly needs additional incentives to activate the cosmic vector of its development.

Special for the Centenary

In 2020, Russian cosmonauts will fly to the moon. Such a statement was recently made by the leadership of Roskosmos, opening up our old wound. After all, the first manned flight to the moon in the USSR was planned back in 1968, but, alas, did not take place ... Why? For what reasons did we lose the “moon race” to the Americans at the end of the 60s, who managed to fly to the nearest satellite of the Earth several times? Or maybe the Russians still went to the moon, but the flight ended in a disaster, and therefore they hide the truth from us?

Lunar Team

The very idea - to send a man to the moon - first came to the mind of the Americans. In 1961, American President John F. Kennedy declared that it would be a matter of honor for the United States to be the first to go to the moon in order to take revenge in space after the flight of Yuri Gagarin and "wipe the nose" of the Soviets.

After that, the USSR also started talking about the Moon. The resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers on the lunar program was signed by the head of state Nikita Khrushchev in 1964. It was planned that in 1967 three manned spacecraft would first fly around the Moon, and in 1968 an astronaut would land on the satellite planet.

According to the developed scheme, only one Soviet cosmonaut, presumably Alexei Leonov, was supposed to set foot on the moon. It was assumed that the second crew member at that time would remain in the ship in lunar orbit. To reduce the weight of the lunar lander, the designers were going to abandon the orbital compartment for astronauts.

“This meant that the crew had to work and sleep in a shackled sitting position for seven days,- Pilot-cosmonaut Alexei Leonov later explained. “But we were ready for anything.” Leonov, who in 1965 went out into outer space, was appointed head of the "lunar group".

In total, there were three crews of two cosmonauts each: Alexei Leonov - Oleg Makarov, Valery Bykovsky - Nikolai Rukavishnikov, Pavel Popovich - Georgy Grechko. According to Leonov, Soviet cosmonauts prepared very seriously for the flight to the moon.

In the design office in Podlipki near Moscow, a super-simulator was created that imitates a spaceship. It was spinning on a huge centrifuge, and the astronauts were inside in a state of weightlessness. They learned to "steer" the ship manually in an emergency and automatic failure.

According to Leonov, the "lunar" cosmonauts needed to know all the stars of the southern hemisphere of the Earth well. "The landing approach takes place purely from the south side of the Earth, more precisely - from Antarctica", he explained. To study the southern sky, astronauts studied at the observatories of Georgia, Armenia and even Somalia.

“We worked out all the stages of the journey to the moon and back, like “Our Father”,- said Alexei Leonov. - And they began to wait for the order to arrive at Baikonur. However, time passed, but there was still no go-ahead ... ". As it turned out, the main problem, due to which the flight to the Moon was postponed, was connected with the launch vehicle: there was nothing to fly on, in fact.

Tsar Rocket

As it turned out, three leading design bureaus fought for the right to design a powerful rocket that could put a spacecraft into lunar orbit in the USSR: Sergey Korolev's OKB-1, Vladimir Chelomey's OKB-52, and Mikhail Yangel's OKB-586.

At first, there were endless disputes between them about the future of the ship. Sergei Korolev insisted on developing a new N-1 rocket, and Chelomey wanted to improve his Proton. Chelomey wanted to use nitrogen tetroxide as fuel, while Korolev wanted to use kerosene, oxygen and hydrogen.

Regarding the conflict between the leading designers, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov said this: “Very difficult relations and competition between Korolev and Chelomey did not benefit the common cause. They were constantly pushed against each other, opposed to each other. The disagreement ended in the defeat of the "lunar program" itself.

In the mid-60s, Sergei Korolev, who then enjoyed great prestige, won the design war. OKB-1 was instructed to develop the H-1 lunar launch vehicle, which was dubbed the "Tsar Rocket": height - 105 meters, base diameter - 17 meters, weight - about 3 thousand tons.

However, in 1966, Sergei Korolev died suddenly in the midst of his work. “For us astronauts, it was almost the end of the world,- said Alexei Leonov. - It was Korolev who was most "charged" to fly to the moon. After him, the “moon business” was left to chance.”

According to Leonov, Korolev's successor, academician Vasily Mishin, although he was a good conductor of "royal ideas", but "could not budge anything." “Mishin was a very good engineer and analyst, but a useless leader, Leonov wrote. - And not a strategist ... "

Four tests of the N-1 rocket in 1969-1972 ended in accidents. Here is how Alexey Leonov spoke about this:

“At the first start, the engines worked for 20 seconds and ... the bottom blew out. A fire started. I had to give the command to blow up the rocket at an altitude of 80 kilometers. The second rocket generally crashed after 10 seconds. Something happened to the third one. In short, a continuous streak of failures due to the absurdity of the design decisions laid down ... "

The details of these disasters are classified and little known. Somehow the details of one of them, which happened on July 3, 1969, were leaked to the press:

“A few seconds after launch, one of the engines exploded, and the rocket crashed into the launch complex. The Baikonur steppe was trembling, rain of hot metal poured from the sky. People who were present at the launch fell like peas into shelters. In the morning the whole steppe was strewn with the corpses of dead animals and birds.

The most annoying thing is that shortly after this catastrophe at Baikonur, namely, on July 20, 1969, American cosmonauts had already landed on the moon and were the first in the world to walk on the satellite planet. The lunar race was lost by our country.

Moon complex

According to academician Vasily Mishin, we objectively could not beat the USA in the fight for the Moon.

« Our gut was thin and there was no money! Mishin said. - We were able to launch vehicles only into near-Earth orbit. A flight to the moon is an order of magnitude higher costs! The United States at that time could have made such huge expenditures, but we could not ... "

The same point of view was shared by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. " The US Congress allocated an astronomical sum of $25 billion for the exploration of the moon. The USSR spent 2.5 billion rubles on the lunar program. Based on these figures, it is necessary to compare what they did and what we did ... "

According to Vasily Mishin, we could really fly to the moon only in 1976. The last test of the N-1 rocket in 1974 was more successful than the previous ones: it exploded only seven seconds before the separation of the first stage, having worked 95 percent of the allotted time. According to him, half a step remained before victory - it was necessary to improve the engine a little more.

However, in 1974, the leadership of the USSR decided to first suspend, and then finally stop the lunar program. Two rockets, almost ready for testing, were dismantled, and work at hundreds of factories in the space industry came to a standstill.

Academician Vasily Mishin believed that the country's leadership lost interest in the moon immediately after the Americans outran us in the lunar race. "If you're late, if you're not the first, then that's it..." he said in an interview.

There is also a version that we ceded the Moon to the Americans in exchange for their political concessions. Allegedly, after the Soviet lunar program was curtailed, a detente began in relations between the USSR and the USA. And all this allegedly was the result of certain political agreements.

It is possible that it was so. But since then, the Moon has remained for Russian cosmonauts an unconquered peak and an unfulfilled dream. Now we can only hope that at least in 2020 our dreams of flying to the moon will finally come true.

On July 20, 1969, a man stepped on another celestial body for the first time. Along with the first manned flight into space, this event is one of the key events in the entire history of the world. Human intellect, will and curiosity helped usher in a new space age.

The most famous people who have visited the moon, of course, were those who first landed on it. They were Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. But the crew members of Apollo 11 are not the only ones who have been on our satellite. In total, 12 astronauts have visited the surface of the Moon during six landings.

Apollo 11, July 20, 1969

Neil Armstrong; Edwin Aldrin

Six hours after landing on the moon, Neil Armstrong - the first man on the moon - said his famous phrase: "That`s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" (This is one small step for a man, but a huge step for mankind) . Aldrin and Neil were on the surface of the moon for 2.5 hours. And if Armstrong was the first person to set foot on another celestial body, then Aldrin became the first person to urinate on another celestial body. Of course, in a special tank in a spacesuit.

Apollo 12, November 19, 1969

Charles Conrad; Alan Bean

After the successful first landing of a man on the moon, a second flight soon followed. Charles Conrad walked on the moon for 3 hours and 39 minutes, during which he collected samples of lunar soil and performed an experiment with the solar wind. Alan Bean spent 2 hours and 58 minutes on the surface of the moon. His task was to place a television camera on the surface in order to transmit to Earth a color picture with video footage of our satellite. However, during the installation, the camera lens was directed towards the Sun for several seconds, because of which it failed, so earthlings had to be content with photographs of the lunar surface.

Apollo 14, February 5, 1971

Alan Shepard; Edgar Mitchell

On his first day on the moon, Shepard was out of the ship for 4 hours and 49 minutes, setting up scientific equipment and collecting rocks from the surface. On their second day on the Moon, Mitchell and Shepard traveled to nearby Cone Crater and planted scientific instruments on the Moon's surface. Their exit lasted 4 hours and 35 minutes.

Apollo 15, July 31, 1971

David Scott; James Irvine

The Apollo 15 mission involved staying on the lunar surface for 3 days. For the first time, astronauts slept in the lunar module without spacesuits, and traveled across the surface in a specially designed lunar rover. Therefore, it is not surprising that the time spent by David Scott and James on the surface of the Earth's satellite is more than 18 and a half hours. The total distance that the astronauts traveled on the Lunomobile is 27.76 km, and the maximum travel speed reached 13 km/h.

James Irwin and the lunar rover | NASA

Apollo 16, April 20, 1972

Charles Duke; John Young

The astronauts remained outside the lunar module for a total of 20 hours and 15 minutes. In this mission, a record was set for the mass of scientific instruments delivered to the Moon - as much as 563 kg. Charles and John were on our satellite for 3 days, and the result of their work was travel to the Stone and Smokey mountains, the North Ray crater and collecting samples of lunar soil.

Apollo 17, December 11, 1972

Eugene Cernan; Harrison Schmitt

Apollo 17 is the last flight to the moon to date, during which the landing of people on the surface was carried out. The crew set two records at once: the maximum number of soil samples brought to Earth is 110.5 kg, and the longest time on the surface of the Moon is 22 hours 3 minutes.

Eugene Cernan is the last man to walk on the moon | NASA

Editorial opinion:

One often hears that the moon landing was faked by the Americans in order to force the USSR to spend huge sums on the space program and, ultimately, ruin it. Sometimes it seems that people who shout that the Apollo 11 mission was filmed in Hollywood sets simply forget or do not know about the existence of five more lunar landings, the veracity of which is beyond doubt. It is our deep conviction that such events and achievements have no political or national boundaries. We need to stop supporting stupid arguments and move together towards new discoveries and worlds that await man in deep space.

Illustration: depositphotos.com

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