Block of the lunar program of the USSR. Soviet lunar programs

The Moon landing was broadcast live all over the world, with the exception of the USSR and China. There is a widespread legend, which was outlined by the Soviet journalist and popularizer of science Yaroslav Golovanov in his book “The Truth about the Apollo Program.” He wrote: “Late in the evening of July 21, 1969, on Central Television, if my memory serves me right, they showed the comedy film “The Pig Farmer and the Shepherd.” At this time, all of humanity, with bated breath, watched the first landing of earthlings on the Moon. We then showed disrespect not for the astronauts, not for the country that sent them, but for ourselves...” But at this moment, 5:56 am Moscow time, the USSR Central Television was not broadcasting at all. At that time, the broadcast did not start until 8 am.

The take-off stage of the lunar cabin with two astronauts on board launched from the surface of the Moon.

This happened at 20:54. Moscow time. After entering the Moon's orbit and maneuvering, the cabin must move to the orbit of the main module of Apollo 11 and dock with it.

At 15:11 Washington time on Sunday, July 20, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin separated the lunar compartment from the command compartment, in which Michael Collins remained, and began an independent flight.

After about 56 minutes, they turned on the deceleration engine and moved the lunar compartment onto a trajectory towards the landing site. One of the most important phases of the Apollo 11 flight program has begun.

Even looking at the TV screen, you can feel the tension engulfing the space center in Houston. The lunar compartment is rapidly descending. At first he flies as if on his stomach, with his steel spider legs forward. The astronauts lie face down in their niche. Then the cabin gradually assumes a horizontal position. The astronauts report that everything is going well on board. The connection with them never stops. Armstrong's distant voice is heard:

- We are descending according to plan. 20 kilometers to the surface of the Moon... 18... 15...

There are a few minutes left before landing.

- A thousand feet! - exclaims the controller at the command post in Houston. - 1500 feet!.. 100 feet!..

“40 feet left,” Armstrong reports from the lunar compartment. - The engine raises clouds of dust from the surface of the Moon. We see our own shadow.

How will the Moon meet them? Will the lunar cabin fall on its side? Instruments in Houston record the astronauts' pulse: Aldrin's is 130 beats per minute, Armstrong's is 150.

- The engine is off! - Armstrong's visibly excited voice can be heard. - Let's sit down!

There is a pause. The clock hand shows a quarter past five (Washington time).

- Hello, Houston! This is the Sea of ​​Tranquility base speaking. "Eagle" (code name for the lunar compartment) has landed!

“You made everyone in Houston turn green with excitement,” they answer from Earth. - Now we have taken a breath. Let me tell you that everyone here now has smiles on their faces.

“Keep in mind, there are also two smiles on the moon,” Armstrong jokes.

“Don’t forget another one in space,” comes the voice of Michael Collins from the command compartment cockpit. Collins asks that you inform him about everything that happens in the landing area.

The Eagle landed about four miles from its intended target in the southwestern part of the Sea of ​​Tranquility. Judging by the further stories of the astronauts, the landing was not easy.

“We descended directly onto a crater the size of a football field,” Armstrong reported 5 minutes after landing. “There were a lot of huge stones around.” I had to switch to manual control to select another landing site.

A few minutes later, looking out the window, Aldrin gave the first description of the area in which the lunar compartment landed:

- There is a whole collection of gray stones around various shapes. There are so many stones here!

Standing at another window, Armstrong continued to describe the landing area:

- It is a relatively flat surface with many craters ranging from 5 to 50 feet in diameter. A series of rock ridges 20-30 feet high. Thousands of small craters 1-2 feet in diameter. Directly in front of us are several 2 foot high shafts. There is a hill in the distance. It could be half a mile or a mile away.

At the request of the astronauts, the Houston Space Center agreed to shorten their rest time and allowed them to leave the lunar compartment on the lunar surface several hours earlier than planned.

Late in the evening Washington time (in Moscow it was early morning on July 21), the cosmonauts began depressurizing the cabin. Instead of the 15 minutes planned, it took more than an hour. On the radio, Armstrong and Aldrin could be heard talking to each other, inspecting and testing on each other the space suits, pressure helmets and life support systems that fit in the backpack on their backs. Finally, Armstrong’s voice is heard:

- Ready to go to the surface.

The cabin hatch opens, but the astronauts are in no hurry. They need to get comfortable. A minute passes, then another.

“I’m starting to leave,” Armstrong reports.

Aldrin helps him crawl on his knees to the hatch. The astronaut begins a slow, careful descent along a 9-step staircase to the surface of the Moon. On the way down, he opens another hatch that stores tools, plastic bags for lunar soil, a special shovel for working on soil, and a television camera. Edwin Aldrin turns on the camera from inside the cabin, and an image transmitted from the Moon appears on the TV screen. At first it's hard to make anything out. Then we realize that we see the lunar surface and the stairs of the lunar cabin. The image is not very clear, as if in a fog.

Suddenly we see a man's foot step on the step. Here's the second leg. Armstrong descends, facing the cockpit. At the last step he stops and “tests” the ground with his left foot. Now he is already standing on the lunar surface, without taking his right hand off the ladder.

He takes the first step, a small step, cautious and uncertain.

The right hand is still on the stairs. But the first step has been taken. And we hear the words of the astronaut, the first words of a man on the moon:

- One small step of a person is a huge step of humanity.

Armstrong steps away from the cockpit. His movements resemble those of a diver on seabed. And he himself in his spacesuit looks like a diver. There is a rope behind him, held by Aldrin, who remains in the cabin. This is in case of surprises.

“I don’t have any difficulty in moving,” the astronaut reports. “It’s even easier here than during training on Earth.”

His first task on the lunar surface after "gaining confidence" is to take a sample of lunar soil. He takes it with a special spatula, we see how he puts it in a plastic bag and puts it in a pocket sewn above the knee of his left leg. His movements become more confident and faster. He goes further and further and finally disappears beyond the frame of the television screen.

Suddenly he appears on the screen again, and the audience on Earth cannot help but cry out in surprise: he is running. But not the way they run on Earth. This is how movies run in slow motion on the screen. He takes another bag for soil samples from the storage hatch and again goes beyond the screen frame.

Edwin Aldrin appears from the cockpit hatch. He descends more confidently than his predecessor. Once again the audience gasps in amazement as Aldrin jumps off the last two steps.

He immediately climbs the stairs and jumps again.

Now there are two astronauts on the TV screen. Armstrong jumps twice in place and even tries to sit down, but the suit interferes with him.

Aldrin walks around the lunar cabin, inspects it and reports to Earth that he found no damage.

Armstrong removes the television camera from its socket in the storage hatch, carries it a few meters from the cabin and installs it on a tripod. Now we see the entire lunar cabin, the close, uneven lunar horizon. All around is a lifeless, kind of pockmarked desert, all covered in pockmarked craters. Large boulders and stone ridges are visible, which Armstrong spoke about immediately after landing.

The astronauts worked on the surface of the Moon for several hours. They installed a laser-radar reflector to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon and study irregularities in the Earth's rotation. They spread a sheet of aluminum foil to detect traces of “noble gases” - helium, argon, neon, and conducted other scientific experiments.

Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins successfully completed the tasks of the first half of their mission. Their courage is admirable.

The commander of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, blue-eyed, with a youthful haircut and a shy smile, according to everyone who knows him, has an enviable composure, restraint and quick reaction.

This silent and somewhat phlegmatic civilian test pilot had already twice during his stay in the cosmonaut corps successfully emerged from very dangerous situations. In March 1966, he managed to prevent a disaster spaceship Gemini 8, which he commanded. This happened during an attempt to dock the ship with one of the stages of the launch vehicle. The flight then had to be aborted, and Armstrong safely landed Gemini 8 in the waters Pacific Ocean. Last year, Armstrong flew in a simulator. Suddenly he began to spin and fall. Armstrong managed to bail out.

He is a native of the small town of Wapakoneta in Ohio (about 7 thousand inhabitants). At age 16, before he could even drive a car, Neil Armstrong received his airplane license. To be able to pay $9 an hour for training at a private flying club, Neil worked as a delivery boy at a pharmacy. Since then, for the rest of his life he connected himself with the air, and then with space.

They say about Edwin Aldrin that his brain is like an electronic computer. Before becoming an astronaut, Aldrin successfully graduated from the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States and defended his dissertation, the topic of which was the docking of ships in space. In November 1966, he was a member of the crew of the Geminai 12 spacecraft, leaving the ship at open space.

Michael Collins, a sociable and cheerful person, is also no stranger to space. He piloted the Gemini 10 spacecraft, which orbited the Earth 43 times in July 1966. Collins was scheduled to fly with Borman on Apollo 8 last December, but fell ill and was replaced. He underwent two major spinal surgeries and, through willpower, returned to the astronaut family.

When you read about them in local magazines, see a movie made about them, you notice that these people are very similar to Soviet cosmonauts. They are also simple and sociable. They are also courageous and dedicated to their cause - the conquest of space.

...Now, the astronauts are resting inside the lunar cabin. Tomorrow is an equally busy day.

Also on the last page of Pravda, under the heading “The First Lunar Expedition,” an interview with geochemist A.P. was published. Vinogradov to a newspaper correspondent.

In addition, congratulatory statements from Soviet officials, scientists and cosmonauts addressed to the Americans were printed.

Viktor Frank spoke about the coverage of the lunar landing in the Soviet media on July 27, 1969 on Radio Liberty. He said: "Earthlings on the Moon." Under this headline, Pravda reported last Tuesday about the brilliant landing of American astronauts. I think that I was not the only one who was pleased with the attitude of the body of the CPSU Central Committee to achieve the Americans. And it’s especially good that the editors of Pravda called the American cosmonauts “earthlings,” that is, they presented them not as citizens of a state with which the Soviet Union, to put it mildly, has its own special scores to settle, but as fellow citizens on planet Earth. It is unlikely that I can be accused of excessive causticism if I express the assumption that if it were not American but Soviet cosmonauts who landed on the Moon first, then Pravda would hardly call them “earthlings.”

A good description of Soviet publications about the lunar expedition was given by comrade S.P. Korolev, Soviet space designer V.P. Mishin in his brochure “Why didn’t we fly to the Moon?”, published in 1990. He wrote that “the US successes in landing American astronauts on the surface of the Moon were illuminated by our means mass media clearly one-sided and insufficient. Silent real facts, we presented the state of affairs in such a way that work on a manned flight to the Moon had not been carried out in the USSR and our efforts were focused only on its research using automatic spacecraft. Moreover, we even began to argue that in the study of the Moon it is possible to get by only with automatic devices, that there is nothing for a person to do on the Moon.”

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Space exploration in the middle of the last century was an extremely important matter for world powers, because it directly testified to their strength and power. The priority of developments in the space industry was not only not hidden from citizens, but, on the contrary, was emphasized in every possible way, instilling a sense of respect and pride for their country.

Despite the desire of many countries to take part in this difficult and interesting task, the main serious struggle took place between two superpowers - the Soviet Union and the United States of America.

The first victories in the space race were for the USSR

The series of successes of the Soviet cosmonautics became an open challenge to the United States, forcing America to speed up work in the field of space exploration and find a way to beat its main competitor, the USSR.

• first artificial satellite lands - Soviet Sputnik-1 (October 4, 1957) USSR;
• the first animal flights into space - the astronaut dog Laika, the first animal launched into Earth orbit! (1954 - November 3, 1957) USSR;
• first manned flight into space - Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (April 12, 1961).

And yet, the competition for space continued!

First people on the moon

Today, almost everyone knows that America managed to seize the initiative in the space race by launching its astronauts on. The first manned spacecraft to successfully land on the moon back in 1969 was the American spacecraft Apollo 11, with a crew of astronauts on board: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin.

Many of you remember the photo of Armstrong proudly planting the US flag on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969. The American government was triumphant that it had managed to overtake the Soviet space pioneers in conquering the Moon. But history is full of conjectures and assumptions, and some facts haunt critics and scientists to this day. And to this day, the question is being discussed that the American ship, in all likelihood, reached the Moon, took it, but did the astronauts actually land on its surface? There is a whole caste of skeptics and critics who do not believe in the American landing on the Moon, however, let’s leave this skepticism to their conscience.

However, the Soviet spacecraft Luna-2 reached the Moon for the first time on September 13, 1959, that is, Soviet spacecraft ended up on the Moon 10 years earlier than the landing of American cosmonauts on the Earth’s satellite. And therefore it is especially offensive that few people know about the role of Soviet designers, physicists, and cosmonauts in the exploration of the Moon.

But a huge amount of work was done, and the results were achieved much earlier than Armstrong’s victorious march. The USSR pennant was delivered to the surface of the Moon a decade before a person set foot on its surface. September 13, 1959 space station Luna 2 reached the planet after which it was named. The world's first spacecraft to reach the Moon (space station Luna-2) landed on the surface of the Moon in the Mare Mons region near the craters Aristyllus, Archimedes and Autolycus.

A completely logical question arises: if the Luna-2 station reached the Earth’s satellite, then there should have been Luna-1 as well? There was, but its launch, carried out a little earlier, turned out to be not so successful and, having flown past the Moon... But even with this outcome, very significant scientific results were obtained during the flight of the Luna-1 station:

• Using ion traps and particle counters, the first direct measurements of solar wind parameters were made.
• Using an onboard magnetometer, the Earth's outer radiation belt was recorded for the first time.
• It was established that the Moon does not have a significant magnetic field.
• The Luna-1 spacecraft became the first spacecraft in the world to reach the second escape velocity.

The launch participants were awarded the Lenin Prize; the people did not know their heroes by name, but the common cause - the honor of the country - was a priority.

USA lands first people on the moon

What about the USA? Yuri Gagarin's flight into space was a serious blow for America, and in order not to remain forever in the shadow of the Russians, a goal was set - and although the Americans lost the race to land the first spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, they had a chance to be the first to land astronauts on the Earth's satellite ! Work on improving the spacecraft, spacesuits and necessary equipment proceeded by leaps and bounds, the American government attracted all the intellectual and technical potential of the country, and, without skimping, spent billions of dollars on development. All NASA resources were mobilized and thrown into the furnace of science for a great purpose.

The step of an American citizen to the Moon is the only opportunity to emerge from the shadows, to catch up with the Soviet Union in this race. It is possible that America would not have been able to realize its ambitious plans, but at that time there was a change in the party leader in the USSR, and the leading designers - Korolev and Chelomey - could not come to a common opinion. Korolev, being an innovator by nature, was inclined to use the latest developments engines, and his colleague advocated for the old but proven Proton. Thus, the initiative was lost and the first to officially set foot on the surface of the Moon were American astronauts.

Did the USSR give up in the lunar race?

Even though Soviet cosmonauts failed to land on the Moon in the 20th century, the USSR did not give up in the race to explore the Moon. So already in 1970, the automatic interplanetary station “Luna-17” carried on board the world’s first, unprecedented, planetary rover, capable of fully operating in conditions of a different gravity of the moon. It was called “Lunokhod-1” and was intended to study the surface, properties and composition of the soil, radioactive and x-ray radiation of the Moon. Work on it was carried out at the Khimki Machine-Building Plant named after. S.A. Lavochkin, led by Babakin Nikolai Grigorievich. The sketch was ready in 1966, and all design documentation was completed by the end of the next year.

Lunokhod 1 was delivered to the surface of the Earth's satellite in November 1970. The control center was located in Simferopol, in the Space Communications Center and included the control panel of the crew commander, the lunar rover driver, the antenna operator, the navigator, and the operational information processing room. The main problem was the signal time delay, which interfered with full control. The Lunokhod worked there for almost a year, until September 14, it was on this day that the last, successful communication session took place.

The Lunokhod did a great job of studying the planet entrusted to it, working much longer than planned. A huge number of photographs, lunar panoramas, etc. were transmitted to Earth. Years later, in 2012, the International Astronomical Union gave names to all twelve craters encountered on the path of Lunokhod 1 - they received male names.

By the way, in 1993, “Lunokhod 1” was put up for auction at Sotheby’s, the stated price was five thousand dollars. The auction ended at a much higher amount - sixty-eight and a half thousand US dollars; the buyer was the son of one of the American astronauts. It is characteristic that the precious lot rests on the territory of the Moon; in 2013 it was discovered in photographs taken by an orbital American probe.

To summarize, it can be noted that the first people to land on the Moon (1969) were the Americans, here is a list of US astronauts who landed: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott, James Irwin , John Young, Charles Duke, Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt. Neil Armstrong lived a long life and died on August 25, 2012 at the age of 82, still retaining the title of the first man to set foot on the moon...

But the first spaceships that conquered the Moon (1959) were Soviet; here the primacy undoubtedly belongs to the Soviet Union and Russian designers and engineers.

In a previous article about the film “Apollo 18”, the Soviet lunar module “Progress” was mentioned. According to the description of the film, it was on it that the only Soviet cosmonaut arrived on the Moon before the Americans (or a little later) and died heroically, fighting for his life against an alien threat.

In fact, the Soviet module is an almost exact copy of the L3 project, the development of which has been carried out since 1963, and the name “Progress” was then assigned not to it, but to the new rocket launcher. In principle, in the context of the film, such details do not matter and we must pay tribute to our American film colleagues - L3 was executed simply “excellently”. Therefore, we need to talk about this design in more detail.

So, as mentioned earlier, the development of the L3 lunar landing module began in 1963, almost simultaneously with the deployment of the Soyuz program. It was they who were supposed to deliver Soviet cosmonauts to the Moon, but they failed to complete this work. As a result, Soyuz became famous as a means of delivering the most cosmonauts. different countries into low-Earth orbit. As for the lunar landing module L3, its fate was as follows.

Due to the lack of a carrier suitable for power, engineers had to limit themselves to a layout designed for only one cosmonaut. Compare the sizes of the Soviet and American lunar modules (figure).

Structurally, L3 (also called LK - lunar ship) consisted of two sections:

– lunar cabin: the astronaut’s chair was located at the rear wall, controls were located on the right and left, and a large round porthole was made in the center;
– instrument module: it was disc-shaped and housed a control system, radio equipment, a power management system and equipment for docking.

The bottleneck of the LC, not counting its modest dimensions, was the impossibility of a direct transfer of the astronaut from the LOK (the lunar orbital ship that was supposed to deliver the expedition). In other words, the scheme of actions after entering low-Earth orbit was presented as follows.

Astronauts put on spacesuits different types(LOK pilot – “Orlan”, LK pilot – “Krechet-94”) and move to the living compartment, which is later used as an airlock.

Next, the LC pilot, using the handrails, moves along the outer surface of the LC to his ship. For greater convenience, both hatches were placed opposite each other. After this, the LC is separated from the LOC and descends to the surface of the Moon.

At an altitude of 16 km, the braking engines are turned on, and at an altitude of 3-4 km, the upper stage “D” is separated from the module, after which the LC performs a “dead loop”.

Such tricks were necessary so that the landing radar of the lunar ship would not mistake the separated block “D” for the lunar surface and the automatic activation of the rocket block “E” would not work ahead of time. The landing itself was carried out by the LK pilot himself, who had to use both automatic and manual control systems.

After resting and checking the operation of the equipment, the astronaut went out to the lunar surface to collect samples. The Krechet-94 spacesuit was designed for 4 hours of autonomous stay on the Moon. During this time, the cosmonaut had to install scientific instruments and the USSR national flag on the Moon, collect samples of lunar soil, conduct a television report, and photograph and film the landing area.

After spending no more than 24 hours on the Moon, the astronaut had to leave the planet. At the start, both engines of block “E” were turned on, and in the case of normal operation, one of them was subsequently turned off. Then the LC entered lunar orbit and, using the Contact system, docked with the LOK. Further, all the astronaut’s actions were carried out in reverse order like before landing on the moon. The return journey to Earth should have taken no more than 3.5 days, and the total duration of the expedition was calculated at 11-12 days.

As we see, American filmmakers were right in many ways. The LC module landed in the crater on sunny side and the Soviet cosmonaut apparently completed the main part of the program to stay on the lunar surface. By the way, not only the LC itself was successfully reproduced, but also the “Krechet-94” spacesuit.

For a more detailed study of this topic, there is a separate article “Spacesuits for the Soviet lunar program” (PDF format). Now all that remains from this epoch-making program are the modules for bench tests and one of the samples of the Krechet-94 spacesuit. The latter, moreover, is a museum exhibit, which cannot be said about the LC module.

Towards the end of the story about the Soviet lunar module LK - a few frames from the film “Apollo 18”. Let's watch, evaluate, enjoy...

Why didn't we end up on the moon? Most often you can hear about the imperfection of the technological base of Soviet industry, which was unable to create a rocket and spacecraft for the lunar project. It was reported that the Soviet Union was doomed to lose to the United States in the lunar race. But this is not entirely true. The main reason for the failure of the most expensive space project (4 billion rubles in 1974 prices) was the inconsistency of the actions of various departments and the ambitions of a number of leaders of that period.

Why did we need the Moon?

In reality, the Soviet lunar program was a symmetrical response to the American lunar program. The leaders of OKB-1 were absolutely not interested in the moon. Korolev and the N-1 rocket project were a modernized version of an earlier royal project. Intended for the delivery of a hydrogen super-bomb and for the launch of large-sized orbital complexes, the dimensions of which were supposed to be several times larger than the Soyuz and Mir that appeared later. It was completely unfeasible to implement the lunar program.

But the CPSU Central Committee decided to accept the challenge of the Americans. In 1960, a decree was issued by the Government Decree of June 23, 1960 “On the creation of powerful launch vehicles, satellites, spacecraft and space exploration in 1960-1967.” was planned to take place in the 1960s. design development and the necessary amount of research in order to create in the coming years a new space rocket system with a launch mass of 1000-2000 tons, ensuring the launch of heavy interplanetary spacecraft into orbit around the Earth