Category Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration

Russia flew a third series of moon probes. These have no direct American comparator. Called the Ye-6LS, little is known about them. Only an outline sketch of Luna 14 has been released (no photographs), showing that it was similar in design to the Ye-6LF. The purpose of the Ye-6LS series was to test out communications between moon orbit and the deep space tracking network, employing the systems to be used later by the manned lunar orbiter, the LOK. Two scientific instruments were also carried: one to measure charged solar particles, the other cosmic rays. One engineering experiment was also carried: more drive gears and lubricants, to test systems to be used on the upcoming series of lunar rovers.

This programme was sufficiently important for three Ye-6LS probes to be flown. The first was launched on 17th May 1967. It was intended that this spacecraft go into a high-Earth orbit reaching out to the full lunar distance, but away from the direction of the moon. In the event, the fourth stage cut out prematurely, leaving Cosmos 159

in a highly irregular orbit, 260 km by 60,710 km. Although falling far short of that intended, the altitude probably was sufficient for a useful test of the LOK commun­ication systems. The second Ye-6LS mission also failed. Block I cut off prematurely 524 sec into the mission on 7th February 1968 when the fuel inlet control jammed and it fell short of Earth orbit.

The only fully successful mission, Luna 14, was flown out to the moon on 7th April 1968 and entered lunar orbit of 160 km by 870 km, 42°, 2 hr 40 min. Russian news agencies said almost nothing about it, except that it carried out studies of the stability of radio signals and the moon’s gravitational field. No one believed them at the time and assumed it was a failed photography mission. In reality, they were telling the truth. It was a test of communications (‘radio signals’) and a mission designed to measure the perturbation of lunar orbits by mascons. Although the discovery of mascons has always been assumed to be American, in fact it can be attributed to Luna 10. Mascons worried both sides equally, for they pulled orbiting spacecraft out of their predicted orbit by several kilometres. These distortions could make all the difference to where a spacecraft was targeted for landing and to the success of subsequent link-ups in lunar orbit. Apollo 11’s Eagle nearly ran out of fuel because its targeting was off-course and Neil Armstrong had to fly the lunar module far downrange to find a suitable area. Instruments were also carried to measure solar wind, cosmic rays and charged particles in lunar orbit, although their outcomes were not publicized. The Russians appear to have been well satisfied with Luna 14’s radio communications tests and mascon mapping, but, because it revealed much about their manned lunar ambitions, drew little attention to the mission.

Ye-6S, Ye-6LF, Ye-6LS series: scientific outcomes (with Zond 3)

Very weak magnetic field around the moon (distortion of the interplanetary magnetic field?). No lunar magnetic poles.

No differences in radiation emission levels between lunar lowlands and highlands.

Cosmic radiation at 5 particles/cm2/sec.

198 meteoroid impacts (Luna 10).

No gaseous atmosphere around moon found.

Finding of anomalous zones of mass concentrations below lunar surface disturbing the lunar orbit (mascons) (Luna 10); characterization of such zones (Luna 14).

Broad composition of lunar rocks (basaltic).

Selection of landing sites for manned and rover landings.

Infrared, ultraviolet scan of lunar surface (Zond 3).

Assessment of reflectivity of lunar surface and inferred density.

Prime landing crew: Leonov (commander, LK), Oleg Makarov (flight engineer, LOK).

Second landing crew: Valeri Bykovsky (LK), Nikolai Rukhavishnikov (flight engineer, LOK).

Third landing crew: Pavel Popovich (LK) and Vitaly Sevastianov (flight engineer, LOK).

Reserves: Yevgeni Khrunov (LK), Viktor Patsayev, Anatoli Voronov, Alexei Yeliseyev (LOK).

COSMONAUTS SELECTED TO LAND THE LK ON THE MOON

First landing mission: Alexei Leonov.

Second: Valery Bykovsky.

Third: Pavel Popovich.

By now, the training situation had at last improved. Leonov and others had flown adapted versions of the Mil-4 helicopter (variously called the Mil-9 and the V-10) for simulated lunar landings. These were quite hazardous, for they had to learn to land the Mils with the helicopter blades barely rotating. They would bring the Mil down to 110 m, the hover point for the lunar landing. At this stage, they would cut the engine, adjusting the blades to smoothen the touchdown. Normally, Alexei Leonov pointed out, this was a completely prohibited manoeuvre and a risky one. Bykovsky practised on a Mil-8 for several years, but hated it. A camera blister was fitted in the nose to record these landings and the film used for indoor simulations. Viktor Gorbatko alone built up over 600 hours flying helicopters. A second purpose of the helicopter landings was to test out the S-330 digital computers to be used on the LK, a test they quickly passed. A hovering vehicle, called the Turbolets, designed by Aram Rafaelyants, had been developed to test Soviet vertical take-off and landing planes like the Yakovlev 36. There was apparently some discussion about adapting the Turbolets as a lunar landing flying simulator. It may have been considered too dangerous for the cosmonauts – Neil Armstrong nearly lost his life when the temperamental American equivalent crashed – although the Turbolets never crashed and can still be seen in a museum today [26].

The cosmonauts went to Zagorsk to watch LK tests. Here, a full-scale model of the LK was used over a hundred times for what were called swing-drop tests: it was

thrown against a mockup lunar surface at various angles to see whether it would topple or not and the limits of its tolerance. Many times they went to Baikonour to watch Proton launches (though they cannot always have been heartened by what they saw). EVAs were practised in the Kretchet suit, both on the ground and on adapted Tupolev 104 aircraft. The moonwalk was practised on the quasi-lunar landscape around the volcanoes of the Kamchatka peninsular in the Soviet far east. A large gymnasium in Moscow’s central park was converted for the practice of moonwalks, harnesses being fitted to simulate one-sixth gravity. Two expeditions of cosmonauts went into the deserts of Somalia so that they could familiarize themselves with the southern constellations that would be their main stellar point of reference during their return to Earth – mainly unflown cosmonauts were sent there so that they could not be recognized and attract American attention. They practised splashdown procedures in the Black Sea, presumably in anticipation of a water landing in the Indian Ocean (such training eventually became routine). However, the full landing simulator was not available until May 1970. Although the commanders and flight engineers trained together for many aspects of their mission, much of their training was also separate. Because only the commander would fly down to the moon and do the moonwalk, commanders did a lot of training as a group on their own. Similarly, the flight engineers had their own training programme.

Zond 8 marked the end of the around-the-moon programme. The landing pro­gramme, dependent on the testing of the N-l, still continued. Chief Designer Vasili Mishin continued to enjoy support at the highest level in the Politburo, especially from Andrei Kirilenko. Testing of the N-l continued with a view to its completing its original purpose, or, alternatively, to carry large payloads to low-Earth orbit. After the two disasters of 1969, KORD was redesigned. The system could no longer be closed down entirely during the first 50 sec of flight. A fire-extinguishing system, using freon gas, was installed. The NK-33 engines were tested more rigorously, with new systems for quality control. Filters were installed to stop foreign objects from getting into the engines. Cabling was better protected against fire. Pumps were improved. The launchpads were rebuilt.

The third N-l was ready to fly again two years later. Unlike its two predecessors, it was not aimed at the moon, carrying only a dummy LK and LOK (and a dummy escape tower). Launching took place at night on 27 June 1971, while, incidentally, three cosmonauts were aloft in the Salyut space station (at one stage, it had been planned for them to look out for the launch). From as early as 7.5 sec, the vehicle began to roll about its axis. By 40 sec, the small vernier engines lost the ability to counteract the roll and at 45 sec the rocket began to break up, the payload falling off first. At 51 sec, the redesigned KORD system shut the lower rocket stage down. The stages separated and the rocket crashed to destruction, the first stage gouging out a 30 m crater 20 km downrange. The escape tower was a mockup and did not fire. Ironically, the failure of the rocket’s roll control system was due to the fact that all the engines of the N-l were actually firing together at take-off at the same time for the first time, none having been shut down by KORD. The thrust of the 30 engines, all firing together, created a strong roll effect that the vernier engines had been insufficiently strong to counter. Had all the engines fired properly at launch on the first or second take-offs, this would have been apparent then. Or, more to the point, the problem might have been identified if there had been proper ground-testing.

The failure of the third N-l took place at a time when the Americans were making rapid progress in lunar exploration. In February l97l, the Americans had returned to the moon with Apollo l4 and were about to proceed to the three-day surface missions of Apollos l5, l6 and l7. In July l97l, the Americans landed at Mount Hadley and spent three days there, driving a rover around the mountains and to the edge of a rille. The old Nl-L3 plan, putting only one cosmonaut on the lunar surface for only a few hours, looked ever more inadequate. The old Nl-L3 plan was finally terminated in August l97l, at the time the third LK was successfully being put through its paces as Cosmos 434. The termination of the plan permitted remaining LK and LOK hard­ware to be flown, presumably on N-l testflights.

Although the Soviet Union lost the race to the moon, a considerable body of knowl­edge of the moon was accumulated by the Soviet space probes that flew there over the years 1959-1976. The following is a broad outline of the type of scientific information collected:

• Maps of the farside and limbs of the moon were compiled on the basis of photographs taken by the Automatic Interplanetary Station, Zond 3 and the Zond 5-8 missions. Mapping of selected areas of the nearside was carried out by Luna 12, 19 and 22.

• The environment of near-moon space was characterized by the orbiting missions: Luna 10-12, 14, 19 and 22. Data were obtained on the levels of solar and cosmic radiation, cosmic and solar particles and gravitational fields. The moon’s surface was studied from orbit by instruments on Luna 10, 11, 12 and 18.

• The moon’s gravitational field was first mapped by Luna 10, then in detail by Luna 14 and refined by Luna 19 and 22.

• Attempts to identify and then measure the moon’s magnetic field were made by the First and Second Cosmic Ships.

• The chemical characteristics, composition and density of moonrock were deter­mined in situ by Lunokhod and Lunokhod 2 and through samples brought back to Earth by Lunas 16, 20 and 24. The lunar samples, although small, were shared internationally.

• The physical properties of the surface were determined by Luna 13 and the two Lunokhods (RIFMA).

• Precise distances between Earth and the moon were measured by laser reflectors on Lunokhods 1 and 2.

• Radiation levels and temperatures on the surface of the moon were measured by Luna 9, 16, 20, 23 and 24.

• The nature of the lunar micro-atmosphere was measured by Lunokhod.

• The effects of Earth-moon space on animals and other biological samples, es­pecially in respect of radiation, were measured by Zond 5 and 8. These remain the only (non-human) lunar biology missions.

As a result of the American and Soviet efforts, the moon became, unsurprisingly, the best known body in the solar system after our own Earth. With such an improved level of knowledge, the scientific case for returning to the moon became more and more difficult to make, granted our much less comprehensive knowledge of the inner planets Mercury, Venus and Mars and the outer planets. In fact, the moon still had many surprises in store, as the American Lunar Prospector was to prove as it began to search for ice. Scientific instruments by the new century were now able to return much more sophisticated data and at a much higher rate than had been possible in the 1960s, opening up further possibilities for scientific exploration. Miniaturization made it possible for smaller spacecraft to be launched on much less expensive rockets.

During 1966-8, the Soviet Union sent up seven orbiters to explore the lunar environ­ment and map the surface. Of these, two failed (Cosmos 111, 7th February 1968) and one partly failed (Luna 11). Only one photographic mission succeeded (Luna 12), but we do not have access to the archive which it assembled. Luna 10, despite being improvised, appears to have returned a substantial amount of scientific information. The Russians also ran a series of communications missions, the Ye-6LS, which shows their thoroughness in approaching the moon project and which have no direct American comparison.

There was discussion, in the Western popular press, as to the need for proceeding to manned flights to the moon when so much useful information had been already retrieved by automatic probes. Later, when the Russians were beaten in the moon race, they raised the question in retrospective justification for their use of automatic probes. In reality, this important discussion was given little airing within the two respective space programmes themselves, for the political decision had already been taken to go for a manned flight around the moon and to its surface. This decision had little to do with a calculation of the best way to obtain a scientific return, but, as President Kennedy himself put it, would be the approach ‘most impressive to man­kind’. It is back to this larger project that we now turn (Chapter 5).

But what if Alexei Leonov had been the first man on the moon? The selection of Alexei Leonov as first man on the moon – and also to fly the first L-1 around the moon – is no surprise, for he was perhaps the leading personality of the cosmonaut squad after Yuri Gagarin himself [27].

Alexei Leonov was selected among the original group of cosmonauts in I960. A short, well-built man full of energy and good humour, he had demonstrated his personal qualities from his teenage years. Alexei Leonov came from Listvyanka, Siberia where he was born in 1934, only months after Yuri Gagarin. He was eighth in a family of nine. Listvyanka was so cold that temperatures fell to — 50°C, but the stars by night were so perfectly clear. When he was only three and in the middle of winter, his father Arkhip was declared an enemy of the people; neighbours came in and stripped their home bare and the family was evicted into the nighttime winter forest [28]. The family fled to his married sister’s home. Arkhip was cleared and later rejoined them there.

Most astronauts and cosmonauts will tell you that all they ever wanted to do in life was fly a plane or a spaceship. Not Alexei Leonov, who determined to be an artist, a painter. He enrolled in the Academy of Arts in Riga in 1953. But he was unable to afford it and applied for Air Force college. He flew MiG-15s from Kremenchug Air Force Base in the Ukraine and later flew planes along the border between the two Germanies. In 1959, he was asked to go for selection for testing new types of planes and when undergoing medical tests for this unspecified assignment he met his sub­sequent best friend, Senior Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin.

Even before his first mission, he had two brushes with death: once when his car plunged through ice into a pond (he rescued his wife and the taxi driver from under the water) and then when his parachute straps tangled with his ejector seat (he bent the frame through brute force and freed the straps). It was a surprise to no one that he was assigned an early mission and he was Korolev’s choice for the first spacewalk. To keep himself fit, in the year up to the flight he cycled 1,000 km, ran 500 km and skied 300 km. The mission, Voskhod 2, itself was full of drama. It started with triumphant success: television viewers saw him push himself away from the craft and turn head

over foot as he gave an excited commentary of what must have been a stunning spectacle. He had great difficulty trying to get back into his spaceship. Only by reducing the spacesuit pressure to danger level and by using his physical strength was he able to get back into his airlock. Then the retrorockets failed to fire so he and his pilot Pavel Belyayev had to light them manually on the following orbit. Instead of landing in the steppe, they came down far off course, their communication aerials burnt away, in the Urals. State radio and television played Mozart’s Requiem, preparing the Soviet people for the worst. Their hatch jammed against a birch tree and they could barely open it. They emerged into deep snow, tapped out a morse message calling for rescuers and drew their emergency pistol to ward off prowling wolves and bears. The cosmonauts spent two nights among the fir trees while rescue crews tried to find a way of getting them out. They lit a fire to keep warm and eventually used skis to escape their ordeal. No wonder they got a hero’s welcome when they returned. Definitely the Russian right stuff.

Alexei Leonov had an artistic bent and made many paintings of orbital flight, spacewalks, sunrises and sunsets, and spaceships landing on distant worlds. He edited

the newsletter of the cosmonaut squad, called Neptune, satirizing people and events with his cartoons. He maintained an extraordinary level of physical fitness and kept up his outdoor pursuits, like water skiing and hunting. He learned English and was inevitably popular with the Western media. Unlike Gagarin and Titov, he seemed to cause the commanding officers of the cosmonaut squad little trouble. Sergei Korolev praised him for his liveliness of mind, his knowledge, sociability and character. With that background and experience, he was ideally suited for the assignment of first man on the moon and, indeed, first man around the moon before that. Certainly, had he got there, the moon landing would have been well illustrated as a result. Even from his spacewalk he had generated a substantial repertoire of paintings, books and films. Unlike Neil Armstrong, who retreated for many years into academia, the extroverted Alexei Leonov would have done much to tell of his experience thereafter.

Even though Alexei Leonov did not make it to the moon, the rest of his space career was full of incident. In June 1971, he was slated to command the second mission to the Salyut space station. His flight engineer, Valeri Kubasov, was pulled only two days before the flight because of a health problem and the entire crew was replaced, despite Leonov’s voluble protests. His comments became muted when the entire replacement crew was killed on returning to Earth: a depressurization valve opened in the vacuum instead of during the final stages of the return to Earth. He had cheated death again. In 1975, Leonov was the obvious choice for the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission. Leonov was the star of the show, a gracious host to the Americans on board Soyuz, cracking jokes and presenting the Americans with cartoons and souvenirs. The

Americans described him as ‘a really funny guy who also knows how to get us to work’. Alexei Leonov made general, was appointed commander of the cosmonaut squad from 1976 to 1982 and was a senior figure in Star Town until 1991. He still lives there, moving on to become president of one of Russia’s biggest banks.

What of his companion for both missions, Oleg Makarov? Oleg Makarov was born in the village of Udomlya, in the Kalinin region near Moscow, on 6th January 1933 into an Army family. Oleg Makarov graduated as an engineer from the Moscow Baumann Higher Technical School in 1957 and worked in OKB-1 straight after. Makarov was centrally involved in the design of the control systems for Vostok, Voskhod and Soyuz, including Vostok’s control panel. He was selected in the 1966 group of civilian engineers appointed to the cosmonaut squad by chief designer Vasili Mishin. Several members of this group were fast-tracked into mission assignments, and it shows that Mishin and the selectors must have thought much of him to appoint him straight away to the first moon crew with Leonov.

In the event, Oleg Makarov did get to fly into space a number of times. His first mission was to requalify the Soyuz after the disaster of June 1971. With Vasili Lazarev, he put the redesigned spaceship, Soyuz 12, through its paces in a two- day mission. The two were assigned to a space station mission in April 1975. This went badly wrong, the rocket booster tumbling out of control. They managed to separate their Soyuz 18 spaceship from the rogue rocket and after 400 sec of weight­lessness made the steepest ballistic descent in the history of rocketry, the G meter jamming when they briefly reached 18 G. Their spacecraft tumbled into a nighttime valley on the border with China and they waited some time for rescue. Soyuz came down in snow, in temperatures of —7°C, the parachute line snagging on trees at the edge of a cliff. The Western media alleged that the cosmonauts had died, so on his

return Makarov was sent out to play football with them to prove he was still alive. Oleg Makarov returned to space twice more. In 1978, he participated in the first ever double link-up with a space station, Salyut 6. Oleg Makarov flew again on an uneventful two-week repair mission to Salyut 6 in a new spaceship, the Soyuz T, in 1980. He died on 28th May 2003, aged 70. His obituary duly acknowledged the role he had played in the L-1 and L-3 programmes over 1965-9. Of a quieter disposition than Leonov, his technical competence must have been very evident and he would clearly have been a good selection.

What about the second crew, Valeri Bykovsky and Nikolai Rukhavishnikov? They too were slated for the second around-the-moon mission. Valeri Bykovsky was drawn from the 1960 selection with Yuri Gagarin and was given the fifth manned space mission, Vostok 5. He flew five days in orbit, three in formation with the Soviet Union’s first women cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova. A quiet and confident man, the same age as Gagarin (born in 1934), he was a jet pilot and later a parachute instructor. He would often volunteer to test out training equipment and was the first person to try out the isolation chamber for a long period. Bykovsky left the moon group for a brief period to head up the Soyuz 2 mission, scheduled for launch on 24th April 1967, but cancelled when the first Soyuz got into difficulties. It took some time for Bykovsky to get another mission, not doing so until 1976, when he flew a solo Soyuz Earth observation mission (Soyuz 22) and then led a visiting mission to the Salyut 6 space station (Soyuz 31, 1978). After his last mission, he became director of the Centre of Soviet Science & Culture in what was then East Berlin.

Nikolai Rukhavishnikov was one of the best regarded designers of OKB-1. An intense, dedicated, serious-looking man, he came from Tomsk in western Siberia, where he was born in 1932. His parents were both railway surveyors, so he spent much of his youth on the move, living a campsite life. His secondary education was in Mongolia, and from 1951 to 1957 studied in the Moscow Institute for Physics and Engineering, specializing in transistors. Within a month of graduation, he had joined OKB-1, concentrating on automatic control systems. For the translunar mission, he

planned experiments in solar physics. When the circumlunar and landing missions were delayed, he was assigned to the Salyut space station programme, being research engineer on the first mission there, Soyuz 10. Nikolai Rukhavishnikov was next selected for the Apollo-Soyuz test project, flying the dress rehearsal mission with Anatoli Filipchenko in 1974. Nikolai Rukhavishnikov was the first civilian to be given command of a Russian space mission, Soyuz 33. This went wrong, the engine failing as it approached the Salyut 6 station. Rukhavishnikov had to steer Soyuz through a hazardous ballistic descent. ‘I was scared as hell’, he admitted later. He later con­tributed to the design of the Mir space station and died in 1999.

And what about the others? The third lunar landing crew was Pavel Popovich and Vitally Sevastianov. The two of them had worked closely on the Zond 4 mission, their voices being relayed to the spacecraft in transponder tests. Pavel Popovich came from the class of 1960, an Air Force pilot based in the Arctic. He made history in 1962 when his Vostok 4 took him into orbit close to Vostok 3 on the first group flight. An extrovert like Leonov, extremely popular, he had a fine tenor voice and sang his way through his time off in orbit. His first wife Marina was also well known, being an ace test pilot. Later, he was given command of Soyuz 14, making the first successful Soviet occupation of an orbital station, the Salyut 3. Later he became a senior trainer in the cosmonaut training centre. Vitally Sevastianov was a graduate of the Moscow Avia­tion Institute and one of the teachers of the first group of cosmonauts, specializing in celestial physics. In between his own lunar training, he ran his own television pro­gramme, a science show called Man, the Earth and the Universe. He was one of the first of the moon group to get a mission once it became clear that there would be no early flight around the moon or landing. Vitally Sevastianov was assigned to Soyuz 9 in 1970 and later got a space station mission, 63 days on board Salyut 4 in the summer of

1975, setting a Soviet record. Later, he became a leading member of the Communist Party in the Russian parliament, the Duma.

The fate of the Soviet around-the-moon and landing team makes for a number of contrasts with the American teams. For most of the American Apollo astronauts who went to the moon, the experience was the climax of their spaceflight careers and many retired from the astronaut corps soon thereafter. For the Russians, the lunar assign­ment was a brief period during their cosmonaut career. Although crews were named, formed and re-formed, none got close to a launch and the training experience seems to have been quite unsatisfactory. For them, the lunar assignment was short and the best of their careers was still to come. Most were quickly rotated into the manned space station programme where they went on to achieve much personal and professional success. Alexei Leonov would have made a dramatically different first man on the moon from Neil Armstrong.

The Soviet plan for lunar exploration was now decisively redirected. Vasili Mishin now devised a moon plan even more ambitious than that of Apollo. He decided to match the three days of two Apollo astronauts on the moon with a Soviet plan to put three cosmonauts there for a month. The new Mishin plan, called the L-3M (‘M’ for modified) envisaged a manned lunar mission with two N-l rockets. The N-l would be upgraded with a more powerful hydrogen-powered upper stage. The exact date on which the L-3M plan was adopted is uncertain. The programme was first mooted in September 1969, clearly a first response to the American moon landing two months earlier, and the title ‘L-3M’ first appeared in print in documents in January 1970. The project was scrutinized by an expert commission under Mstislav Keldysh in spring 1971, and a resolution of the chief designers Technical proposals for the creation of the N1-L3M complex was signed off on 15th May 1972.

The first N-1 would place a large 24-tonne lunar lander descent stage, the GB-1, based on block D, in lunar orbit. Independently, a second N-1 would deliver a three – man lunar lander and return spacecraft, GB-2, to link up with the descent stage. Together they would descend to the lunar surface. Initially, three cosmonauts would work on the moon for a full lunar day (14 Earth days) but this would be later extended to be a month or longer. Eventually, four cosmonauts would live on the moon for a year at a time. The ascent stage would have a mass of 19.5 tonnes on launch from the moon and 8.4 tonnes during trans-Earth coast. Launch would be direct back to Earth, like Luna 16, without any manoeuvres in lunar orbit. The lander would incorporate Soyuz within what was called a cocooned habitation block, or OB, a sort of hangar. The crew could climb out of Soyuz into the hangar, put on their spacesuits there and use the hangar as a pressurization chamber before their descent to the lunar surface. The Americans might be first to the moon, but the Soviet Union would build the first moon base. Mishin envisaged the dual N-1 mission taking place in the late 1970s. Mishin’s new plan even won the approval of long-time N-1 opponent, Valentin Glushko. At one stage, the Soviet military considered turning the moon base into their first military headquarters off the planet [16].

An important feature of the N1-L3M was the redesign of the N-1 launcher, given the tentative name of the N1-F (industry code 11A52F). The airframe was much improved and there was a hydrogen-powered upper stage. The top part of the rocket, needle-shaped for the early N-1, was now bulkier and broader. The fact that Russia successfully developed a hydrogen-powered upper stage during the 1960s was one of the last, well-kept secrets of the moon race. The West had not believed the Russians capable of such a development, and it did not come to light until India bought a hydrogen-powered upper stage from the Russians in the 1990s. In fact, we now know that Russia had worked on hydrogen propulsion from 1960 onward and that hydrogen-powered stages had been part of the 1964 revision of the Soyuz complex in OKB-1. This research had continued to progress and by the late 1960s was reaching maturity. Linking this research to the new, improved N-1 made a lot of sense.

The hydrogen motor was the KVD-1, built by the Isayev design bureau (KVD stands for Kislorodno Vodorodni Dvigatel, or oxygen hydrogen engine). The role of the KVD-1 was to brake the assembly into lunar orbit and make the descent to the lunar surface. The KVD-1 engine had a burn time of 800 sec and a combustion chamber pressure of 54.6 atmospheres. The KVD-1 had a turbopump-operated engine with a single fixed-thrust chamber, two gimballed thrust engines, an operating period of up

to 7.5 hours and a five times restart capability. It weighed 3.4 tonnes empty and 19 tonnes fuelled. Its thrust was 7,300 kg and the specific impulse was 461 sec, still the highest in the world at the end of the century. It was 2.146 m tall, 1.28 m diameter and weighed 292 kg. It was sometimes called block R and had the industry code of 11D56.

The Isayev bureau was one of the least well-known of all the Soviet design bureaux and featured little in the early glasnost revelations about the Soviet space programme, its design bureaux and rocket engines. The bureau started life as Plant #293 in Podlipki in 1943, directed by one of the early Soviet rocket engineers, Alexei Isayev. Born 11th October 1908 (os) in St Petersburg, he was a mining engineer and had been given his own design bureau in 1944. This was renamed OKB-2 in 1952, being given its current name, KM KhimMach, in 1974. Besides spacecraft, its work has concentrated on long-range naval, cruise and surface ballistic missiles and nuclear rockets, and by the early 1990s had built over a hundred rocket engines, mainly small ones for upper stages, mid-course corrections and attitude control.

The KVD-1 prototype was first fired in June 1967. The engine was later tested for 24,000 sec in six starts. Five block R stages were built and tested over the years 1974-6 and the engine was declared fully operational. In fact, the KVD-1 was not the only Soviet hydrogen-powered upper stage. Nikolai Kuznetsov also struggled with a hydrogen-powered upper stage engine called the NK-15V, with a thrust of 200 tonnes, which would replace block B. OKB-165 of Arkhip Lyulka also developed engines for the third stage and fifth stage, respectively, 11D54 and 11D57 or block S. A scale model was built of a revised N-1 with hydrogen upper stages [17]. Approval was given for these developments in June 1970.

A new engine and new fuel were developed for the N1-L3M lunar module. Here, under Vasili Mishin, Valentin Glushko’s OKB-486 design bureau made a belated appearance in the N-1 programme. Valentin Glushko designed the new RD-510 engine, with 12 tonnes thrust [18]. The fuel was hydrogen peroxide, also called High

Test Peroxide (HTP). Only one other country in the world used hydrogen peroxide for its space programme: Britain, for its Black Arrow rocket. Hydrogen peroxide actually went back to wartime Germany where it had been developed by Dr Hellmuth Walter for high-speed U-boats.

Like Glushko’s favourite fuel, nitric acid, hydrogen peroxide could be kept at room temperatures for long periods. Hydrogen peroxide had one advantage over nitrogen-based fuels: it did not require the mixing of a fuel with a oxidizer. It was a monopropellant, requiring one tank and a means of igniting the rocket (metallic filings were inserted). There was no need to mix in the product of two tanks in a very precise ratio to get the desired thrust. Nor was HTP toxic, but it could be equally dangerous in another way. HTP must be kept in absolutely pure tanks and fuel lines, otherwise it will decompose or, if mixed with particular impurities, would explode. HTP was later used to fuel the torpedoes on the Russian submarine Kursk, with disastrous results when they exploded in August 2000.

The cancellation of Luna 25 in 1977 marked the end of the Russian programme of lunar exploration. Nevertheless, the chief designer of the Soviet space programme was not ready to give up completely on a manned flight to the moon, for Valentin Glushko persisted with dreams for lunar exploration, presenting his last set of ideas in 1986, just three years before his death.

AFTER N-l: A NEW SOVIET MOON PROGRAMME?

Strangely enough, the suspension of the N-1 programme in 1974 did not mean the final end of the Soviet manned moon programme. The new chief designer, Valentin Glushko, announced that the whole space programme would be reappraised and a fresh start made in reconsidering strategic objectives. The only definite decision was that the N-1 would not fly for the time being, if at all. Glushko set up five task forces, one of which was headed by Ivan Prudnikov to develop the idea of a lunar base and another the idea of a new heavy-lift launcher. Glushko personally began to sketch a new series of heavy launchers called the RLAs, or Rocket Launch Apparatus, capable of putting 30, 100 and 200 tonnes into orbit respectively.

When the Politburo met in August 1974, it actually reaffirmed the general objective of Soviet manned missions to the moon. Ivan Prudnikov duly completed, by the end of that year, the plans for a lunar base. The base was called Zvezda, or ‘star’ and featured teams of cosmonauts working on the moon for a year at a time, supplied by the new, proposed heavy-lift rocket. Their proposals were formally tabled, along with the outcome of the four other task forces, in 1975. Design of a heavy-lift launcher appropriately called Vulkan, able to deliver 60 tonnes to lunar orbit, was sketched out. In an abrupt turnaround, Vulkan would be powered with hydrogen fuel, the one system Glushko refused to develop for Korolev. Glushko even designed new hydrogen-fuelled engines, the RD-130 and RD-135, the latter with a specific impulse

of no fewer than 450 sec. A lunar expeditionary craft or LEK was designed, not that different from the long-stay lander of Mishin’s N1-L3M plan.

Although Glushko put his full force behind Zvezda, it attracted little support overall and none from the military at all. Crucially, the president of the Academy of Sciences, Mstislav Keldysh, would not back it. He was never a close friend of Glushko and was wary of the extravagance of the project. The cost, estimated at 100bn roubles, was too much even for a Soviet government not normally shy of extravagant projects. Keldysh let the process of consideration of the project exhaust itself so that it would run out of steam [1]. Glushko tried to save some face with a scaled-down project, but this won little support either. The basic problem was that Glushko had replaced a real rocket (the N-1) and a real programme (N1-L3M), both with diminishing political support, with a theoretical rocket (Vulkan) and a programme (Zvezda) that had none. The Soviet leadership began to regard the Soviet manned moon programme as having been a failure, a waste, a folie de grandeur that the country could not afford. Leonid Brezhnev had a mild stroke in 1975 and decisions were taken ever more by a shifting group of ministers and generals. This was not a leadership that would take a big decision and see it through.

In the event, the most significant project to emerge from the strategic reconsidera­tion of 1974-6 was the Energiya-Buran heavy launcher and shuttle system, which was driven by military imperatives to match the American space shuttle. No one can point to a particular day or decision on which the Soviet manned moon programme died, but it withered in mid-1975 and was effectively gone by March the following year, 1976. Despite this, Valentin Glushko even once briefly returned to the moon base idea in the 1980s, outlining how a small base might be built using the Energiya rocket, but he won no support in a country entering ever more difficult economic conditions. Despite their declining political fortunes, the moon base projects reached a certain level of detail and are outlined here.

In the course of the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union built the equipment it required for manned lunar exploration. This comprised the Proton rocket, to fly spacecraft around the moon, and the N-1 rocket, designed to land cosmonauts on the moon. The Soviet Union built the spacecraft necessary to circle and land on the moon: the Zond to pass round the moon and return to Earth, the LK lunar lander and the LOK lunar orbiter. And, finally, the Soviet Union trained a squad of cosmonauts to fly there and land there. Each is described in turn.

THE ROCKET FOR CIRCLING THE MOON: THE UR-500K PROTON

The UR-500 Proton rocket dates to October 1961, when Russia detonated, over the northern Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, its first 58-megatonne thermonuclear superbomb. This bomb was carried aloft and dropped by a Tu-95 bomber, but there was no way these ageing propellor planes were going to reach, never mind drop their cargoes on New York. For this purpose, a new, powerful rocket was required. Nikita Khrushchev turned to Vladimir Chelomei, the man who gave him his military rocket fleet who now promised to build him an ever bigger rocket called the Universal Rocket 500, so-called because it could be used for many other purposes (hence UR-500) [1]. Not long afterward, Khrushchev was bragging about the Soviet Union’s new ‘city – buster’ rocket.

In the event, the UR-500 was never taken into the armaments as a city-buster and was cancelled as a military project very early during the Brezhnev government. The UR-500 survived and was converted to civilian use. Vladimir Chelomei astutely persuaded the Kremlin that the UR-500, with suitable upper stages, could send a small manned spacecraft round the moon and that this was a much quicker, neater way of doing so than Sergei Korolev’s Soyuz complex, without any of the uncertain­ties of Earth orbit rendezvous. As a lunar rocket, it was called the UR-500K.

Chelomei’s moon rocket was a three-stage booster carrying nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylmethylhydrazine (UDMH), the fuel abhorred by Korolev. The engine of the first stage was built by Valentin Glushko’s OKB-456 and became the famous RD-253 engine. The second – and third-stage engines were built by the Kosberg Design Bureau. The Proton had the most advanced rocket engines in the world for 20 years. Valentin Glushko’s RD-253 engines recycled their exhaust gases to create a closed-circuit turbine system. Pressures of hundreds of atmospheres were obtained on delivery. Each engine weighed a modest 1,280 kg. The turbines went round at a fantastic 13,800 revolutions a minute or 18.74 MW. Temperatures reached 3,127°C in the engine chambers and their walls were plated

with zirconium. OKB-456 developed the first three stages, but the fourth came from rival Korolev’s design bureau. Here, block D was developed by Mikhail Melinkov in OKB-1 [2]. This relied on the traditional liquid oxygen and kerosene that was the hallmark of Korolev’s approach.

The RD-253 was perhaps the greatest breakthrough represented by the Proton. Equally significant was the clustering of fuel tanks of the side of the bottom stage.

Russian rockets are limited to a diameter of 4.1 m, the widest size that can be trans­ported by the rail system. This restriction would make any powerful rocket far too slim to be viable. What Chelomei did was develop the main core as the oxidizer only, within the 4.1m limit and later attach the fuel tanks to the side of the rocket. They were built separately, transported separately from Moscow to Baikonour and then attached in finishing hangars beside the pad in Baikonour. With the tanks attached, the diameter of the Proton on the pad is 7.4m.

Launching the Proton required the building of fresh pads to the northwest of the cosmodrome. Two sets of double pads were built, called Area 81 and Area 200. Each had a left pad and a right pad (81L, 81P, 200L, 200P). A Proton is brought down to the pad on a train trailer and then erected into the vertical position. Around the pad are 100 m tall lightning conductors and four 45 m tall floodlight stands. A shallow flame trench takes away the rushing roar of the engines firing at take-off from both sides.

Proton was and still is built in the Fili plant in Kaliningrad, now known as Korolev. This was an old automobile factory, taken over by the Bolsheviks to build German Junkers planes in the 1920s and then Tupolevs. It became effectively part of Vladimir Chelomei’s OKB-52 in 1960 but is now known as Khrunichev, an affiliate of Lockheed Martin.

The design history of the Proton is, compared with that of the N-1 which follows, not well known. It took Chelomei and his OKB-52 fewer than two years to design the UR-500 (1961-3) and fewer than two years to build it (1963-5), all the more remark­able granted its cancellation as a military weapon. The design was subject to rigorous ground testing and Chelomei refused to rush things. This paid off, for the UR-500’s first mission went like a dream, lofting the first of a series of four large cosmic ray satellites over 1965-8. They were called Proton and the first, Proton 1, was the largest scientific satellite ever launched up to that point, weighing in at no less than 12 tonnes (as a satellite, it was a failure, but that was not the launcher’s fault). Of the Proton’s first four launchings, only one failed, making it the most promising rocket of its day. The first launch was well publicized. The Western media quickly recognized a rival to the American Saturn IB moon rocket and came hastily but correctly to the immediate conclusion that an early task for the rocket was to send a Russian around the moon first. Possibly because of its military origins, the Russians kept back details of the Proton for well over 20 years and the first proper pictures of a Proton launch were not released until the 1980s.

Despite its promising start and despite Chelomei’s thoroughness, the Proton was to have an exasperating development history. The early promise was not maintained, and of its first 29 launches, no less than 14 failed, arguably costing the Soviet Union the round-the-moon race, as well as numerous lunar and Mars probes. At the time, nobody would have credited it that the Proton would go on to become one of the most reliable rockets in the world. Proton was launched for the 300th time in June 2003. Although there were occasional final-stage failures with block D, lower-stage failures became most unusual (there were two in the 1990s, when quality control in the manufacturing plant slipped during the period of greatest economic difficulty). A new version of the Proton was even introduced, the Proton M, in 2001.

Russia’s UR-500K Proton

Length 44.34 m

Diameter 4.1 m

When Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins returned from the moon, television viewers were amazed to see the returning heroes wrapped up in biological suits with masks and unceremoniously ushered into what looked like a camper caravan. The purpose was a serious one: to ensure that they were not contaminated with lunar soil that might in turn affect other Earthlings. The caravan was transferred to Houston where the astronauts spent the rest of their three-week quarantine.

The USSR developed a similar series of precautions and its own isolation unit. Lunar soil samples were to be received in the Vernadsky Institute of Geological and Analytical Chemistry, but a small lunar isolation unit was built in Star Town. In the Vernadsky institute, a two-floor room was set aside with two cylindrical glovebox units, each with four large viewing ports.

The opportunity to use the Soviet isolation unit came in 1970, following the mission of Soyuz 9. This was a two-man spaceflight designed to push back the then Soviet endurance record of five days and pave the way for the first Soviet space station, Salyut, due in 1970. The cosmonauts chosen, veteran Andrian Nikolayev and new­comer Vitally Sevastianov, spent 17 days in the small Soyuz cabin in June 1970.

Soon after landing, the cosmonauts were transferred to the isolation unit in Star Town by way of Vnukuvo Airport and not let out till 2 July, two weeks later: the same period of isolation as a moon journey would require. Flight debriefing was carried out behind glass partitions: telephones and microphones were used. The isolation complex had probably cost a lot to build and this was the only use it was to get. Soviet Weekly tried to explain:

The isolation isn’t because offears that Nikolayev and Sevastianov may have brought back strange diseases from outer space! Indeed the precautions are for the opposite reason. Doctors consider it possible that protracted space flight may lower normal immunities and they are therefore making sure that the spacemen are protected from earthbound infection until they have acclimatized.

Although Soviet spaceflights subsequently grew longer and longer, the facility was never used again. In reality, there was an element of farce about the whole episode. The Soviet Weekly explanation was the exact opposite of the truth, for the ultimate purpose of the unit was precisely to prevent infection from space-borne diseases. The real aim of the unit was never publicly revealed and we do not know what became of it subsequently. The theory behind the need for Soyuz 9 isolation had already been

completely undermined anyway at the point of landing. Nikolayev and Sevastianov were in weak condition when they touched down and had to be assisted from their cabin. Pictures released many years later showed them being helped and comforted, and if there had been any plans to rush them into biological protection suits, they must have been quickly abandoned. Had they indeed carried the cosmic plague with them, the entire recovery team would have been quickly infected.