THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE SAD

The Soviet and American enterprises to explore space were created as a by-product of the Cold War, specifically the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and their modification to put spacecraft on interplanetary trajectories. While aiming their nuclear-tipped missiles at each other, the iwo opposed societies competed for the minds of the rest of the world by demonstrating their technological prowess by exploits in civilian space exploration. The Soviet space exploration program was noi entirely divorced from the military, as it was in the US. As a result. Soviet robotic missions to the Moon and planets were cloaked in secrecy until the early 1980s, and only after the collapse of the USSR has reliable information become available on the full history of the Soviet lunar and planetary exploration program. The key leaders and institutions involved, and almost all decisions and events, were state secrets and unknown outside the closed circle of Soviet secrecy. Launches were not announced, and the Soviets rarely revealed the purpose of their spacecraft except for human missions where this eould not be hidden. This policy hid embarrassing failures, and only when a success could be claimed was its purpose revealed.

The heavily cloaked Soviet robotic exploration program provided mystery and a challenge to the Americans. State secrecy concealed the fact that the Soviet robotic space exploration program was bolder, more innovative, and more tragic than any observers in the West could have imagined at the lime. As eaeh planetary launch window approached, the Americans would get very anxious about what spectacular the Soviets might be planning. The subliminal pressure to outdo the Soviets added to this anxiety, particularly in the first decade of the space race when the USSR always appeared to have the upper hand. Imagine the despair on the American side in the late 1960s if it had been known that the Soviets were planning landings on Mars in 1969 while the US was still conducting flybys. Over the long run, the Soviets were tragically jinxed at Mars, never gaining a true success despite expending enormous effort and resourees on a resolute and more aggressive attack on the planet than was the case in the US. They were the first to launch at Mars in 1960, failed with their next generation spacecraft in the 1960s, fared poorly with their massive grand fleets in 1971 and 1973. fell tragically short with the Phobos missions in 1988, and ended abysmally with Mars-96. Yet many Soviet achievements endure the lunar rovers and sample returns, the Vega missions, and the extensive and very successful in-situ exploration of Venus are all accomplishments that were never equaled by the US.

і’he story of the Soviet lunar and planetary exploration program is a tale of great adventure, excitement, suspense, and tragedy; a tale of courage and the patience to overcome obstacles and failure; a tale of fantastic accomplishment and debilitating loss; a tale of courage and enthusiasm to try the previously impossible. To carry it out they exhibited superb expertise in engineering design and development. They were very innovative in utilizing the technology available to produce engineering systems that accomplished the task. Their rocket engines are testimony to mastery of materials development and propulsion system engineering. Their innovative lunar mission design and return trajectories and their terminal optical navigation scheme for the M-71 and M-73 missions demonstrate excellence in celestial mechanics, navigation, and guidance and control. The automation of the midcourse maneuvers and optical navigation scheme for Mars were applied successfully well before the US even contemplated such complexity a clear demonstration of superior skill in automation and software which unfortunately was to unravel in later missions. The

success of any enterprise is ultimately the result of people, and the Soviet Union had excellent engineers, scientists and managers who faced immense difficulties with the heavy-handed, personality-driven, complex and entangled national system of control and supply, and succeeded thanks to an intense devotion to the space exploration enterprise and a strong sense of competition with America.

The successes of the Soviet robotic exploration program were achieved at a heavy price. The Luna, Venera and Mars programs all endured an enormous number of losses from launch vehicle and spacecraft failures – far more than would have been tolerated in a US program. Soviet persistence in pursuing their goals, particularly in the early years, would have appeared maniacal to an American. During one stretch between 1963 and 1965, the Soviets suffered eleven straight failures in attempting a lunar soft landing. Korolev had to exercise considerable political skill to save his lunar lander program after such a long string of disasters. This w ould have brought dow n an American program w here no such commanding personality existed for the robotic program. The worst string of losses in an American robotic exploration program occurred roughly contemporaneously and was only about half this number. The Americans suffered six straight failures from 1961 to 1964 in their Ranger lunar impact or program. At one time they were very close to terminating both the program and its implementing organization. Thereafter the Americans never tolerated more than an occasional failure in their program, whereas the Soviets tolerated relatively large failure rates as a matter of course.

The poor reliability of Soviet rockets was the primary cause of failures until the mid-1970s, but it was these very same rockets that enabled the Soviet Union to be so bold in executing their program. The Molniya was capable of lifting many times the weight of American rockets. It was produced in quantity, and readily available from the military on short notice and at no apparent cost. This characteristic was essential since the Soviets, in contrast to the Americans, tested their spacecraft by Hying them – resulting in many more attempts to launch Soviet spacecraft than American: 106 versus 51 through 1996. This may have been a consequence of the readier access to Soviet launch vehicles before cost became an issue, but in any case Soviet engineers also lacked discipline in ground testing. They rushed their designs through assembly with insufficient system test time in low quality clean facilities with loose ground test procedures. This showed in the poor performance of their spacecraft in flight. By the end of 1965, they had lost all four of their spacecraft launched to Venus, both of their spacecraft launched to Mars, and five of nine lunar spacecraft. In that same time, they lost an additional 24 of their 39 missions to launch vehicle failures. w7hich w’as not only a very large number in itself but also a huge percentage loss from an American point of view. The situation improved with time, but failures continued to plague the program. The inflight failure rate dropped from over 70% through 1965 to 39% by 1976, and the launch vehicle failure rate dropped from over 60% to 48% over that same period of time. After 1976 the inflight failure rate fell to 10% and the launch vehicle failure rate dropped to 9%.

The absence of strong ground test discipline w as symptomatic of a weakness in systems engineering. The Americans learned their skill in this discipline through the trouble-plagued Ranger lunar program in the early 1960s, and rarely had an inflight failure afterwards. The Soviets were much slower in applying this discipline, and suffered continuing inflight failures. Their problems were exaeerbated by a handicap in electronics technology. Decades after vacuum electronics had become standard in Western spacecraft the Soviets eontinued to fly pressurized spacecraft – in fact, right up to Mars-96. One impetus for continuing this practice was that Soviet rockets were so large that the mass penalty of old electronics was not a major consideration, but another problem was that Soviet industry did not produce vacuum qualified complex electronic systems for its exploration missions. The reliability and operating lifetime of Soviet space avionics systems were a problem throughout the program and were a principal reason why the USSR never attempted a mission to the outer planets. Their Mars spacecraft were for some reason particularly prone to inflight avionics failures from start to finish.

The sad part of the story is the disappearance of Russia from the scene after the fiasco of Mars-96. This has been a great loss of vision, enterprise and expertise in robotic space exploration. The Soviet enterprise was born as part of the Cold War. and seemingly expired with it. After 1991 the Russian space program turned almost exclusively to humans-in-orbit. The Academy of Sciences had a great deal of trouble acquiring funds to keep its robotic space exploration program alive. After Mars-96 failed and government interest in robotic space exploration plummeted, it increased its investment in human spaceflight and partnership with the US in the International Space Station. Now7, after a long hiatus, the Russians are reviving their robotic space exploration program with the Phobos-Grunt mission.