L-1 SELECTION FOR AROUND-THE-MOON MISSION (OCTOBER 1968)

First mission: Alexei Leonov, Oleg Makarov (backup: Anatoli Kuklin).

Second mission: Valeri Bykovsky, Nikolai Rukhavishnikov (backup: Pytor

Klimuk).

Third mission: Pavel Popovich, Vitaly Sevastianov (backup: Valeri Voloshin).

Not allocated: Anatoli Voronov, Yuri Artyukin, Valentin Yershov.

It is worth stressing that these selections were never absolutely final. Soviet mission assignments were frequently changed, often up till a short period before take-off, an event not unknown in the United States (e. g., Apollo 13). Nevertheless, they indicate the broad intentions which, all things being equal, would probably have happened. What was the decisive factor in the around-the-moon selection? It seems that the first two around-the-moon crews were selected for the around-the-moon flight on the basis that they would also constitute the first two landing flights. This would give them a flight to the moon and back before they went for the landing mission. This would have been like selecting Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for Apollo 11 and then deciding to send them, much earlier, on the Apollo 8 mission to the moon. Indeed, there was some discussion that the Apollo 8 crew of Borman, Lovell and Anders should, because of their around-the-moon experience, go for the moon-landing mission as well. In the event, the Americans chose, for the moon landing, men who had not flown to the moon before. The interchangeability of the Soviet around-the-moon crews with the landing crews is also reflected in the allocation to the group of mathematician scientist Valentin Yershov, one of the designers of the Zond navigation system, but whose priceless presence was also available to the moon-landing group.