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Soviet Moon Rocket
TestBoy writes "There is a decent article about the Soviet Union's moon rocket and why it was doomed to fail. From one of the pictures on the website, you realize how large just one of its multiple engines were."
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..It is kind of depressing to ponder the rise and fall of the soviet space exploration empire. Crippled by the fall of communism, and lack of money, a once great competitor to NASA is now a laughing stock.
Now a point to ponder, how long will it be before NASA becomes a laughing stock. Countless articles continually point out that NASA cant get proper funding, etc etc.
The sad thing is, if only Russia's space agency could of survived after the berlin wall came down, we would probably still have a thriving space race and maybe even more public interest.
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
after WWII the US got the better German V2 rocket scientists like Wernher Von Braun, instead of the USSR? Certainly the US didn't have the will to fully use their experience and talents, however, untill after Sputnik.
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As far as I know - robotic mission to the moon was complete success though. It is interesting to observe mass media in the West time after time to concentrate on areas where US were ahead and never opposite. Venus landing of a robotic craft and photographs from the surface is an example of another success of soviet space programm and I am sure there are many others not well known in the West.
... what have we done recently that's so hot? Shuttle launches still cost a billion bucks a pop (yeah, we're always learning how to save money on the next generation), and all we do is either dick around in low earth orbit or lob probes out.
Maybe I just OD'd on space opera, but to me "space exploration" means letting real people go out there and take real risks, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
One of those little throwaway comments that stuck in my mind was Buzz Aldrin commenting that we're in for a shock when (if) we do try and go back to the moon, because we're going to find out just how hard it was. Sure, we know how to do it, but do we still have the knowhow?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Listen the Americans beat the USSR in the race to get to the moon but that is absolutely it.
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They got:
1st satellite.
1st man in orbit.
1st woman in orbit.
1st lunar rover.
1st space station.
1st long term space station.
The US my country that I love so well got to the moon first.
The Soviet's took us down in every other first. It terms of keeping people in space for long periods of time they had it down while we had lost interest after seeing some guys hope around on the moon.
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ACK
It really was awful, there were analog gauges and whatnot littering the interior
It was built the late '60s. What else would they have been using?
basically one step shy of having Cosmonauts just jump out of the orbiter and hope for the best!
Actually, this isn't too far off the mark. If memory serves, the Soviet lunar missions were planned for two-man crews, as opposed to the three-man crews of the Apollo program. In the Soviet missions one cosmonaut would have stayed with the orbiter - same as the US flights - and the other would have spacewalked to and from the lander, rather the orbiter first docking with the lander. Soviet lunar landings and explorations would have been accomplished by one man, at least early on.
Why has no-one been to the moon since 1972? For those who cant count, that's 30 years. There are not even plans to go back even though we've (debatably) found ice up there (perfect for a settlement). I guess the next people to go will be from the private sector. Seems like a long way out though.
How we know is more important than what we know.