Slashdot Mirror
Russian Rovers on the Moon
An Ignorant American writes "Perusing an Air & Space magazine the other day, I came across an article about Russian Moon Rovers during the space-race era. Thanks to my American science education, I had never heard of this feat. I asked around (friends and coworkers) and nobody else I've talked to has heard of them either. They were called 'lunokhod', and were the first of their kind. Unmanned, remotely operated rovers with basic instrumentation. Two were successfully landed on the Moon, each driving for many miles on the Moon's surface, returning tens of thousands of pictures. You can do a Google Search to start your education, or read what they have to say at Wikipedia on the subject (Wikipedia also has some external links.)"
An interesting fact is that while the Lunokhod robots transmitted more than 20,000 TV pictures and more than 200 TV panoramas and also conducted more than 500 lunar soil tests, their actual purpose was to try and find US made robots and/or buildings(!) on the surface of the moon.
This was done under a program name of "Timofeev". Timofeev is just a common Russian last name and seems to have no special meaning (not referring to a lead scientist/government official, etc).
Click here to find out the true story of Russia's first space "rover", almost 50 years ago.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Lunokhod 1 actually toured the lunar Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) for 11 months in one of the greatest successes of the Soviet lunar exploration program" I wonder how they managed to get them to hold up (and be potentially useful) for that long? sheer dumb luck?
I wonder what else american public schools forgot to teach me...
I had never heard of this feat. I asked around (friends and coworkers) and nobody else I've talked to has heard of them either.
That's because in Soviet Russia, moon rovers learn about YOU!
Sorry...couldn't resist.
Also look at the pictures (images.google.com)
candidly
They were pretty successful. The last pictures showed something like this on the lunar surface. After this, transmissions were cut off.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I remember reading about these rovers when I was in GRADE school. Or am I carbon dating myself?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I'm not going to try and defend the US Education system for it's lack of bias, but I doubt that you learned about any US Mars Rovers in school either - even if they were current events. We have yet to talk about the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in my school... it's a shame really. :/
I knew someone from Russia that swore that the russians had landed a man on the moon before the USA. She didnt belive me that they never got anyone on the moon...
I can't believe that the Russians beat us there. To think that they could have been the first to build a movie set and fake a lunar rover landing! I'm glad we were first to think of putting human actors on the set, though!
Not A Sig
some idiotic troller edited the page on wikipedia, they did it to get a reaction, it'll get fixed by editors at wikipedia soon
... but Australian education too. A quick survey around the office revealed that Aussies missed out on this little fact too. Same with the UK. Makes you wonder just how much history gets edited to highlight the wonders of our American overlords...
in czech republic (fromer soviet ally) was a small model lunokchod with remote control. all people in eastern europ know lunokchods. i am surprised it is not known in usa, because american exploration of space was well known in the eastern block.
by th way, Lunochod means Moonwalker
SHE does throw dice.
Ha, a troll changed the Wikipedia entry after it was posted to Slashdot. I'm surprised it hasn't been changed back yet.
And no, it's not normally like that. This isn't good, it's whack.
"the most interesting thing about all of this is that they remodeled the rover for earthside use under the brand name lada.
Tested on the moon? This must explain the "bounce 20 feet in the air when you roll over a pebble" suspension.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I can't believe you've never heard of this (even if you are American). Ever wonder why so many of the features on the dark side of the moon have Russian names? It's the same with many features on Mars, too.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
These rovers were far from secret - they even carried a joint experiment with the French, a set of retroreflectors for Lunar Laser Ranging, which (together with similar retroreflectors installed by the Apollo astronauts) are still used for a variety of fundamental measurements in celestial dynamics.
Considering the fact that i was born and raised in Russia i knew all about it :)
In America we tend to forget that we are far from immune from 'evil socializing school.' I remember hearing about flying Russian dogs but never moon rovers. In fact, come to think of it I never knew we landed on the moon more than once until I saw Apollo 13.
It reminds us that our history books stilled talked about manifest destiny in grand terms until the mid 70s and how the genocide of indigenous peoples in our own country was conveniently brushed aside at the same time. Politicians here love to criticize Japanese teachings about WWII, but this is a good reminder that us Americans should temper our supposed superiority from time to time.
the russians had/have some brilliant scientists. I have never heard of this project before but i am not surprised at all to read that they accomplished this. There is alot to be said for Russian ingenuity and intelligence.
You failed it!
I saw that also. It appears that some Wiki editor has already corrected it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
We all know the pictures were taken in some building in Siberia :P
Setec Astronomy
I wonder if u could see any of these rovers on the surface with a powerful telescope.....
and where would u look
Perhaps our education system and mass media leave more details out of the big picture. It makes one wonder what facts are being left out in the discussion about Iraq and what remains of the 'axis of evil'. Hmmm, what little details have been hidden away with respect to the patriot acts. Maybe freedom of speech and expression only count when its in support of corporate/powerful America.
Something to consider.
I'm American and I don't go to any fancy schools or anything. I just go to regular old public schools -- many of which weren't very good and I must have learned about this at least five different times. You just forgot it. I think my first memory of my teacher telling me about it is 4th grade.
Every single time that the space race was mentioned in a history class or whatever, there was always the "we put a man on the moon, the Soviets just sent machines."
Don't blame the American educational institution on you not remembering what was taught to you in 4th grade, and then again in 7 grade, and then yet again in High school. I guaranteee that at some point in your life, you were told about these things while in school.
In fact, just to make sure I'm not hallucinating, I just looked in my little sisters junior high history book. It's there.
--Chag
Ever wonder why so many of the features on the dark side of the moon have Russian names? It's the same with many features on Mars, too.
It really is true. I'm in the Western Hemisphere right now, and it is light out. It so happens that many of the features in the northern part of the dark side of the Earth at this time also have Russian names. Imagine that!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Does anyone remember that the US landed three rovers on the moon that were driven by astronauts?
"U.S. astronauts drove three Lunar Rover Vehicles on the last three Apollo missions..."
"Thanks to my American science education, I had never heard of this feat."
Don't be sad. Thanks to my soviet-era communist education, I was convinced in my school years that the Apollo maned missions to Moon are just an expenisve imperialist publicity stunt with no real scientific value.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
because the russians did not, in fact, land rovers on the moon
if you look closely at the pictures, you can clearly see the forest line on the horizon of the secret siberian base where the pictures were faked!
it is a conspiracy between the russians and nasa in the 1960s to cover up the joint superpower discovery that there is also, in fact, no moon!
how do i know? fox tv told me so! must be true!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I went to American public schools.
I knew that Russians had put rovers on the moon.
School's job is not to tell you everything that's ever happened. School's job is to give you the tools you need to find things out. I got those tools. You did not. The fact that we both got an "American" education is irrelevant.
Quit blaming your ignorance on your teachers. Start paying more attention to what they had to work with.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I actually knew about them. Supposedly the first one (or the first attempt) was landed on the moon the same day as Neil and Buzz. Too bad a rover is nothing compared to men.
What is your penile percentile?
When the Soviet Union wad ruled by Leonid Brezhnev, an extremely elderly person not capable of any mental activity furing his late years, there was a joke about Lunokhod and Brezhnev.
Airport in Germany. Soviet and German leaders meet. As the Germans come to the Soviet airplane, Brezhnev comes out, sniffs everyone from the German delegation, picks up some dirt off the ground, puts it in his pocket and returns to the airplane.
Few minutes later a Russian scientist apologizes: "We messed up and instead of Presidential visit program loaded up Lunokhod program".
And if you are in Kansas, you can see them st the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.
www.eFax.com are spammers
[...] their actual purpose was to try and find US made robots and/or buildings(!) on the surface of the moon.
That's an interesting assertation. Do you have any references to back it up? It seems unlikely -- isn't a moon launch rather hard to hide? Why would they need to bother sending a lander there to check?
Sheesh, what (if anything) are they teaching kids these days?
The existence of the Lunokhods was certainly well-known at the time. Of course after the first couple of Apollo landings, the attention deficit disordered American public had pretty much lost interest even in humans walking on the Moon, so I guess it's no surprize that hardly anyone remembers the Lunokhods.
In that same time frame (between the two rover landings I think, but I could be wrong) the Russians also landed a vehicle that scooped up a sample of Lunar soil and returned it to Earth. A tiny fraction of what Apollo returned, of course, but significant in that it was from an area of the Moon that Apollo never visited.
-- Alastair
I, for one, welcome our peeved A.C. would-be overlords.
Now the wikipedia has goatse links!
This is getting FUN!
That's nothing. The soviet union managed to land rovers on _VENUS_, and they held up for a while too. Thery beamed back color pictures of the Venusean surface and tons of data on the atmospheric composition, etc.
An imaginary quote from some Astronaut landing on the moon and tripping over one of these, not knowing about them.
His ass would be on monolith alert after that, no doubt!
I would have thought with advances in solar panels and motors that the new rovers would wipe the floor with the old Russian ones. I guess there are lots more instruments/computers to power and you need higher gain radio transmissions from Mars, but that is still a power of ten difference in speed.
Here is a nice picture too.
They were fairly well covered in the news at the
time, at least in Britain where I was then living.
That's because some slashdot trolls have gone to that article and edited it. The article is likely to be locked from editing while it's on the front page of slashdot if they don't let up for awhile.
If they sell old rovers anywhere, like on ebay or something? Venus has the remanants of probes, mars has rovers, the moon has rovers, so why can't my backyard have a rover?
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Sheesh! Don't you people ever pick up a freaking encyclopedia?!
I read about the USSR's space program, including the rovers, in the 5th grade.
NEVER wait to be taught what you can learn yourself!
Read a Book!
Or what kind of second rate education you received, but this has been known for a while. The USSR had several regions of the moon covered by robots.
Oh and yes, my "American education" didn't "censor" this info as yours supposedly has. Maybe it was your "American ignorance" or "American laziness" which prevented you from retaining this information when it was actually taught to you.
Anyway, in OTHER news, Russia Also Conquered Mars 30 years ago.
Thats where we got the idea for the Mars rovers no doubt.
From looking at the Wikipedia history, it appears that the GNAA poster is at 82-32-36-56.cable.ubr05.azte.blueyonder.co.uk (82.32.36.56). This is a Blueyonder cable subscriber in the UK. I am currently hacking their computer.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Those were awesome, it looked like a soup dish and you stuff the batteries inside :) ...im czech
What kind of ping times can you get to the moon? Just curious if these guys had to program the rover in a language kind of like logo, or if they just fired up the old Joystick?
"Derp de derp."
yep, you guessed it...
I, for one, welcome our new Russian Roverlords.
The mode of submission of this article earns it a -1, Flamebait. Why can't we have real journalism?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Don't feel so bad about not having heard of Lunokhod. On the other side of the curtain there was a joke that the newspapers tested their absolutely smallest fonts when describing the American landing on the Moon.
Why something that happened 40 years ago is news. History, yes - news, hardly.
Goddamned dirty brit trolls!
might have been during the profusion of soviet science books in India around that time, but I remember reading about it in an indian kids' encyclopeadia at the time, and thinking how much it sounded like a fusion name between hindi and some some language (luna (moon) + khoj (seek in Hindi) :) :)
goddamn, every day i am more and more amazed at how much us American's don't learn in school due to our government. For example, the Civil War. Think for a second what you learned (or retained) about it and the causes for it.
Now go read some real history and find out why it really happened.
The US government is far from honest and open and just.
I being a child of the space age (Born in 1960), or close enough anyway. I also recall the Soviets returned samples collected by these rovers.
There are many other missions by both countries forgotten by everybody except us space enthusiasts!
If you had asked me, cold, if the russians had operated a rover on the moon, I probably would have said no. But, looking at that picture, I remember it vividly. As a kid, I was given a coffee table book called "The History of Flight" or some such (I think I still have the book). I remember thinking the picture of the Blackbird was just too cool and the "bathtub" probe too comical to actually be real.
"For example, the Civil War. Think for a second what you learned (or retained) about it and the causes for it."
The Civil War's main cause was slavery. Neoconfederates like to argue "No, it is state's rights!" but their argument crumbles when it is pointed out that the main "state's right" at issue was the right to have a slave state.
While I might not have the educational system of the USA (in a general sense) in the greatest regard (relax, I don't hold my own in high regard) this apparent lack of knowledge is rather general. I remember Lunokhod very well but I was a) very interest in spacial exploration when I was a kid and b) most of the books I had were from the USSR (or from Novosti Press editions in Portugal).
The thing is, most of my classmates were not even interest in the whole subject, so for them Lunokhod or Appolo didn't meant anything. In the USA it's obvious that people have knowledge (or should have, it is after all a great thing to be prouf of) about their own space missions, but beyond that it's really down to curiosity and personal interest.
I would argue that most knowledge of this kind that people have is not directly derived from taking classes at school but it's a result of curiosity and self-reading. And perhaps rightly so.
I was about 12 years old at the time of the Apollo moon landing. I knew all about the Lunokods. Reporting about them seemed to be downplayed some, most of the emphasis was on the manned stuff. But still they were reported in the news and followed by the interested public.
But then, my dad worked at the Marshall Space Flight center in Huntsville, then ran a NOAA tracking facility near Fairbanks. . . so maybe my perspective is a little bit skewed.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Believe me, if all you have to offer is what was fed to you at school, you've got a long way to go.
How about how to teach yourself?
Try reading, it works great. You can find these things called books at a place called a library.
In addition to teaching me how to use a library, my parents also bought a big pile of paper called an encyclopedia. The purchase includes yearly updates called yearbooks.
Then there's a yellow skinned magazine to which your parents or grandparents should have subscribed. It is called National Geographic. Issues go way back. Even though it is renowned mainly for its photography and printing quality, you should try reading it.
Be sure to subscribe before you have kids of your own.
Happy education!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
The issue has been handled. We've locked the article due to the huge amount of vandalism.
"Go to the US and many people believe that the US was helping Vietnam during the Vietnam war,Some even believe that the US won!"
The first is certainly true. The second is certainly not.
Nobody cared!
They flew them in the 1970's, years after we had sent men to the moon. It wasn't seen as such a giant leap by that time.
If they had sent the rovers *before* we landed men, oh yeah, we'd have heard a lot more about them.
You and your friend are not representative of the level of education in the US.
Uh.. they are. I think you're sitting pretty and would be amazed. Remember that an IQ of 100 is merely the *average* - and that 50% are relatively dumb. Some kids think that the time spent becoming educated merely gets in the way of them having fun.
And kids today aren't going to be taught about thirty year old unmanned Russian moon rovers. The manned moon landings, sure. Unmanned (especially since they happened *after* the manned ones) - why bother?
Heh, that's interesting. It was common knowledge in Soviet Union that you guys kicked our butt with the first man on the moon. I'm not sure that it was mentioned in the school though.
Anyway, lunohod was great. I think some people in Russia still call police cars "lunohod": soviet police on patrol liked to move slowly in silence with their lights off.
I passed the Turing test.
I don't see this project getting very far.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
Let's place the blame where it belongs, with yourself. This is hardly something that was hidden from the public, it's always been there for anyone who cared to look. Was it as well known as the current crop of NASA rovers? No, but there wasn't an internet, etc to splash the latest images around the world in moments either. It has nothing to do with your education, but rather your lack of curiosity up until this moment.
On the subject of Russian space feats, they were also the first country to mount a specially designed machine gun to a satellite and fire it in space. For peacefull purposes only, of course..
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
"Heh, that's interesting. It was common knowledge in Soviet Union that you guys kicked our butt with the first man on the moon"
"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Now, where's those damn Russkis they told me were here first? Come on Houston, let me know. I'm ready to kick commie ass with my moonboot!"
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/9901/lunokh od_t.jpg
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990109.html
Worst
The Earth vs. Mars Scorecard doesn't mention the Lunokhod missions. Assuming both missions counted as successes, it would bring the score close to a tie.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
What school did you go to that didn't have a library? Info on the Russian space program (including these probes) was in most, if not all, of the books I read about space in school.
Don't blame the teachers for your like of motivation to learn on your own.
Not only did I know about the Russian rovers, I had a set of Russian stamps with Soyuz and the rovers on them.
Thanks to *my* American education.
If you really lament your education, I think you should speak to your parents about their lack of involvement, and to yourself about your lack of curiosity.
Clear, Dark Skies
MAYBE THEY can PUT SOME on MARS and we COULD HAVE a DEATH MATCH!!!!!!!!!
as a 'weapon of mass destruction' against the Native American population? Did they teach you about that?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
soviet police on patrol liked to move slowly in silence with their lights off
They had little choice. The bulbs burnt out sometime in the Kruschev administration. The two-HP engines also gave out not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now Ivan had to push the police car everywhere it went. Once they cut "police boots" out of the department budget, the silence was complete.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
that Mars and the Moon aren't the same place?
Clear, Dark Skies
I think the record for a working venera lander was a few minutes (the first ones didn't work at all). They had a fisheye camera, and returned a single horizon-to-horizon image before crapping out. Having said that, it is the only actual photo we have of the surface, but still, hardly does it count as "lots of goodies."
aw crap, now you've destroyed my anonymous proxy!
I hear americans decrying chinese man in space by saying "hey, we did that long long time ago! whats the big deal?" I guess rover has completed the circle. we live in a strange world dont we? Intelligence (not the wmd kind), engineering and skill are not just one nation/race's asset and this proves it. :)
We put a man on the moon in 1969. Lukhod landed on the moon in 1970 and 1973. They were landed on the moon after us, and they didn't even send a man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_program
"i am surprised it is not known in usa, because american exploration of space was well known in the eastern block."
I'm surprised that you're surprised. I mean, how can you be surprised by this?
Wasn't the Soviet Union just a little bit secretive? Slightly?
I'd seen a picture of it many years ago but, face it, between Soviet paranoia and incompetence there are no surprises here.
--Richard
"Intelligence (not the wmd kind), engineering and skill are not just one nation/race's asset and this proves it. :)"
yeah. China has been able to kill 200,000 in non-chinese foreign countries like Tibet, just by using bullets.
Yeah the American schools somehow forget to mention or deemphasize the first man in space, first woman in space, first open spacewalk. Now I'm not trying to disavow the great feats achieved by the American space program but I especially like this list of "firsts in space", with tiny paragraphs devoted to the first HUMANS(Russian) to do things in space and the large, detailed paragraphs devoted to the first AMERICANS to do anything in space, since we all know that the first American in space is of course a much more monumental achievement for the entire human race then just the first person in space.
For someone who sees these feats of human courage as universal it's a little shocking and sad to see so many educated Americans who have absolutely no idea about any of these events. These should be viewed not as Russian/Soviet achievements but as human achievements. Forgeting these pioneers is just an insult to their courage and sacrifices.
So whoevers winner circle your'e in is the history you get :) I never heard about it either though.
I like things that are sweet and not things that are lame. --
I've been told that the book What Ivan Knows that Johnny Doesn't was prompted by the space race but the year it was published suggests otherwise.
The rovers were driven in real time, using a very low quality TV- no half-tones, one frame in several seconds. One day they drove Lunokhod-2 into a crater, and had troubles climbing out. The drivers decided to back off a little. Lunokhod-2 had no rear- view camera, and they collided with a rim of the crater. The solar battery was covered in dust, reducing it's output. They try to clean the battery by flipping it, but the dust wouldn't come out, and what would got on a heat radiator surface, which lead to overheating. The drivers got the rover out of the crater, but it didn't wake up after next lunar night. Source (in Russian): http://www.space.hobby.ru/projects/lunochod1.html
I think you mean, "Thanks to my North American Education."
Anyway, educational facilitators can address standards in many ways. Bring what you are interested in to the classroom; your facilitator may find it a "vehicle" (har har) to introduce other concepts and methods.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
A Google search of Timofeev + Lunokhod turns up nothing.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
"I did learn about these in school, but then I was always interested in space.
Try these questions.
What was the name of the first American lander on the moon?
The name of the first lander on Mars?
What was then name of the first US communications sattilite?
Most people know little about space."
Your examples questions are history questions. I don't even think they are particularly relevent except in Trivial Persuit, Space Race Edition.
"Yeah the American schools somehow forget to mention or deemphasize ....first open spacewalk [wikipedia.org]."
I love how they did that one. Open airlock, boot political prisoner out. "You need no suit, Dmitri! You die for Science!"
The Russians beat the US a very large number of firsts in space. First satellite, first animals in space, first human in space, first safe landings from orbit, first spacewalk, first to the land a probe on Mars, first probe to Venus, first orbital station, first flight around the moon.
The whole notion that the US "won the space race" is an interesting bit of spin. The fact is that the USSR notched up a very large number of firsts and could equally argue that they won the race if the finishing line hadn't been arbitraly decided to be a manned mission to the moon (and you can bet that it wasn't the Russians who decided that that was the only feat which mattered).
The US won the cold war over the USSR, or more to the point, outlasted the USSR, because the USSR ran out of money. Ultimately the Soviet system was a poor means of running a country, so they lost their super power status... but that hardly means they lost the space race.
As Napolean said: history is a lie made up by the victors.
No, it hasn't. You need to learn history before you can even make a point.
In Communist Russia, moon lands on YOU!
It might be of interest to some of you that Richard "Lord British" Garriott of Ultima fame actually bought one of the rovers from the Russians in the 90s.
------- Code to try when you're bored: qsort( 0, UINT_MAX, sizeof( int* ), IntCompare );
"...so rather than risking dnagerous human mission on the moon, they only sent robot, while astronauts stayed safely at home."
What's the point of exploring space if we don't go there? The Europeans (and unlucky Africans) that settled North and South America didn't send something to report back saying, "Oh, that's nice", they went there. The U.S., Canada, Mexico, and all of Central and South America as they are now is the result. Yes, negative ramifications abounded, but the collective we wouldn't be where we are today if it weren't for those circumstances. Humanity is stronger because we are spread out, and if we actually get the guts to try to go into space permanently we will be stronger still. I'd like to hope that all of the work we do isn't for nothing in the long haul. We're the most versatile living thing to come about in known history. Let's see what we can really do.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Wow, news flash, Russians land rovers on the moon 35 years ago! Well, shit, folks, that ain't exactly news. Anyone who cared enough to find out has known that since it happened.
Watch, in 35 years, some stupid kid is going to post on slashdot: "Wow, did you know that they showed Janet Jackson's boob on TV in 2004? I never knew that before!"
The Wikipedia page has been slashdotted.
Under a list of protected pages, the Lunokhod program page is listed because page was listed on a /. story 26 minutes ago, has already been vandalized half a dozen times including insertion of goatsex links. Pakaran. 23:06, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
But what the hell is a satillite?
from this page:
"Lunokhod-2 had 3 low-rate TV cameras and 4 panoramic cameras. TV cameras could work at different frame rates: 3.2, 5.7, 10.9 and 21.1 seconds per frame (not frames per second)."
talk about slo-mo...
Suddenly, Spirit and Opportunity seems less of a feat to me, more of an enhanced rip-off that crashes and displays weird colors... "look we can build remote controlled robot that sends us pictures and has super-advanced sensors and gizmos"... "Much like the Russian did on the moon more than 30 years ago..."
I remember a documentary about lunar exploration and in an interview a Russian scientist told how he when the rover was reaching the end of its "life" on the moon tried to get his superiors to agree to letting the rover "die with music" (or something like that - I don't remember the proverb (i.e. the translation) so please tell me) meaning to let it die more honorably than just stopping but instead letting it do more hazardous (and more interesting) exploration which probably would "kill" it - that would've been going closer to the edge of a crater.
I caught a History Channel special called " History Undercover: Secrets of Soviet Space Disasters". While there were plenty of disasters, there were many accomplishments. With respect to the lunokhod, according to the program there was some concern that the orbiting Apollo spacecraft might collide with the lunokhod craft (though highly unlikely) and that the lunokhod was a fallback plan after the Soviet's own manned moon-craft failed repeatedly on the launch pad. I'm certainly no space expert, so any comments on the TV show?
Did the Russians ever get a human crew on the moon?
You just can't compare. With all due respect, Moon is 1.5 light-seconds away, while Mars is 20 light-minutes or so.
The metric system is the tool of the devil. My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and thats the way I likes it!
Honestly, has it really come to this?
:-P
How is this news? I mean, fine, maybe some
people have never heard of the Lunakhod but I would
have thought anyone interested in space would
have heard of it (there is even a replica in Sydney's
Powerhouse Museum a few streets from where I am)
Man, I'm so ignorant I've never heard of Neil
Armstrong! Did you know he actually walked on
the moon?? Wow, this should go into a Slashdot
article!
Yeah, they look like video cassettes, only made of paper.
This isn't because of proximity to the Earth or gravity or more solar power or anything. The Mars rovers move so slow because one of their mission parameters was that they would not be "torque bound". They wanted them to be able to roll over any obstacle. The motors are made with a power/speed tradeoff so while they are very slow, there's very little that they cannot climb.
Blaze a trail to the New World
you probably can manage.
Actually, if you read the other linked articles, or google search you can see it was 11 days, not months. Unless some people mean moon days instead of earth days, which would equal 11 months (one mmon day = about 30 earth days), but i cant imageine that being the case. Anyone know for sure?
I for one welcome our 50 year old Russian Moon Rover Overlords!!
I remember these buggies. They were front page news in the newspapers and magazines at the time. I was in an American high-school, enjoying a good science education.
I don't remember seeing 'em on tee vee. Maybe that's why you missed 'em.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
Check out
http://www.astronautix.com/
Very extensive site with lots of pictures and information.
Thanks to my Soviet science education I've just recently learnd about American people stepping on Moon 3 decades ago. Perhaps.
Now the question is: what is propaganda and what are facts?
Even now I belive that 3 decades ago it was much easier and safier to deploy the rover through the Earth radiation belts than humans. And speaking about safity, it was never a strong point in American space industry.
Well, I hope we'll see about humans crossing those deadly belts in upcoming 3 decades. Or will we?
Less is more !
You know why you never heard of it? Because it never happened. Those rovers crash landed on the moon. Anything else you hear is a remnant of cold war propaganda.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
I find it kind of sad that due to propaganda etc this has been forgotten. A lot of amazing things happened in the "space race" apart from the Apollo missions. And on both sides. The Russians we now know weren't that far behind America in getting a man to the moon when it was cancelled (better to pretend you wouldn't lower yourself to a crass race than to come second I guess). But the lunakhod was very public and was front page news in many countries. And it just kept on going for ages. There was even talk about getting one that would take off and return samples to Earth ... I *think* that happend but I'm not sure, that was considered an embarassing possibility to the Americans. Still so much potential lost. It should be a lesson I guess to the future generations of engineers about publish or perish.
Bitter and proud of it.
We've all heard of Pioneer, Voyager, Viking etc but how many have heard more than a passing reference to Surveyor? (not MGS)
e yo r.html
"The Surveyor probes were the first U.S. spacecraft to land safely on the Moon. The main objectives of the Surveyors were to obtain close-up images of the lunar surface and to determine if the terrain was safe for manned landings"
5/7 landed. Probably the only time you will hear them mentioned is when talking about apollo 12 when the LM landed near one of the surveyors, hacked off it camera and took it back home. other than that it is almost forgotten.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/surv
And remember, if it is in print, it MUST be true....
See? I can play Shakespeare:
To be or Not to be, that...
that is illogical Captain!
Well gee, I had an American education too and I knew all about the Soviet Moon rovers and other Soviet space feats. Maybe you just weren't paying attention?
Don't forget Luna 16 which had a descent and
ascent stage and retrieved a lunar soil sample
which it brought back to Earth in Sept. 1970
Luna 16
Also don't forget Luna 15. Just two hours
before the Apollo 11 Eagle was due to lift
off from the Moon, Luna 15 crash-landed
into the Moon's surface. It's job had been
to robotically retrieve soil samples which
could well have trumped Apollo 11 in doing so
and without risking human lives.
Those old of us to vividly remember the
Apollo 11 landing will also recollect the
drama surrounding Luna 15 right up until the
last moment.
Yeah, we'd be better off illiterate. Damn, I knew learning to read was a big mistake.
The more people I meet from East Europe, the more I am convinced that the two worlds were much more similar than what we westerners were raised to believe.
People from former East Germany don't shun their origins as people from Nazi Germany would have (see 79qm DDR, which I am told is a quite precise account of the facts by East Germans). Some are even fond of the old eastern flag. A Czech girl told me that, visiting San Francisco, she was appalled by seeing American girls executing a Spartakiad. They were cheerleaders.
There were abuses of human rights on both fields, sometimes specular in type if not in magnitude; McCarthy in the US, stalinist purges in the USSR (Ok, McCarthy never got to that magnitude); invasion of Czechoslovakia and Hungary there, coups in Greece and Chile here; Vietnam for the US and Afghanistan for the USSR (Ok, the USSR was fighting the good fight and the US not, but their methods did not differ much, and civilians suffered most in both cases).
On the other hand, things went on pretty normally for average people on both sides. It was dangerous being against communism in the USSR as much as it was being a communist in the US, and the likelihood of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to lose their elections was pretty much the same as the American Communist Party's to win them.
This is not to say "everybody's a human-right criminal, blast human rights, they were all good fellas".
It is to say that, instead of laughing at propaganda crap in other countries, you should think what propaganda they fed you as truth; that is the most dangerous, as nobody is out there telling you how ludicrous lies you are being exposed to. For instance some may be interested in what was going on in 1984.
One thing is watching Goebbels on the Discovery Channel with a Brit telling you what a jerk he was, another one is being a German, who had been on the brink of starvation before nazism, that has no other information channels than the nazi state's, that stands in a cheering crowd, and who, when Joseph asks, "Wolles Sie den totalen Krieg?", cannot help shouting "Ja!".
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Well, I went to a public school in the good ole US and I had heard of them.
;)
In fact, in 10th grade, (1982) I wrote a Sci Fi story about people going to the moon because of a nuclear accident in the middle east that was polluting the world. The people who were there for a long time, decided to kill time by going and finding one of the Apollo landing sites. When they arrived there, they found pieces torn off of the US moon rover and other US items left behind. Curious, they followed a pair of small wheel tracks over a ridge or two, and found the little Soviet rover dead in its tracks as well, in a failed attempt to steal some of our secrets.
Where is that paper? I thing I got an A on that thing.
- I like pudding.
What, you found some historic space race info. Neat, how is this news? I knew about this stuff when I was 8 years old. A long time ago...
Growing up in one of the Soviet occupied countries, they made sure that every citizen knows Gagarin, Sputnik, Lunohod and the 2 dogs that flew into orbit (I forgot their names and I am glad). Not a whole a lot of "Armstrong" and "The Shuttle" talk... go figure. They would shove all that stuff down our throats starting in kindergarden. Not really the science aspect, more propaganda, to contrast the "backward" America where they had "slavery" and "lynch mobs". So, I am sure to a much lesser degree, the vice-versa was happening in U.S. That's the reason probably why you haven't heard much of Lunohod.
After Americans put men on the Moon, Brezhnev calls for the cosmonauts and tells them: ;-)
- In order to win the space race, you will land on the Sun!
- But we'll burn there, Leonid Il'ich!
- Don't worry, the Communist Party's Central Commettee is not stupid! You'll fly there in the night!
P.S. Anyone can translate the anecdote about Challenger and "zalpy saljuta"?
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
"Pomirat', tak s muzykoj" - the literal translation will be "If it is to die, then do it with a music".
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Everybody knows those pictures were just of a sound stage in Siberia.
paintball
"Thanks to my American science education, I had never heard of this feat."
:-)
Well, i'm glad to be from Europe (Austria to be exact), because we were - as a neutral country - beeing subject to both western AND eastern brainwashing and so got information of both sides of the space race
Well, to get the truth to it: Science experiments of Austria have flown on both sides; we even got an astronaut (or Austronaut) to MIR, which is quite a feat for such a small country...
BTW, look at quite a nice Lunokhod picture and also see the US Ranger Program to get a better view of the real pressures in NASA's side of the space race.
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
Since the Moon is about 400,000 kilometers from the Earth, the one-way signal time at the speed of light (300,000 km/sec) is about 1.3 seconds. Thus if a person on Earth sends a Moon rover a command, the rover responds at least 1.3 seconds later, and the Earth operator observes the response no sooner than 2.6 seconds after the signal left the Earth antenna. With allowances for hops to and from synchronous communication satellites plus any internal system delays, a three-second response delay is likely.
Watching documentaries on BBC, PBS, Discovery Channel, etc. are also good sources if you don't like reading.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
This just in! Children are not being taugh all of the knowledge contained in the universe in school! When pressed for comment, the school said "Time is finite". We'll be sure to get more info on this conspiracy in the next hour, stay tuned!
Deriding the American educational system for not having kids memorize every event in space history is a bit harsh. To be fair there is quite a bit of space history, and this feat while impressive was clearly not as impressive as walking on the moon, and came second. I also doubt there is some dark sinister nationalism at fault, as also seems to be hinted at.
Lets deride the American education system for failing to teach reading and math, not obscure space trivia.
Letter To Iran
I've known about these rovers forever - and have at various times searched for images and data from these missions, never to find more than a few. The only place these and other Soviet-era space missions are archived seems to be at nasa.gov. Where can I find more?
You linked to a nasa.gov page about the Soviet lunar missions. So yes, you can thank your "American science education" for learning about them.
... and I was never taught about the Whalers on the Moon! Thanks Futurama :-)
We're whalers on the moon
We carry our harpoons
But there ain't no whales
So we tell tall tales
And sing this whaling tune
For example, if you watch TV around here they would try real real hard to convince you that Pearl Harbor and the single most important event in the whole WWII, and their campaign against Japan was likewise the most important in the entire war. It's been 60 years, but they still can't live without this brainless propaganda.
Then there's a yellow skinned magazine to which your parents or grandparents should have subscribed. It is called National Geographic. Issues go way back. Even though it is renowned mainly for its photography and printing quality, you should try reading it.
Be sure to subscribe before you have kids of your own.
No need to subcribe any more. Now you can pick up the National Geographic Swimsuit Issue at any grocery store. Last year, they decided that all anybody cared about was rifling through the pictures looking for topless natives, so they ditched all the educational crap and geography stuff and are focusing on pablum and tits from here on out.
Everything good is destroyed by capitalism.
There is an unused Lunokhod rover here in the states. Here is a color picture I took a few years ago. The rover is/was at the Kansas Cosmosphere. The Cosmosphere is a wonderful place, and well worth making a road trip.
The top of the rover popped open lengthwise to reveal the solar panels. The long nose looking thing on the front was the antenna. There are rumors that these rovers did sample returns even. Havn't seen any proof though.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
I guess you didn't read The Big Golden Book Of Space when you were a kid.
Who has time for that? We have to work really long hours to pay taxes to support the schools.
Jan 28, 1986, date of Challenger's launch.
The President of the United States gets a call from Russia's Prime Minister, Mikhail Gorbachev:
- Hello, President?
- Yes?
- Please accept our sincere apologies for Challenger's explosion!
- But it's scheduled to launch in 40 seconds!
- Oh? Ok, we'll call back!
Not long at all:
Airport in France. American and German leaders meet. As the French come to the American airplane, George W Bush comes out, sniffs everyone from the French delegation, picks up some dirt off the ground, puts it in his pocket and returns to the airplane.
A few minutes later an American scientist apologizes: "We messed up: instead of the Presidential visit program, we loaded up the Mars rover one".
(apologies to the original poster)
Here is an interesting tid-bit: to remotely drive the rovers, the russians selected people who did not have driver licences.
The idea was that they would not have driver's reflexes they would have to unlearn in order to drive a vehicle with a 1 second lag in response thanks to the Earth_Moon gap...
I was around then (watched all the Apollo flights) and I recall these things. I live in America, too.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
"How about how to teach yourself?"
How about you get off your high horse?
"Try reading, it works great. You can find these things called books at a place called a library."
Nice and condensending, sure to win people over. Not to mention that we all know, propaganda has never been used in any print material.
"In addition to teaching me how to use a library, my parents also bought a big pile of paper called an encyclopedia. The purchase includes yearly updates called yearbooks."
And they must of got them from a magic place, where never a lie is told.
"Then there's a yellow skinned magazine to which your parents or grandparents should have subscribed. It is called National Geographic. Issues go way back. Even though it is renowned mainly for its photography and printing quality, you should try reading it."
yes, read 100+ years of national geographic. That chould be quick.
But remeber, you need to read thm backwards. That way you get the good stuff, and fewer advertisments.
"Be sure to subscribe before you have kids of your own."
fuck you. Like suscribing to NG is like looking at the fucking labrary of alaxandria.
"Happy education!"
Just becasue you immediatly take the opposite of what is said, doesn't mean your educated.
And for you I suggest reading up a Miss manners. It's in these things called newspapers. They come on print. You can suscribe, or you can just go to the store and pick one up.
I suggest you get sundays paper, roll it into a tube, and shove it up your ass so you can read it.
Before we brought back soil with Apollo II.
Early too, 1967 or so.
Can anybody confirm?
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
Speaking of grandparents... my grandmother transferred her NG subscription to me. So I've been a "valued subscriber" since before I was even born. I hope to do the same with my kids... see how long we can keep the run going.
Larry
because of the latency in communications, a marsokhod must be autonomous, while lunakhod can be pretty-much human-controlled...?
C'mon guys that was like what 40 years ago.
That's it, I am fed up, screw you all.
I just wanted to set the record straight and say that I did learn about this in public school in Texas when I was a child. And this is not something new or secret, I had several childrens space books too that had the Luna missions in them. While I agree the education system in the US is junk it isn't as bad as the author of this letter states. So please mister author don't make blanket statements about people in the US, you just end up making the rest of us who are in the "know" look the fool too.
I also learned about how the CCCP had sample return missions and successfully landed probes on Venus (of course the US dropped probes on Venus too, just not landers).
His friend Pavel shows up the next day to see how his friend was doing. "Just a few bruises, but they took care of the potato field for me. So, next week it is my turn to inform on you?"
The original poster might not have had a typical experience during their oh-so-awful American education. My experience of an American, public school space education in the early 1980s included Soviet Luna (vividly remember pix of the rover, with the funky chickenwire wheels), Venera (Venus), Mars and Soyuz.
You've got enough grammatical errors there that I shall more or less disrespect your 'contribution' out of hand and summarily disregard it. Moron.
Can anyone suggest any books about the russian side of things along the lines of
The last man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan
or
Failure is not an Option by Gene Kranz
from a Russian perspective?
unlike the moon, mars is so far away that driving the rover in real-time isn't very feasible (you tell it to move, then 30-40 minutes later you'll get your image back showing the result).
So the latest mars rovers are semi-autonomous. Mission control gives them a destination, and the rover finds its own way there.
Now the reason for the slow speed has a bit to do with control theory. One of the most accurate ones we've developed to date works like this: Plot a path to the destination using currently available data (from your cameras, range finders etc). Take the first step on that path. Halt. Look at your data, plot a new path to the ultimate destination. Take step. Halt. And so on.
This system allows the rovers to navigate on their own pretty well and deal with obstacles as they come across them (which may not have been obvious in the first path plot).
Humans do essentially the same thing as we navigate in our world except we call it "reflexes".
The slowness with the rovers has to do with their low power consumption limiting both motor power and processing power and just plain ole' caution. Mars has alot less sun than the moon does so solar panels aren't as efficient. And when you've got an $800 million pair of machines... you want them to take their time to get to their destinations. Especially since getting results takes so long anyway.
-
As nowadays, they are still people in US that think, europe is in middle-age !
:
... was only a mock-up of st marco plaza made of steel and tissue.
:) ;-)
...
Ok, they might be reason, i remind 3 years ago in the European quater of Orlando EPCOT center, all the things about europe were just LOL
Germany, was represented as a "bayern land" where everybody drink bear all the day lon with strange suits.
Italy
And France movie was shot in the late 50s !
Sorry guys, but go and teach your history lessons
Or better, go and visit us, visit the countryside and not only the "cliche" places you've seen in holywood movies. Be openminded !
Then, we can discuss on why US is still using an old mesure system
The more it spreads, the stronger it gets.
PS I completely understand your point, and agree to some extent.
What's with teaching state history, when teaching the present and future values of a loan is so much much more important towards quenching the blind ambition of college-bound students.
:)
Sorry, Mods, but ignorance is not insightful. More like inciteful.
There are plenty of good reasons to learn history; the most obvious reason being that it helps you understand why we are where we are. But your question assumes people are actually learning history, and I must make a serious objection.
Since the time teachers have is a limiting factor, we try and give the fundementals -- casting a wide net and hoping this spurns students to go and (shocking!) learn on their own. Unfortunately, the resources allocated to education pale in comparison to the money spent on, say, cosmetics. Or professional sports. Or any of a number of other useless things that reinforce we can't be our best unless we spend, Spend, Spend! Welcome to the U.S.
It's not like students don't have enough time to learn history, science and economics. But more often then not, the kinds of subjects you mentioned are seldom requirements, though some schools offer pretty decent physical-education programs and economics classes as electives. In general, this increase corresponds to higher income demographics, which may help to explain why the rich tend to be slimmer.
Yeah, all of the US NASA stuff was very public. The military really was not though. And the USSR's NASA equivelant were hidden until after a succesful mission. But the US government knew every last one of those, including the failures. It was not published due to the possible exposure of our survelence that it would cause.
I would also guess that the USSR knew all of ours including the Militaries. It may be interesting some day to go through their records and find out why they were checking for extra US stuff on the moon.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Anyone else ever here about the rumor that Yuri wasn't really the first cosmonaut in space? The 'rumored' first manned launch decided to keep going instead becoming ballistic and re-entering the atmosphere.
I'm the root of all that's evil, yeah, but you can call me cookie.
where are the pictures of the moon? i wish to see the 20,000 pictures
anyone know any links?
Radio signals travel at 186000 miles/s
.
Moon is 238,857 miles
. . Ping time = 238857*2 - there and back
--------
186000
2.56 seconds round trip ping
No sharp objects, I'm a programmer!
Using the name of a god in a theocratic society is probably goint to be blsphemous and get you beheaded!
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Slashdot effect and all, it's fascinating !
I remember reading about this when I was a kid - early seventies I guess - in the UK, in the I Spy book of Space Exploration (or something like that.) Interestingly, there is a replica of one of the rovers in the Powerhouse museum in Sydney, Australia - along with an Apollo rocket engine nozzle! I couldn't find any pictures of the rover, but here's a link to the space exhibition.
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
I sleep better knowing that the Six-Million-Dollar Man was able to fight and destroy these evil machines when they crash landed on earth.
... the modern marvel called the Internet! There just hapens to be a bunch of info you were never told about in school there.
Sindri Traustason.
well i was educated in india and i can tell u this that we studied these russian rovers in high school.
this was a part of our basic course. education in america is too weak ( i am in america so i can comment on tht)"
Was it India who taught you to spell you as "u" and that as "tht" ?
we sloved them by hand by theorems. never guessed by graphs.
Slove!
"worlds on collision" by I.V. is a great book perhaps debunked but he sure but his heart in it.
But then perhaps he got it right
Going to Mars is great but I do not believe the mysteries of Mars will hold a candle to Venus.
Hmmmm. I've got an American education, and I knew quite a bit about the Russian program. Maybe it's not the American education system that is at fault here...
... on Polonium 210. Apparently it decays by energetic alpha particle emission (5.407 MeV) to Pb-206, which is stable. Compared to Plutonium 238 at 5.592 MeV (which NASA uses in its RTG's), they're essentially equal as far as energy goes. Pu-238 wins hands-down in the half life category - 87.7 Years vs 138.376 days.
Po-210 has one decay product, whereas Pu-238 has at least 8 steps in some of its decay chains.
Oddly, there is a decay chain starting at Pu-238 that leads to Po-210!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
i know that we have telescopes that can see light years away.
I've got this amazing talent, myself. I can see light-years away with my own eyes! Tonight, I can go outside and look up and see the belt of Orion, made of stars that are many many light-years away. I'll gloat. I doubt you have this talent yourself.
"The soviets did other cool stuff like sending a balloon to venus that floated in the atmosphere and travelled more halfway round the planet before losing contact."
This would have succeeded had the Russians not hired Richard Branson to pilot that balloon.
Come on, moderators! Some clown posts what amounts to nothing other than ridiculously sarcastic trash, and you mod it up?!
You can find these things called books at a place called a library.
It's unbelievable that anyone found this worthy of anything other than scorn. Pal, take your shitty attitude to some site that welcomes posts containing nothing but empty sarcasm.
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
The USSR fought the bad fight in Afghanistan and Vietnam. Their invasions there were about nothing more than aggression, and millions of lives were lost.
The only difference is that the USSR won against Vietnam, and lost against Afghanistan.
Am I the only one who thinks this isn't funny?
... in the sense that pointing out the underbelly of one's community (in this case, the slashdot community) is an important function.
No, you're not. And if I'm the one meta-moderating the "funny" moderations, I'll meta-moderate them as "not funny." "Insightful" perhaps
Trolls and online vandals are indeed the vermin of the internet, and far too many of them foul the well of thought here on the 'net, and far too many foul the waters of slashdot (and now, apparently, wikipedia).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Last time I was at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC (a little over a year ago) they had a Soviet moon suit on display with a few details of the Soviet manned moon program. What was interesting was they had the moon backpack opened up, and there were several well-formed WOODEN braces holding a few things in there. I would guess they were temporary braces while the engineers waited for the real things to (never) appear. Also, the cosmonaut entered through a hatch in the back of the suit.
"What was interesting was they had the moon backpack opened up, and there were several well-formed WOODEN braces holding a few things in there."
Perhaps it turns out that wood was perfectly adequate for this bracing?
Actually it is now belived Germany attacked Russia when it did because otherwise Russia would have attacked a little later itself.
That is quite obvious. Lenin instated the Soviet empire with frequent claims of intent to attack just about every country. after this, Lenin invaded and annexed about a dozen independent countries.
Back when Hitler and Stalin were allies, Stalin was invading and annexing countries to the west of the uSSR (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia).
Stalin's imperialist intent was proven when he made East Germany also a permanent part of the Soviet Empire.
"Uh, they didn't have any choice. Robotics were notoriously poor in the 17th century"
Yes. Millions of robots lived in shocking squallor in the slums of cities such as London and Paris and New York.
TransOrbital, Inc. has plans to image the landing sites of both the Apollo and Lunokhod programs during their TrailBlazer mission. A description of the mission is available here. There is also some info on the Lunokhod rovers available here.
Well must have been long decades of Soviet occupation (I am hungarian) ... but I have definetely seen lotsa pictures of this beauty... I did not know though that it was russian :)
... better late than never :)
now I know
Wow! Thanks!
I am not a russian. I am bulgarian, but there is no "K" in the russian word "LUNOHOD". I dont't know why the letter "K" was added.
The Soviets never occupied Hungary. The Soviets merely helped the Hungarian workers in their struggle against imperialist threats from the West. The Soviets were brothers with Hungary in their struggle for worker rights and democracy.
If there ever was a time when Hungary was occupied, it is now: the country is now the playground of Western hegemonists who are exploiting the workers and enslaving them in corporations. Workers who were formerly in control of the means of production before the cruel trick in 1989 and the progress of socailsim was reversed.
If you rape and burn your way 1,000 miles into another country in a self-described "war of annihilation" then fully expect them to do the same to you if the fortunes of war change
So it was OK for Stalin to order the rape of German civilian women?
I guess I'm a real space geek, because I've heard of these and seen pictures years ago. As I recall the robots looked like a little red rectangular box with a foot on either side and it sort of walked. One model anyway. The Russians also sent probes to Mars and Venus for picture and samples.
I studied Russian history and language in college and before that anything I could get my hands on. I was fascinated with Russia. Probably because they were the unknown quantity to me, the most foreign people I could imagine.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
Wow that sounds an awful lot like endorsing the idea of pre-emptive warfare (Bush Doctrine anyone?)
It's not the Bush doctrine....yet. There is was nothing "pre-emptive" about retaliating against Iraq last year after a long period in which Iraq had engaged in more than 2,400 separate attacks against U.S. peacekeepers patrolling the "no fly zones" in accordance with the cease-fire.
they have been in US published books about space and lunar exploration since i was a kid. years later(early 90s) i was asked to Work(volunteer) for an exibit at the FortWorth Museum of Science and History on Soviet Space. this was a traveling exibit that was making it's way around the US and would eventually find it's way to the Cosmosphere in Hutchenson Ks. the exibit included the backup hardware of the lunokhod(still worked) and sputnik. also included were the return vehicles for Soyuz and other hardware and equipment. all in all it was very impressive.
they had some russian techs running the remotes for the lunokhod. i think they got a bigger kick out of it than anyone else.
hey anyone else out there that worked it?
i still got my tie!
I stopped in at the St.Louis Science Center a few years ago when they had a big presentation setup for the Russian Space Race showing off all of their Race era tech with videos and such of their rovers. I think they even had one on display. I also remember a big mockup of their big launch site for their massive multi-stage SaturnV sized rockets (forgot the name though). Cool stuff, Russia was on the ball.
"Russian cosmonauts were known to tape over the red eject button on these seats when it was revealed that the shuttle was designed so that the seats would have ejected straight up into a thick steal roof overhead. The team that designed the seats and switches did not coordinate with the hull designers."
However, under the socialist government, women had some rights, and society was socially more advanced
...and way less religious, than what it is now.
This was the same Socialist government that killed over a million Afghans and forced many more to flee: more than half of these victims were women.
Socialism destroyed Afghanistan. Islamists took the crumbled remains of the country and ground them into powder. Afghanistan remains as an example of why socialism and Islam have no place in government: the place has seen the worst of both.
It was quite religious. The only difference was that the Soviets were forcing their state religion, instead of the Taliban.
but Stalinist Russia and Maoist China are what Communism means to most people in the west
It is what it means (or has meant) to most people, period. Really huge numbers of people have belonged to the CPUSA and the Communist Party of China.
Because your presumption that Europeans "settled" North and South America. One *settles* un-occupied land
Settlement happens in either occupied or unoccupied lands. The definition and concept makes no distinction.
One does not have to look further than Israel and Palestine. The territories are considered "occupied" by all sides of importance (even Ariel Sharon, now). The Israelis who have intruded there to live permanently in these occupied territories are called "Settlers"... by all sides of importance.
It is actual people doing real evil things. Take the fact that it has not happened in your country (I guess) as a bliss
It has, at least to a smaller degree. Study the lynching period in the South, and take especial note of the happy carnival atmosphere taking place beneath the "strange fruit" in the trees.
This is what the Confederate flag stands for.
I've seen just as many that suggest the Russian buildup actually was defensive"
To the Soviet leaders, aggressive expansion was always done for what they said was "defensive" reasons.
Actually yes it does. That's the difference between a war of conquest and a war of defense. Stalin's designs on Europe aside -- he did not start the War with Germany
Yet, he had started his war on Eastern Europe before started the War with Germany. In fact, he invaded and conquered the 3 Baltic nations before there were hostilities between him and Hitler. Long after Hitler was defeated, these countries remained permanent parts of the USSR. He also took a chunk of Romania.
Stalin's war was 100% a war of conquest. He treated Poland little better than he treated East Germany.
Hitler launched a war of annihilation against an entire race of people (two races if you count the Jews in the conquered nations). Even Stalin wasn't that evil.
Hitler also tried to exterminate the Rom (Gypsies). However, Stalin did the same. Look up the "Doctor's Plot" against the Jews. He tried to eliminate the Cossakhs. He had 7,000,000 Ukrainians killed.
Even Stalin wasn't that evil -- his goals were imperialistic conquest of lands that didn't belong to him and the spread of his Communist theories -- not genocide.
The former included the latter, sometimes.
I still take exception to calling it "Stalin's war" when it was Hitler who started the war
I was referring to "Stalin's side of the war". However, the whole thing was Stalin's war of aggression. Stalin succeeded in expanding his empire, moving his border far to the west. Stalin's aggression was much more successful than that of Hitler.
leave much to be desired but I highly doubt Stalin or anybody on the Politburo were thinking about annexing Poland and East Germany in the middle of 1941 or 1942 -- they were fighting for survival.
Yet, he annexed Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania long before this. Imperial expansion was very much on his mind before he got into hostilities with Germany.
Also, the only landers ever to return pictures from the surface of Venus were Soviet. See here. It's pretty amazing what was accomplished there, considering that surface temperatures are hot enough to melt lead. Venera 7 (1970) was also the first man-made craft to return signals from another planet.
this specific diplomatic move was clearly reducing the risk of WW3 breaking out.
Brezhnev did not rule out WW3. In fact, he kept to the goal of the USSR as proclaimed by Lenin: that of global conquest. He even stopped at saying he would not engage in an invasion of Western Europe.
The U.S.'s policy was no first strike. However, if the USSR engaged in a first strike of a conventional Blitzkrieg against Western Europe, the US reserved the quite reasonable right to respond with nuclear arms.
If the "hardened bigots" include the die-hard Klan members, this is exactly what they want.