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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.)"
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.
Also look at the pictures (images.google.com)
candidly
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.
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.
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
--Chag
FYI: "Lunokhod" mean "moonwalker" in russian (They should sue Michael Jackson)
As for name, russian engineering projects are most often named after the lead engineer or location where they are made (common for russian planes and cars, like MiG actually is a shortened version of Mikoyan-Gurevich - names of the design team leads)
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
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..."
And if you are in Kansas, you can see them st the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
It probably was good old Joystick.. Moon is practically around the corner compared to Mars. I think there is a couple of seconds delay in signal propagation, that's all..
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/9901/lunokh od_t.jpg
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990109.html
Worst
That's 'cause the Lunokhods were being driven
in real-time from Earth. They had two TV cameras
to give the operator a stereo view to the front.
A cheap graphic system projected a virtual bar
into the image at a distance in front that
increased in direct proportion to the Lunokhod's
speed, so that it would appear where the
Lunokhod would be 2.5 seconds (light speed delay)
into the future. The operator then "drove" the
projected bar to avoid obstacles.
The current Mars rovers are far more autonomous
due to the much greater light-speed delay. It
would not be possible to drive them at any
reasonable speed under control from Earth.
The difference in speed is entirely an issue of
control/obstacle-avoidance.
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.
The names on the far side of the moon (not the dark side, since it's only dark half the time) are Russian because the Russians were the first to photograph the far side. Nothing to do with rovers, everything to do with being the first ones to send men around the moon.
In fact, how would they operate the rovers if they were on the far side?
Features on the dark side of the moon are (nearly) invisible. There's no sunlight there. Nobody's ever spent much time there (even roboticly).
The far side of the moon, however, is another story. The Soviet Union was one of the pioneer explorers of that, and they took lots of pictures... during local daylight periods, of course.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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
Toward the end of its life, various subsystems were weakening and its ultimate fate was obvious to the control team. Some of the mission scientists were in favour of sending it to risky areas--that had up to then been avoided--in the hope of yielding really exciting scientific results. If it failed (ie. rolled down a crater wall), no big deal; it was gonna die anyway. Sadly, management vetoed the idea and Lunokhod 1 died with a whimper, not a bang.
One I hear repeated often is that the first woman in space was Sally Ride in June 1983. Sadly, this isn't just a US misconception, as it was one I was taught in Australia too.
It completely ignores Valentina Tereshkova, a russian woman who was not only the first woman in space 20 years earlier (almost to the day, in June 1963) but was about the sixth person into space entirely (I may have that position slightly wrong)
OK, your vaunted Google search gives 29 results for 'Lunokhod + "11 days"'. Did you bother to find out how many it got for 'Lunokhod + "11 months"'? 39 hits. Duh.
And aside from that, if you follow the links, you'll see that it landed on November 17, 1970, and "operations... officially ceased" on October 4, 1971. It also happens to mention "Lunokhod was intended to operate through three lunar days but actually operated for eleven lunar days."
ProofReading Markup Language - and yes, I find typos.
The reliable Soyuz rocket in use today was designed by Sergei Korolev, who was a brilliant rocket engineer who, like Wernher von Braun, dreamed of building rockets that could send people into space. He died in the mid-1960s, however, so his second-in-command designed the giant N-1 -- and the N-1's first stage had many, many small rockets powering it rather than a smaller number of large ones, as in the Saturn V. It's believed (according to a mid-90s NOVA program on the Soviet manned lunar effort, and other sources) that the sheer complexity of the N-1 was largely to blame for the failures.
How the cosmonauts really felt hasn't been addressed much if at all in any of the books or web sites I've read, nor have any documentaries.
i am a soviet space shuttle
...as if this was supposed to be some sort of huge secret or something!
I remember visiting the Science and Tech Museum here in Ottawa way back in 1977, the 60th anniversary of the USSR. The Soviets had an exhibition of their space program, including a model Vostok and Sputnik 1, some stuff about the recently completed Apollo/Soyuz joint mission...and a model Lunokhod, which ran on a little track on a grayish moon surface. Most interesting! Somewhere, I still have a brochure or two from it.
So this was hardly any sort of secret, the USSR being very solvent at the time.
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
Yes indeed, Redstone was a US Army ballistic missile. It was designed by Wernher von Braun, who also designed the A-4 (V-2) ballstic missile you also speak of. Redstone not only launched two suborbital manned Mercury flights (and accompanying unmanned test flights) but its Jupiter-C variant launched Explorer 1, the first US satellite.
A-4 rockets flew to the edge of space while flying from Germany and France to London, and in later years were modified by von Braun and the US Army for increased performance; they then flew cameras and scientific instruments instead of the original one-ton Amatol warheads.
A winged A-4b variant was also tested in preparation for building a manned A-9 variant, which would have been boosted by an A-10 first stage. Its purpose was to be able to send a warhead to New York City, but development of the A series of rockets stopped before it was ever constructed.
i am a soviet space shuttle
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.
The US lunar module was no less an unknown quantity, though it was known to be at least somewhat reliable because it was tested several times before the actual landing - several times unmanned, then by Apollo 9 (earth orbit) and Apollo 10 (lunar approach but no landing.)
i am a soviet space shuttle
"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
After Apollo 11 successfully landed, the Soviet lunar program was classified for many years and not publicly acknowledged until the laet 1990s
A lot of the moon-related exploration stuff was available to public - just visit the space museum in Moscow. Some parts of the exhibitions from the 1980s are, I believe, still there.
Jobs? Which jobs?
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....
Do you suppose that, given that the first of the series of probes was launched February 12, 1961 (though the first moderately successful one wasn't until October 18, 1967), and the last arrived at Venus on October 18, 1983, he just might be referring to the whole series of missions, rather than making the rather ridiculous claim that a single probe had been in operation there for two decades? Oh, and while we're at it, here's a link to the "only actual photo we have of the surface", as taken by Venera 9, 10, 13, and 14. Funny how it took four successful landers to "return a single horizon-to-horizon image before crapping out", isn't it?
Duh.
That the Russians did all the heavy lifting in WWII.
The Americans and British helped out a lot, but they sat on their hands for far longer than they had to. The Russians took one of the worst beatings any country has ever received in a war without giving up.
Had the Russians had failed at Stalingrad, we would be living in a very different world today.
Man, I'm glad someone said it. As an American, I have always been so embarassed by the bullshit that we get told by our teachers regarding WWII.
The worst thing is, the teachers aren't deliberately lying, they believe the crap. I was told by my freshman world history teacher (a great guy, actually) that "we landed in Normandy and kicked ass."
Now, as it happens, my grandfather was in the German army on the eastern front and his version of the story was a little different. By the time the US & Britain arrived in Germany, the Soviets had beaten the Nazis to a pulp and there really wasn't much left to do. Much of the Nazi ground forces (including my grandfather's) were running west to surrender to the Americans and British because they'd heard horrible stories about the GULAG in Siberia.
Slightly OT, but for the curious, my Grandpa (who was just about 17 or 18 at the time) was taken POW by the Americans in just this way, and he and his fellow captives were taken to concentration camps throughout Germany and Poland to "clean up the mess." Can you imagine being 17 and having to see what your own people had done, to that extreme? Before some smartass responds, "Better than actually being there while they were operational," let me just say that I heartily agree. But I wouldn't want to experience either. My grandpa (17 or 18? Can you imagine?) was so scared by it that he wouldn't let my mom join the girl scouts because they wore uniforms, which he felt was "too militaristic."
He died last year. I miss him.
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.
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the USSR was fighting the good fight
Eh? Was this a typo?
Nope. The USSR was fighting against a muslim fundamentalist uprising financed by external powers (read: Ronald Reagan), and was called in by a legitimate government. You may question that Afghanistan's government was fully independent, but again few in western Europe were then. Among the "freedom fighters", a certain Osama bin Laden learnt a lot about guerrilla in that war. The mujaheddin finally won thanks to American Stinger missiles with which they shot down Soviet choppers, and, when they drove out the Soviets, they started a civil war that raged on until a faction, the talebans, came to power and established their perfect muslim state.
Most Americans noticed these guys first when two 767 smashed in the twin towers. I remember a New York store with the sign "Whack Afghanistan" the day after, and could not help thinking "You already did".
Of course the USSR's methods were not especially gentle, and they were responsible for extensive land-mine fields (though there is an american quota, not easily discerned since the US cloned soviet mines to cover their tracks). Civilian casualties were not a major concern, as they were not in Vietnam, and it turned again in a world-domination question. But if I had to pick which was the most evil side, that would not be the USSR, especially considering what mujaheddins and talebans did later, both to Afghani and American civilians.
However, under the socialist government, women had some rights, and society was socially more advanced, and way less religious, than what it is now. Women today 40 years old and over, who experienced those times, are among the most frustrated groups in Afghanistan, resulting in high suicide rates.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Get a clue. You desperately need it.
They did. It was started at the same time as US. While the US was from inception and till now intended as a manned system and requires 7 guinea pigs to fly (and die), the russian from inception was designed to run in fully automated mode if needed. It can also carry as many people as the US one, but it took off and landed automatically day one.
It went through a number of prototypes which were considerably smaller then the shuttle and can land on both sea and ground. There are publically available pictures taken from New Zeland destroyer of russians retrieving one of the prototypes after a water landing in the South Pacific in the late 70-es.
The program developement ended with the Buran which had the same spec as the shuttle and could still fly in fully automated mode (take off, dock, land). It completed one fully automatic space flight and landed successfully. On the second flight with crew on board the system malfunctioned at a similar time in the take off sequence like the Challenger. The main difference between the Challenger and Buran was the fact that the Buran had a working ejector system and the crew escaped unharmed. Which makes a remarkable difference compared to the shuttle. And it was not kept secret. It was in the news and well known.
After that incident the powers that be finally did an economical analysis of the program and found that it is completely unviable. The reason being that copying the shuttle was wrong. The shuttle was designed to satisfy several silly USAF requirements and as a result was and still is too big for our rocket technology. The early prototypes were right. We cannot build a reusable vehicle larger then about 30% of the shuttle and keep it reliable.
And the funniest bit is that one of the prototypes for the new NASA vehicle is a literal copy of these prototypes. Compare the Kiwi pictures of the real thing from the 70-es and the NASA material. Actually nothing funny - it is the reality. Same as with the Yak 142 technology making its way into the next generation of US VTL fighter jet, so on so forth. I would not go into why and what as it will be marked as a flamebait though they are well known as well.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Right words.
My father(14 year old in 1942) survived in barbarous bombardment on August 23, 1942 in Stalingrad.
It was black day in the history of Stalingrad. About 50000 townsman died that day.The fascist bombers accomplished about 2000 fligths (600 bombers 3 times, 40 minute interval).
That was part of the problem, Korolev who designed the N1 died before the it could be test fired and Mishin who followed him was not in the same league.
N1 was only one of three designs of heavy launch rockets designed by the Soviets (they never designed a specific Moon rocket). It was chosen in preference to a design known as UR700 which would have been far simpler to construct and more reliable. The UR700's smaller brother became the highly successful Proton rocket which is still used and was at one point planned to launch a lunar manned orbiter.
But perhaps the most serious set-back that the Soviets had to face was that they never built a test stand for the N1 (Apollo built one in Mississippi), so the only way of determining its performance was to stack the rocket on the pad and fire the engines.
Four attempts, four different reasons for failure, but by then the N1 was so late that the propaganda advantage of manned missions to the Moon had been lost. The Politburo cancelled the programme just before the fifth launch attempt which the engineers believed would have succeeded.
Best wishes,
Mike.