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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.)"
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).
I wonder what else american public schools forgot to teach me...
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 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.
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If you go to Viet Nam, you'll find a lot of people who believe that:
1) The Soviets landed people on the moon;
2) The US moon landings were faked.
They learned it in school. I've even heard that from some of my in-laws there, and I'm far from sure I've convinced them it isn't true. Heck, some Americans even believe 2.
I remember the whispering propaganda of the 60's and 70's. "The soviets all use crapy electronics", "The soviets rockets all crash or explode", "The soviets are way behind the USA", etc. In reality, time has revealed that whatever their politics, the soviets showed great economy and resourcefullness (at a time many US rockets blew up, too but were less publicized) and succeded in many ways. That their information has been so overlooked rather underscores a propaganda war on the part of the USA (and make no mistake, since the day Kennedy launched the Space Program, there was a huge propaganda onslaught to make US look good, inspite of setbacks and disasters.)
I've never met an astronaut, but have met a cosmonaut, an intelligent and personable fellow, who was mercilessly grilled by a college professor on politics rather than the space programs.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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Funny. I now work for an american corporation, and did work closely with NASA. And we indeed give a fuck about quaity control, economics, or long-term consequences. A very long, hard fuck.
But statistics is a stubbron thing. Russian space craft, from boosters to landers do have higher success rate. Go figure.
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"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
I'd like the next poster to quit comparing his relatively privileged education to that received by the average American.
My schools didn't give me the tools I needed to find things out. Luckily, I dropped out and started reading, which was a great boon once I got into college.
All I was taught about Russia in school was that their government was put in place without concern for the will of the people, their government spied on its own people, corruption was rampant, and a bunch of fat cats at the top lived well off of the sweat of the commoners. Actually, learning those things *has* helped me deal with modern-day America.
Quit being so "born on third base, thought he hit a triple". Start paying more attention to the perks you got growing up, that weren't shared by the majority of your fellow Americans, let alone the rest of the world.
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...
It's pretty amazing how much stuff they did land on the Moon. The first crash-lander was Soviet. The first soft-lander was Soviet. The first fly-by was by a Soviet probe. The first rover was Soviet. Etc. For whatever reason, those efforts are, as you say, little known among the general public even though the information sent back was vital toward sending humans there (Example: Luna 9 didn't sink into the swamp, so it was pretty safe to guess that it wasn't all that likely that the US Surveyor craft wouldn't, either, and they didn't.)
I once posted in a discussion on fark.com about a different space mission, made a comment in passing about the fact that there were US and Soviet craft on the moon, and somebody informed me, with disdain, that all the flags on the Moon were American.
Nope. Not by a long shot, they weren't. Even the tiny Luna 9 carried some Soviet memorabilia.
i am a soviet space shuttle