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.)"

Comments

you didn't hear about the russian rovers

[circletimessquare]

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!

News

[Shooter6947]

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!"

An easy answer.

[Chess_the_cat]

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.

George Bush version

[Uksi]

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)

Re:George Bush version

[grozzie2]

Your forgot the part about where just as he starts to look at the delegation, president stops, and sits with a blank stare on his face for 20 minutes. Scientists apologoze, sorry, forgot to erase all memory of the trip over, and there's insufficient mental capacity to deal with memory of both the trip over and our meetings at the same time.

Re:Russian-named features on the dark side

[SimonInOz]

Lemme see, does this guy REALLY think the moon exposes different sides to different nations? I thought the moon being tidally locked (that means the same side points to the earth at all times, ok?) was pretty well known. I admit to being amused when I looked up at the moon from Australia instead of England and thinking "hey - it's upside down".