In the fall of 1967 the first UR-500/7K-L1 (Proton/Soyuz) was readied for launch. On the 28 September the unmanned complex took flight but the first stage of the UR-500 failed, consigning much of the large expensive pack age to a toxic fireball. The L1 escape system performed its function and the lunar vehicle survived the conflagration. It had been hoped that the full L1 lunar orbital mission might still have been possible. However, von Braun was about to astound the world, because on November 9 1967 his gigantic Sat urn V booster finally took flight, carrying an unmanned Apollo capsule. Seemingly not deterred by this, a second attempt with the L1 took place on November 22 but this time it was the second stage of the UR-500 that failed. Once again the launch escape system fired but the landing apparatus failed, revealing another flaw that might have killed a crew.
Since the Americans had not flown any astronauts for over a year there still seemed to be a glimmer of hope that the UR-500/7K- L1 might yet take a Russian around the moon before Apollo. That prospect was given a significant boost when on March 1968 Zond 4 became the first successful launch of an unmanned 7K- L1 mission. The vehicle flew around the moon on a free- return trajectory but once again its orientation system failed causing it to re enter the Earth’s atmosphere at an alarming pace and in the wrong place. It was noted that a crew could have survived, but Zond 4, an unmanned 7K-L1 Soyuz, was destroyed by the ground controllers. Six weeks later a further attempt failed during launch.
UR-500(Proton)/7K-L 1 launch
In July another catastrophe happened at Baikonur when the upper stage of the UR 500 simply exploded during launch preparation. Once again the Soviets were lucky to only lose one person. In September, the fifth Soyuz LI, designated Zond 5 successfully flew around the moon. While all of these efforts with Chelomei’s UR 500 and the L1 unmanned lunar Soyuz were happening, work continued apace to get the manned Soyuz back into space. On October 26 1968 the first manned Soyuz in 19 months carried Georgi Beregovoi into low earth orbit on a mission to dock with another unmanned Soyuz. Over the preceding twelve months several important unmanned docking and rendezvous Soyuz flights had been conducted, with varying degrees of success. Now the Soviets were under the gun to keep up with the Americans, who had finally regrouped themselves after the Apollo 1 setback and flown the first manned Apollo just two weeks earlier.
Rumors were flying on both sides of the race that the other team was going to fly a moon mission before the end of the year. In fact the successive Zond (LI) flights combined with the clearly visible N-1 super booster sitting on the pad at Baikonur were not the only signals emanating from the Russian side. The Soviet leadership had been urging a manned L1 mission for late 1968 and so the intelligence reports that led to the historic “all-up” flight of Apollo 8 were indeed accurate, a manned L1 was a reality in desire if not entirely in the realms of possibility. Undoubtedly the surge of activity and flights out of Baikonur certainly must have spurred the American team to make their historic and risky decision. The very next Apollo would not only be the first manned flight of the Saturn V but it would go to the moon and do even more than what had been planned for L1, although the L1-Zonds had not been intended to enter lunar orbit, Apollo 8 certainly would.
Beregovoi’s Soyuz flight was relatively problem-free and the Soviet team were reinvigorated by his successful and safe return. Another extravaganza was then planned to try and take some of the fire Out of Apollo 8’s parade. On January 14 and 5 two manned Soyuz vehicles were launched and hooked up in low earth orbit. It was the first time that two manned vehicles had ever docked in space, preceding the flight of Apollo 9 by two months. Two of the crew of Soyuz 5 actually space-walked over to Soyuz 4 and after a brief celebratory toast, closed the hatch and returned home in a different spacecraft to the one they had flown into space. It was a minor victory, lost in the cloud of media fuss over Apollo. Meanwhile, N-1 /L3 and UR-500/L1, the two gigantic lunar programs, managed to maintain their cloak of mystery.
Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 diagram
Despite what appeared to be the final arrival of Soyuz as a valid space craft, it must have seemed apparent to just about everyone that there would no longer be any way to derail the Apollo express. Soyuz 4 and 5 would be the final Soyuz flights to be launched before the race to the moon was over, but the Soviets would not go down without a fight. Just days before the Soyuz 4 flight, two Venera probes had been successfully dis1 patched to Venus, both would enter the Venusian atmosphere in May. Another L1/Zond failed to get off the pad two days after the return of the Soyuz crews, then in February 1969 a more ambitious mission was attempted. This was to be the first of a revised version of Korolev’s L2 mission, to carry a rover to the surface of the moon.
The Lunokhod was one of the great success stories of the Soviet space program. The original idea had come from Korolev and had been modified and adapted by a science bureau in Leningrad. It had originally been envisioned as a complimentary part of the manned lunar program. Korolev transferred the program to the Lavochkin bureau in spring of 1965 where another of the chief designers, Georgi Babakin completely redesigned it to now fit on Chelomei’s UR-500/Proton booster, since the UR-SCO was now the principal launch vehicle for the smaller lunar missions (i.e. the L1 and L2 scenarios).The rover weighed in at 756 kg, and was mounted on a lander stage of around 5000 kg. It was a large machine, over 2m wide and almost 1.5 high. It ran on eight wheels and was equipped with four television cameras. It had a top speed of nearly 20Cm per hour. The rovers were originally to be flown in pairs and would carry locator beacons to be used to guide a manned lander to their location. The Lunokhod (which at the time was known as the E-8 probe) was loaded onto the UR-500/Proton rocket and on the 19 February left the pad. The booster failed at 40 seconds into the flight and another chance at a Russian first was extinguished. Then with the debris of Chelomei’s Proton still scattered across the ground at the western launch facility, the time had come for Korolev’s giant N-1 to finally take flight.
Lunokhod moon rover
View of the Lunokhod landing stage
On February 21, 1969, fifteen months behind the Saturn V, the giant N-1 rocket, the most powerful ever built, roared upwards into the night sky above the northern launch complex at Baikonur. All of the Soviet team’s dreams flew with her for all of 68.7 seconds before a giant fire erupted at the base of the first stage. Never having been given the funds to build a test stand for the gigantic Blok-A it was the first time it had been fired, and it was in full-up mode, carrying the rest of the massive rocket along for the ride. A series of unexpected design problems in the base of the first stage caused the failure and it fell back to earth to be utterly destroyed. Aboard the rocket had been a test version of the L3 lunar landing complex. Had the earlier Proton/L2 rover been successful, then the L3 would have photographed and communicated with the rover from lunar orbit. However, the double failure of the Proton/L2 and the N-1/L3 within two days of each other was a harsh blow to Mishin and all of the Russians that had worked so hard. Even then they would not give up. On June 4, after the return of Apollo 10, another Proton/UR 500 carrying a lunar sample return mission blew up on launch. Nineteen days later another N-1, this time carrying an L1 orbiter designed to photograph lunar landing sites, failed only 23 seconds into the mission, The huge rocket managed to crawl about 200 m into the sky before falling back onto the launch pad and destroying it in one titanic explosion.
There was now only one minor chance left to upstage the Americans and it came on July 13 just three days before Apollo 11’s departure. On that day another of Chelomei’s Proton/UR-500 boosters took flight and this time it was carrying the Luna 15 sample return vehicle. This machine had been hastily constructed using part of the technology developed for the E-8 rover sys tem. It represented the last gasp in the Soviet Union’s attempt to wrestle some sort of victory from the continuous defeats of the last two or three years. But it was not to be. Luna 15 crashed on the moon just after Apollo II astronauts Armstrong and A completed their historic moon walk. This final ignominious end to the space race was kept a secret and the world was told that Luna 15 had fulfilled its planned mission. Once again the Soviets stated they had never been in the race. Their attention had been on long term space flight and their upcoming space station program would clearly prove this.
What is somewhat ironic about the space race is that the Soviet leaders were invested in embarrassing the Americans as often as they could, but the men who built the hardware were truly more interested in the long-term exploration of space and had their sights set on Mars long before they had ever been caught up in Kennedy’s vortex. Although, the political leaders certainly understood the significance of the Apollo achievement, they were able to simply squash it in the Soviet press and pretend it didn’t happen. No one in power at that time was ever truly embarrassed by their failure because they were all long gone before the Russian people ever learned the truth about what had really happened.
Back at the Soviet space design bureaus the truth hung over them like a shroud. They knew that the Americans had won the race but they had no choice but to continue on and try to regain their former glory as the world’s foremost space faring nation. Plans for the N-1 continued and the Soyuz was flown again, this time in a three-ring circus. Starting on October 11, 1969 Soyuz 6 was launched followed on October 12, 1969 by Soyuz 7 and finally on October 13, 1969 by Soyuz 8. While preparations were underway for Apollo 12 the Russians flew seven people in space simultaneously. A docking was supposed to have occurred between Soyuz 7 and 8 while Soyuz 6 took the photos, but various obstacles prevented this from happening. Another LI/Zond had successfully circumnavigated the moon the previous August and several attempts continued to get sample return missions to and from the moon. At this point the Soviets began to use the (now familiar) rhetoric about robotics being cheaper and safer, but it was a thinly veiled excuse for having failed to beat Apollo. This political excuse was soon picked up and used as a mantra around the world to encourage funding robots over manned missions—a chorus that continues to this day.
Next: Part 12
Prev: Part 10
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