Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

“It Looks Like A Dirty Beach”

Or,

How the Soviets (Sort of ) Won the Race to the Moon

Sovietskaya Timeline, Part One

Argument

Armstrong and Aldrin die on the Moon, and this failure spurs the Soviets on to a great effort. In the delay between the disaster of Apollo XI and a new US attempt, the Soviets are able to land their own man on the Moon, but manage to return him safely to the Earth.

Background

The Soviets had four main difficulties in their race to the Moon:

Firstly, funding, their various agencies receiving some one-tenth to one-fifth of funding of the US Mercury-Gemini-Apollo programmes (exact figures are difficult to calculate, not only because of the traditional secrecy of the Soviet-era government, but because of the overlap of many areas of research and engineering. For example, the first rockets sending Gargarian and Glenn into orbit, were modified ICBMs. Does their cost come under space research, or weapons research?).

Secondly, lack of focus and political in-fighting. The large amount of prestige associated with the space effort, and men’s natural desire to garner all the glory for themselves, meant that different sections of the effort didn’t co-operate well with one another, often running parallel projects, each with the same aim, and similar equipment, but not sharing data or results. The basic conflict was between Korolev, and Chelomei. Korolev had by 1966 achieved almost unified control of the effort, but died of colon cancer, during surgery, shortly thereafter. His successor, Mishin, hadn’t the strenght of personality to keep Chelomei under his control.

Thirdly, Soviet-era secrecy. Scientists in the USA had the benefit of a free and open scientific press. They could read scientific journals, see what other scientists were doing, and combine information and ideas. But in the Soviet Union, cutting-edge technology was a state secret, and so there was lots of “reinventing the wheel.”

Fourthly, political interference. Projects not really ready to be launched, were pushed forward for political reasons. High levels of risk were taken, and the accidents and deaths resulting lead to great setbacks in the programme. Of course, the USA effort suffered from similar troubles, but to a far lesser degree, and in any case, this political interference of the Soviet leadership came on top of an already weakened programme.

Nonetheless, the Soviets came quite close to success, and the USA, quite close to failure. When Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon (Apollo XI), as they approached, they found the planned landing site strewn with boulders. Armstrong flew on, hoping for a better site. He had some twenty seconds of fuel left when he did land. He just happened to go in the right direction away from the bad site, to a good one. But he could, very easily, have gone in the wrong direction. After haivng come so far, being within a hundred metres of the Moon’s surface, was there not a chance that, as the seconds of fuel ticked down, and Aldrin said, “time to abort, Neil,” Armstrong would have said, “just a few seconds more…”? Perhaps resulting in their not having enough fuel to take off again.

Kennedy had said the mission was to land a man, “on the Moon, and return him safely to the Earth.” Armstrong and Aldrin suffocating on the surface would be considered a great failure and disaster.

Would such a disaster not have spurred the Soviets on to a greater effort? Perhaps at least two of their four difficulties could have been eliminated with a single meeting of the Politburo.

Scenario

Summer 1969

"As we ascended in the elevator to the top of the Saturn on the morning of July 16, 1969, we knew that hundreds of thousands of Americans had given their best effort to give us this chance. Now it was time for us to give our best." -- Neil Armstrong

Apollo XI orbited the Moon. Armstrong and Aldrin entered the Lunar Module, the Eagle. After pre-flight checks, they blasted away from Collins in the Command Module, and descended towards the lunar surface. As they came within two hundred feet of it, Armstrong saw that the planned landing site was littered with rocks and boulders. He throttled up the thrust, and heads north looking for a better landing site.

“Thirty seconds fuel, Neil,” Aldrin said, examining the gauges.

“That’s okay,” Armstrong replied, “I’ll keep looking.” They flew on, the Eagle blasting away twenty pounds of fuel a second.

“Twenty seconds, we have to consider abort,” Aldrin said, quietly.

“Not yet, just a little more… I think I see a site about a thousand yards ahead.”

The needle crept further to the right, well into the red, now, and Aldrin shifted impatiently in his seat, “Ten seconds, Neil. Remember, this isn’t White Sands, there’s no eject option, here.”

“Almost there… there! Over that rise!”

“Jesus, Neil, you’re into our take-off fuel!”

“I didn’t come all this way just for a fly-by, Buzz! Now read off the altitude!”

“Damnit… eighty feet… seventy… sixty… fifty… thirty… whooah! Easy!… twenty… ten… five…. Three feet…. Contact.”

Armstrong looked back at Aldrin with a grin, “Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.”

Aldrin looked sadly back at him, “And here we’re staying.”

Above them, Collins orbited, just fifty miles above, but as unable to help as those a quarter million miles away.

And so the men of Tranquility Base were the first men on the Moon, and the dream of many was achieved. But Kennedy had been determined that the men should “return safely to the Earth.” Their painful deaths from suffocation 37 hours later meant the mission was incomplete.

The USA mourned. After two days, Collins engaged the Command Module engines, and headed home, alone above the Moon a quarter million miles from the nearest living human being. The US flag lay still in the lunar vacuum, beside the Eagle, the tomb of two explorers.

"If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
-- Gus Grissom

Autumn 1969

A meeting was needed to discuss the matter with Chelomei. This was complicated by the fact that Chelomei and Mishin refused to talk to each other. Tsybin noted that when Beria and Stalin were still alive, Stalin took care of such disputes between chief designers very easily. He had once told them 'If two communists cannot co-operate, then one of them must be an enemy. I don't have time to tell which one. Therefore you have 20 minutes. Decide yourselves'. After this, Tsybin said, 'Chelomei and I worked together like best friends'.

Though the Soviet Union publicly sent its heartfelt condolences to the USA, the senior leadership was overjoyed. Pravda became filled with accounts of US indifference to the lives of their men, in space, in Vietnam, and in the ghettos of the cities. The entire Apollo Programme was put on hold by a Senate Inquiry, prompting Justice Arthur Goldberg to remark, “If Columbus had had an advisory committee, he would probably still be at the dock." The Soviets estimated the Americans would be two years away from another attempt, since a failure of any one system invariably prompted a complete review of all other systems; also, NASA would know that two disasters in a row would cause the cancellation of the entire programme.

Mishin sent a letter to the Politburo, saying, essentially, that now was the Soviet’s chance. “Are we content to have merely a US defeat, or should we have a Socialist victory, also?” As his predecessor the famed Korolev had done many times before, he insisted that the Politburo order a joint effort, of he and Chelomei. Buoyed by the real chance of outdoing the Americans, the Politburo agreed. They placed Chelomei in charge of the rocket effort, and Mishin in charge of the capsule and lander programme. Mishin was to have overall control. Their goal was to land a man on the Moon, and return him safely to earth, by July 1971.

With a silent prayer of apology to his predecessor and mentor, Korolev, Mishin set aside Korolev’s complex N-1 rocket, which rocket’s only two flights had ended in its destruction within two minutes of take-off. Mishin decided to go with Chelomei’s UR-700 rocket, the upgrade of the UR-500K; the UR-500K, with boosters, and a UR-200 upper-stage. The UR-500 was the space programme’s version of the Proton ICBM, which ICBM had been cancelled in 1966 due to funding pressures. However, it had had many successful launches, including the first orbit of a man-capable craft, the Zond 7, carrying turtles and fruit flies, around the Moon in the Autumn of 1968 (this flight burned up on re-netry, but that wans’t the rocket’s fault, that was a capsule problem). The N-1 launch pads were, in any case, destroyed, and would take two years to repair, after the last catastrophic failure of the N-1 in July of 1969. Chelomei’s launch pads were quite intact, however.

The quid pro quo for Chelomei getting his launcher as the preferred one, was that Mishin would get to use his mentor’s Soyuz-L3 system. Chelomei had long before proposed a single-vehicle capsule-lander, the L5, which would also be a Lunar Rover. This, however, had never even reached mock-up stage. It would require a couple of years fo development, not to mention, the full payload capacity of the UR-700. Though at one stage the Soyuz capsule tests had revealed no less than 203 separate failures, Mishin felt it best to go with a system where at least the faults were known.

The L3 was a one-man lunar lander. Fifteen had been built in all, though only two of them rated for manned use, the remainder set aside for experiments and testing. Mishin immediately ordered the production of four more L3 units, and the preparation of a total of six Soyuz craft. The USA, in its Apollo programme, had had a three-man capsule, with a two-man lander; the Soviets would press forward with a two-man capsule (Soyuz), and a one-man lander (L3). Because of problems with their rudimentary docking mechanism, the lunar explorer would have to transit from the Soyuz to the L3 by a spacewalk. Given that the Soviets had done the first spacewalks, and had had cosmonauts in space for longer durations than the Americans, they didn’t feel this would be a problem.

While the Americans examined their consciences, programmes and wallets, Mishin set a schedule of launches, six in total, to be no less than six months apart. He thus hoped to have a manned lunar landing no later than the end of 1972.

Soyuz 6 – L3 (unmanned); testing of L3 system in earth orbit.

Soyuz 7 – L3 (manned); manned test of systems in earth orbit, duration flight of 14 days.

Soyuz 8 – L3 (unmanned); unmanned lunar orbit, de-orbit and return safely to earth.

Soyuz 9 – L3 (manned); manned lunar orbital, testing of cosmonaut spacewalk, etc.

Soyuz 10/11 – L3 (manned); lunar landing.

Soyuz 10-L3 would be the landing party. Soyuz 11-L3 would actually be launched two to four weeks before, with its L3 landing on the lunar surface first, and the actual manned module landing within five km of it. This would allow it to act as a back-up. The Soyuz 10-L3 would, in addition, carry a Lunakhod Rover, a rideable version of the unamanned rover which had previously spent several weeks exploring the lunar surface. In addition, the Soyuz 11 would act as a back-up in case of the Soyuz 10’s failure. Given the Apollo XI history, the Soviets were particularly concerned about engine failure; given their own, they were concerned also at capsule failure.

A series of unammned probes would complement this mission, with a soft lunar landing, a soil return, and rover, all considered pre-requisites for a manned landing. These probes would also be deliberately over-powered in having the UR-500K, and UR-700 launch systems, so as to test them before putting men on top of them.

Winter 1969/70

This period was spent in studies and scrutiny in the USA, and in preparations and cosmonaut training in the Soviet Union.

Spring 1970

Soviets successfully launch, orbit, and return to earth the Soyuz 6-L3, with animals aboard.

Luna 15, a lunar probe, impacts on the Moon and is destroyed.

Summer 1970

Soviet launch of Soyuz 7-L3 is aborted due to stress fractures being discovered in the UR-200 upper-stage booster. (In OTL, the Leonov had said, “we were willing to try for a moonshot, even though our systems had often failed, because we felt that the engineers would be more careful if the mission was manned.” I believe he was right.)

Luna 16, a lunar soil-return vehicle, fails to de-burn properly on lunar approach, flies past the Moon, and enters a heliocentric orbit.

Luna 17, a lunar orbit probe, successfully enters orbit about the Moon.

Both the Luna 16 and 17 missions had pointed to problems in the Block D booster, that which would control the burns to enter and leave the Moon’s orbit. Work began on fixing these problems.

Autumn 1970

"What is it that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse?" -- Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979

In September, USA launches Apollo XII. During ascent, the craft is struck by lightning (as occurred in OTL). All readouts and telemetry fails. NASA, wary of a repeat of the Apollo XI disaster, aborts the mission. NASA is now struggling for the continued existence of its lunar landing programme.

In October, the USSR launches the Soyuz 7-L3 into Earth-orbit, with cosmonauts Yevgeny Khrunov, and Pavel Belyaev. Berlyaev successfully transits in a spacewalk from the Soyuz to the lander, but encounters the embarassing problem of the lunar lander’s door not shutting, properly. Its hinge has frozen in the vacuum of space. He jokes about worrying about “lunar burglars,” but it’s an embarassingly simple problem for them at this stage.

The crew return safely to earth.

One month later, the Soviets successfully launch and operate Luna 18, a “Lunakhod” lunar rover, which operates for nine months before running out of power. A month after that, Luna 19 lands on the Moon, and returns to the Earth a few grams of lunar soil from the Sea of Fertility.

Winter 1970/71

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return." -- Leonardo da Vinci

In the USA, NASA faces huge funding cuts. Their complaints are met with the comment, “the Russians are doing fine with one-tenth our money.” They desperately point out that their failures have been human (Apollo XI, and Armstrong’s not aborting as he should have), and simple bad luck (Apollo XII struck by lightning), rather than equipment failures, and equipment is what the funding is for. However, their arguments are not persuasive to a Congress sensitive to public opinion. American distaste for casualties in Vietnam has already won and lost many Congressmen’s, Senators, perhaps even a President’s position, what might more casualties in the even more public space programme do?

Astronauts such as Jim Lovell (who has already orbited the Moon in Apollo VIII, in December 1968), press the NASA brass strongly for another attempt – Lovell especially since he was scheduled as commander of the Apollo XIII mission. But NASA’s head, the Vice President Al Haig, already under fire for various political scandals, is not about to stick his neck out “for a bunch of fly-boys.”

In the Soviet Union, they redesign the hinges on the L3 door.

Spring 1971

The Soviets launch Soyuz 8-L3, which successfully orbits about the Moon, photographing the proposed landing site. A robotic system tests the L3 door, which works fine. On earth return, however, the Soyuz craft’s guidance control system fails, and it tumbles, so that its chute fails to open properly. It strikes the earth at 580 km/hr, smashing its contents.

Summer 1971

The Soyuz 8 fault is traced to a single crossed wire, and it’s decided to go ahead with Soyuz 9. Mishin pushes for a delay, and further unmanned tests, but the Politburo wishes for a manned landing on the Moon by Lenin’s birthday, next April. That requires a Soyuz 9 launch by the end of the year.

Autumn 1971

"I could have gone on flying through space forever." -- Major Yuri Gagarin, quoted in the New York Times, 14 April 1968

The Soviets launch Soyuz 9-L3 in October of 1971, and Georgi Ivanov and Vasili Lazarev become the first Russians to orbit the Moon. Though it comes almost three years after the Apollo VIII fly-by, it is several orbits, and the US success is forgotten by now in the wake of its Apollo XI and XII failures, and coming withdrawal from Vietnam.

Winter 71/72

"How posterity will laugh at us, one way or other! If half a dozen break their necks, and balloonism is exploded, we shall be called fools for having imagined it could be brought to use: if it should be turned to account, we shall be ridiculed for having doubted."
-- Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann, 24 June 1785

President Nixon, facing withdrawal from Vietnam – called, “the US Dunkirk” by some – and with the perceived failure of the US space programme, announces he won’t be seeking the Republican nomination for the Presidency. The GOP selects Ronald Reagan as their candidate; the Democrats, Carter. Concerning the space programme, Reagan campaigns on a platform of turning it to military uses, and lowering taxes, while Carter campaigns on a ticket of cutting funds for it, and putting them into social programmes.

At Baikonur, the Soviets prepare Soyuz 11-L3 for launch.

Spring 1972

"Poyekhali!" ("Let's go!") -- Yuri Gagarin as Vostok 1 was launched

On March 3^rd, 1972, Soyuz 11-L3 is launched. Seven days later, the unmanned L3/11 lands in the Sea of Fertility.

On April 1^st, 1972, Soyuz 10-L3 is launched, with Aleksei Leonov (Commander) and Konstantin Feoktistov (Pilot) aboard. Foektistov names the Soyuz 10, the Pirx, after the space-pilot of same name in a Polish science ficiton writer’s stories. They enter lunar orbit on April 10^th.

Leonov spacewalks to the L3 Lander. As he enters it, he christens it, “the Korolev.” The lander door fails to close. He laughs, and curses the engineers so far away, joking, “I’d like you to make a house call and fix it, Comrade Director Mishin.” Seeing as there’s a working back-up on the surface below, they go for a landing anyway. But first Leonov casts out the stuck door a wreath, as he passes over the Sea of Tranquility (below)

April 11^th, 1123hr GMT, and Leonov lands the Korolev in the Sea of Fertility, just 1.3 km from the L3/11 lander. He leaves the lander, and plants the flag.

Forgetting his scripted words about Socialist Unity reaching the stars, he says, “It looks like a dirty beach.”

He spends about half an hour collecting a few small samples from immediately around the Korolev, then unpacks the Lunakhod rover, and rides over to the second lander. He tests the door. It doesn’t work, either. That halves the time of the lunar surface mission, to just what Leonov can spend in his spacesuit, about seven hours. He collects more samples, and sets up a few leave-behind experiments, a solar-wind measurement device, and so on.

At 1756 GMT, he enters the second L3, which he has named the Lada, after the famed German Democratic Republic’s mass-production vehicle of cheap and unreliable manufacture, and takes off for the Soyuz 10. He docks the Lada with the Pirx, and spacewalks to it. He joins Feoktistov, who jokes, “You’re in early, tonight, son. I expected you to break your curfew again!” Leonov is puffing as he undoes his helmet.

Feoktistov engages the Soyuz 10 engine. Nothing happens. He tries again. Again, nothing. Both liberally curse Soviet engineering. They try again, and this time, the engine sputters into life. Halfway through its thirty-second orbit-raising burn, there’s an explosion, and the vehicle shakes. They stop the burn. It’s decided to remotely pilot the Soyuz 11 craft towards the Soyuz 10, and transit to that. Feostikov does so without incident, and brings them within five hundred metres of each-other, which is as close as he dares to while remotely piloting. Cameras on the Soyuz 11 pan over the Soyuz 10, and ground control at Baikonur reports that a side panel of the Soyuz 10 has blown off. Apparently, one of the fuel tanks of dinitrogen tetraoxide had exploded.

Now they face the problem of reaching the Soyuz 11. Feoktistov decides to spacewalk to it, but their suits have no kind of rocket, or means of transit. Leonov remembers an old Arthur C. Clarke story (which he read in translation) So he takes Leonov’s bag of moonrocks, massing some 110 kg in all. As he spacewalks, he flings them away from him, and slowly moves towards the Soyuz 11. After about half an hour of sweating, and the loss of a quarter their moonrocks, he reaches the Soyuz 11. He christens it, Potemkin, hoping it shall be “as revolutionary and sturdy as its namesake ship.” He powers it up and manouevres it over to the Pirx. Leonov transfers their personal gear to the Potemkin, and they bid goodbye to the Pirx, and the moon. Their lunar de-orbit burn goes well, and they coast towards the Earth.

Four days later they arrive in earth orbit, and enter it safely. The Potemkin re-entered the earth's atmosphere over the South Pole at 11 km/sec, skipped back out to space after slowing down to 7.5 km/s, then soared 5,000 km before making final re-entry. As they re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, flame, thousands of degrees-plasma, roared about them, and several times Earth’s gravity pulled at them as they decelerated. “There’d better not be any crossed wires on this one, Konstantin!” Leonov cried over the roar.

As they came to within 15,000 metres of the Earth, the explosive panel holding in the parachutes popped. Two of the three chutes flew off into the air, but the third opened. Instead of landing at the safe 50 km/h, they found themselves slamming into the Earth at 120km/h. One side of the craft caved in, and Leonov’s left leg, and several ribs, were broken. “I hate engineers!” he commented.

They were hurt, tired, and annoyed, but alive, resting in a smoking Potemkin on the black soil of the Kazakh steps. An hour later, the Airforce arrived with its helicopters.

The Soviet Union had been the first to land a man on the Moon, and return him safely (more or less) to the Earth.

Aftermath

In December of 1972, in the US Presidential elections, Ronald Reagan (R) and Carter (D) ran against each-other. Their policies regarding the space programme were, for Reagan, to direct it to military uses, after cutting much of it to lower taxes, and for Carter, to scrap its manned section and divert the funds to social programmes.

With the Republican withdrawl from Vietnam in August of ’72, and the Soviets’ successful lunar landing in April of ’72, the Democrats won handily. Carter found himself President of the United States, and stayed true to his promises. Apollo was officially terminated, as were the planned Skylab and Shuttle projects. Unmanned exploration continued, notably the Pioneer and Voyager series of craft, the Viking Mars landers and so on.

For the Soviets, the point had been made. They launched their Salyut series of space stations and with their experiences of long-duration spaceflight, eventually developed the Kvartet series of spacecraft, essentially Chelomei’s L5, combination capsule-lander-lunar rover. Three of these went to the Moon, carrying four cosmonauts on each, in February 1977, October 1977, and January 1978. They spent two to four weeks each on the Moon. The last was on the far side of the Moon, and set up a small optical observatory there, controlled and transmitting data by a lunarcentric satellite. Proposals to set up a permanent base, beloved by Soviet researchers from Korolev’s time, were never seriously considered by the Politburo.

The October ’77 mission, commanded by Alexei Leonov, retrieved the bodies of Armstrong and Aldrin from the Sea of Tranquility, and returned them to the United States, on the sixtieth anniversary of the October Revolution (the anniversary is actually in November).

Carter found his time easier after the ’74 Congressional elections, when the Democrats got a significant majority. He won re-election in ’76, his social policies proving popular in the USA. In foreign affairs he was somewhat isolationist, and moderate. He’d dealt with the Arab oil crisis with some moderation, and negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, after their October ’73 War (which took place exactly as in OTL). Vietnam had fallen to the Communists in April ’75 (just as in OTL), but was quietly forgotten by an embarassed and ashamed USA.

The US military was severely cut back during Carter’s administration, its morale was in the toilet, and SALT II was ratified by the US Senate. SALT III talks immediately began again, with Carter proposing the complete elimination of intercontinental, and submarine-launched, ballistic missiles. This was not exactly greeted with great enthusiasm in Moscow, however.

In 1980, the Reverend Jesse Jackson won Democrat nomination for the Presidency, and stood against Ronald Reagan. Jackson won, and became the first black President of the USA.

In 1981 came the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, the Warsaw Pact invasion of it, and the accidentally-started Third World War. But that is another story.

Summary

A series of accidents meant that though the USA reached the Moon first, the Soviets were able to return a man from it safely, first. This, coupled with the US defeat in Vietnam, brought to power liberal, socialistic isolationists in the USA, and hardliners in the USSR. Prestige and pride mean a lot to world leaders, and affect, also, their people’s confidence in, or fear of, their government. The one decreased in the USA, both increased in the USSR.

References

http://www.fas.org/spp/eprint/lindroos_moon1.htm, M Lindroos, the Soviet Manned Lunar Programme, a compilation of opened Soviet archives

http://www.users.wineasy.se/svengrahn/histind/histind1.htm, Sven Grahn, good information on Soviet and Chinese activities. Including a Soviet plan, authoured by Korolev, to explode a nuclear bomb on the Moon – so no-one would doubt the Russians had been there.

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/youelled.htm, giving cancelled space efforts, including the Russian moon programme.

Appendix – OTL Cancelled Soviet Missions

· 1969 March - Cancelled: Soyuz 7K-L1 mission 1. Prime Crew: Leonov, Makarov, Backup Crew: Kuklin,

Planned first manned circumnavigation of the moon. On 24 September 1968 Bykovskiy/Rukavishnikov were the prime candidates for the first Soviet circumlunar flight. Just three days later, when the crews were named, Leonov was selected as commander of the first mission, with Makarov as the flight engineer. Soviet plans to beat America around the moon were upstaged by the sudden decision to fly Apollo 8 into lunar orbit over Christmas 1968. Given problems with obtaining a trouble-free Soyuz 7K-L1 unmanned flight, it would probably not have been possible to make a Soviet equivalent flight until March 1969. It was decided after the American success to cancel any 'second place' Soviet manned circumlunar flights.

· 1969 May - Cancelled: Soyuz 7K-L1 mission 2. Prime Crew: Bykovsky, Rukavishnikov, Backup Crew: Klimuk,

Planned second Soviet circumlunar flight. Cancelled after the success of the American Apollo 8. On 24 September 1968 Bykovskiy/Rukavishnikov were the prime candidates for the first Soviet circumlunar flight. When the crews were named, they had been bumped to the second flight.

· 1969 July - Cancelled: Soyuz 7K-L1 mission 3. Prime Crew: Popovich, Sevastyanov, Backup Crew: Voloshin,

Planned third and final Russian circumlunar flight. On 24 September 1968 Popovich/Makarov were the prime candidates for the third Soviet circumlunar flight. When the crews were named, Makarov was moved to the first crew and Sevastyanov was named Popovich's flight engineer.

· 1969 Autumn - Cancelled: Soyuz (Kontakt) 9. Prime Crew: Khrunov, Yeliseyev,

The Kontakt system designed for the lunar orbit rendezvous and docking of the LOK lunar orbiter and LK lunar lander was to be mounted on two Soyuz spacecraft and tested in earth orbit. The first Kontakt crews were established in February 1969. By April 1969, two separate docking missions were to be executed after the triple Soyuz-6/7/8 mission. The first crew of what would have been Soyuz 10/11 and Soyuz 12/13 would have piloted the active spacecraft, simulating the LOK. The second launch would have launched a passive spacecraft, simulating the LK.

· 1969 Autumn - Cancelled: Soyuz (Kontakt) 10. Prime Crew: Grechko, Kuklin,

Would have simulated the passive LK lunar lander in an earth-orbit test of the Kontakt docking system.

· 1970 Spring - Cancelled: Soyuz (Kontakt) 11. Prime Crew: Fartushny, Shatalov,

The active spacecraft in the second planned test of the Kontakt lunar rendezvous/docking system.

· 1970 Spring - Cancelled: Soyuz (Kontakt) 12. Prime Crew: Patsayev, Shonin, Yazdovsky,

The passive spacecraft in the second planned test of the Kontakt lunar rendezvous/docking system. One or two of the crew would have spacewalked to the Soyuz 11 Kontakt and returned in the other spacecraft.

· 1971 August - Cancelled: Soyuz 12 / DOS 1. Prime Crew: Kolodin, Leonov, Rukavishnikov, Backup Crew: Gubarev, Sevastyanov, Voronov,

If the Soyuz 11 crew had not perished during return to the earth, a second crew would have been sent to the Salyut 1 space station. Further missions to Salyut 1 were cancelled after the disaster.

· 1972 Early - Cancelled: Soyuz Kontakt 1. Prime Crew: Filipchenko, Grechko,

By December 1970, there were four crews in training for two pairs of Soyuz spacecraft to be launched to test the Kontakt lunar rendezvous/docking system. The launches at that time were scheduled to occur after the missions to the Salyut 1 space station were completed. Soyuz Kontakt 1 would have been the active spacecraft of the first mission.

· 1972 Early - Cancelled: Soyuz Kontakt 2. Prime Crew: Lazarev, Makarov,

Soyuz equipped with the passive Kontakt rendezvous/docking system of the LK lunar lander. Would have docked with Soyuz Kontakt 1.

· 1972 Early - Cancelled: Soyuz Kontakt 3. Prime Crew: Vorobyov, Yazdovsky,

Soyuz Kontakt 3 would have been the active spacecraft of the second dual launch to test the Kontakt lunar orbit rendezvous system.

· 1972 Early - Cancelled: Soyuz Kontakt 4. Prime Crew: Dobrovolsky, Sevastyanov,

Soyuz equipped with the passive Kontakt rendezvous/docking system of the LK lunar lander. Would have served as a docking target for Soyuz Kontakt 3.

· 01 June 1972 - Cancelled: Soviet Lunar Landing. Prime Crew: none known for certain, though Leonov has recently claimed he a Feotsitkov were the planned crew, with himself practicing frequently on the L3 simulator.

The Russians were never able to have enough success with the N1 booster to have a serious schedule for the first Soviet lunar landing. In January 1969, before the first N1 launch, it was not expected that a Soviet landing would take place until 1972 at the earliest. In such circumstances only a disaster leading to cancellation of the Apollo program would allow the Russians to be first to the moon. After the explosions of the first two N1 rockets, and the success of Apollo 11, Russian engineering efforts were diverted into crash development of the Salyut space station in order to beat the American Skylab. Cosmonauts trained for L3 lunar landing missions until October 1973, when the last training group was dissolved. By that time actual manned flight of the original single-launch L3 LOK/LK spacecraft to the moon had been abandoned. Instead work was underway on the N1F-L3M, a twin launch scenario that would put the L3M lander on the surface in 1978 for extended operations, and eventually, a lunar base. This in turn was cancelled with the entire N1 program in 1974.