Ardent opponents of American flights to the moon. nasa independence
US space program. How it was - the story of a great swindle
It has long been clear to sane people that the Americans have never flown to any moon. But few people thought about the American manned spaceflight program as such. In this note, I will not touch on the technical side of the matter - it is written in detail and tastefully in various sources. More interesting to me is the chronology of events, the motives and decisions that the rednecks made.
After the milestone flight Gagarin the Americans felt that they were losing their undisputed technical leadership. The damned Russians have once again shown that there are no obstacles for them, and they are able to complete any, even the most difficult task. It was decided that such a thing could not be tolerated, and the Americans began to work on their own flight into space.
However, creating a ship capable of taking a man into space and returning him to Earth proved to be a difficult task. The USSR was able to do this by concentrating colossal scientific, labor and natural resources in this area. Of course, this had to be paid for by a decrease in the living standards of the population. Instead of conventional tractors for agriculture - lunar tractors. Instead of affordable ass trucks - space metal, and for the people - creaking and collapsing buses, and so on. The Americans could not go for this, because it would blow up America from the inside. The question arose - what to do? And then the masters of psychological warfare said - why, in fact, should we fly? To achieve our goals, it is quite enough that we show the visibility of our flights.
After all, nuclear missiles fly, and fly well. Satellites provide excellent pictures and provide radio communications. Nothing else is needed! And work began to boil. Tin cans called "Gemini" were created, and the equipment installed on them showed pictures from space quite tolerably.
There were also suborbital launches of these ships with people on board, they rose up to 120 km above the Earth's surface - more advanced V-2 rockets von Braun could not issue. But the most respectable public did not need to know about this, they did not know. Although in most cases the crew solemnly loaded to the rocket actually calmly descended into the protective room inside the launch pad (there is a photo of it on the network), and after the start they went to work at the radio center, from where they broadcast their transmissions, relaying them from a tin can hanging in space. And everything went off with a bang - the Russians believed that the Americans could go into space.
However, in America they understood that this was a temporary solution. Not today or tomorrow, the Russians will deploy a network of satellites in space, on earth and in the ocean - a network of stations and tracking ships, and the deception will be revealed. Therefore, it was decided to achieve victory in space over the Russians by landing on the moon.
However, without solving the problem of creating a habitable capsule, it was impossible to do this. Initially, work in this direction was carried out very intensively. But as more and more difficulties were revealed in the rocket, the life support system, and the possibility of overcoming the newly discovered radiation belts around the Earth, the US leadership realized that the task before them was impossible. This is where the historic meeting of the President of the United States took place Johnson, constructor Werner von Braun and former US Chief Lawyer Robert Kennedy. On it, von Braun said that a manned flight on his rocket impossible- hydrogen engines do not work (they cannot work in zero gravity, but then no one knew this).
The USSR was almost ready to fly around the moon. Of course, there was no question of any landing on the moon. However, Johnson, realizing that further delay in flights puts an end to the entire "American dream", and the West is losing leadership, which passes to the Russians, makes a desperate decision - to bluff further. Kennedy, enjoying fame in the Soviet establishment, promises to probe the ground on the subject of Russian approval of the lunar scam, does this - and dies, hit by bullets Sirhan Sirhana(who, kmk, will never be released from prison - suddenly they will blurt out why he killed the RFK). The moon scam begins. The Soviet leaders of the space program do not receive information about the Brezhnev-Johnson deal, and do not receive, on the personal instructions of dear Leonid Ilyich, intelligence about the "space" flight of Apollo - and they were. For the intelligence of the army, and even more so the Navy, does not put any words of the enemy into a penny. The Americans are well aware of this, and they block Soviet ships that read telemetry from the Apollo launches, having the president's order to immediately sink them if they intercept information about the missile flight. However, the Russian sailors were not a fool, and by the next launch of the Apollo, they put into the sea all the ships at their disposal, including minesweepers, and caught them in Biscay Bay a few hours after the launch of another dummy "lunar" ship, which was held in Hollywood as "Apollo 13".
Under the cover of cruisers and submarines, an iron barrel was delivered to Murmansk, and subsequently, in the presence of journalists, handed over to the American authorities. Thus, the USSR acquired, in the literal sense, an iron, galvanized hook, which makes it possible to firmly hold America by the gills in the space issue. For participation in the lunar scam, the USSR received a number of tasty goodies - the cessation of the exhausting arms race, the US withdrawal from French Indochina, almost free supplies of Anglo-Saxon food, and most importantly, the admission of Soviet oil and gas to the markets of Western Europe - that is, an uninterrupted source of the coveted currency. The Soviet lunar exploration program was buried, as was the American one. No one else has gone to the moon. As a final gesture of the deal, a joint, as they said, Soviet-American expedition "Soyuz-Apollo" was carried out.
Which, of course, was also a staging on the American side - even by 1975, the United States did not have a residential space compartment. The film broadcast from orbit was now provided by the great advocate of the lunar scam, and then the astronaut Leonov. For which he received the star of the Hero and the Order of Lenin. Hero of deception, yes. I don’t even mention the attempts by the Americans to create an orbital station in Hollywood - the attempt frankly failed.
Having started the space game with the USSR, the Americans understood that the agreements could not last forever. They were based on a deal with Comrade. Brezhnev. The followers of dear Leonid Ilyich could easily spit on them. And the Americans did not plan to deceive people forever. It seemed to them that just a little bit, and they would be able to create a habitable ship, they would mount the blocks for a flight to the moon, they would clean everything up there, and it would be possible to forget about the story of the scam. Once again, based on technologies new by that time, the Americans are starting the Space Shuttle program.
And a miracle is happening - the Americans are building a really large, advanced spacecraft for those times, capable of taking people into space. And, drawing a line under twenty years of solid lies, on April 12, 1981, exactly 20 years after Gagarin's flight, symbolically deduce first americans into earth orbit. Thus, giving a signal to those who understand - yes, we were behind by 20 years, but now we have certainly pulled ahead - and the Russians are stagnating. It is very important that the first real the flight of American cosmonauts took place during the lifetime of dear Leonid Ilyich. It seemed that the cosmic deal could be safely completed. Ronald Reagan, immediately after a successful launch, he began to do this by announcing the Star Wars program. But…
The "shuttle" turned out to be an extremely expensive and unreliable design - the problems went one after another. The flight schedule was flying to hell, and with it, the chances of ever assembling a device for flying at least to lunar orbit looked more and more illusive. Meanwhile, Brezhnev died. And then a tragedy occurred - the explosion of the oxygen tanks of the spacecraft is no longer in Hollywood, but in reality, and the death of the astronauts. The Shuttle flight program was completely stopped. The design of the lunar scam staggered, threatening to bury under its rubble many Americans, and not only people - after all, the participants in the scam committed, no less, the gravest crime against America - they lied to the American Congress. Reagan instantly changed his anti-Soviet rhetoric and backtracked - no star wars, drastic arms reduction, friendship, etc.
But then the USSR had internal problems, and it was not up to space. And then it completely fell apart, and with it the threat of exposing the US space scam went away for some time. The shuttle program was resumed and they continued to fly. But not for long - another shuttle fell apart with a roar during landing. The United States took the lead in the number of victims of space, and it became clear to everyone that the king is naked. That the vaunted American technologies are not able to ensure safe space flights in the 21st century and, therefore, they could not provide them in the 20th century. The Americans had to bow to the Russians, and first buy Mir-2 from them, and then flights to it. And then the engines for the rockets. The degradation of American industry has reached its apogee. After the announcement of the PRC about the start of its own lunar program, Obama blurted out something about the resumption of the American one, but was very quickly blown away - The United States does not have the opportunity to go into space.
US Big Space Lie
The technology of lies or while fools live in the world
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Sensational for the layman revelations of the Soviet veteran rocket scientist Nikolai Lebedev. How did the Russian rocket scientists react to the fake "flight" of the Americans to the moon? Why was this myth supported by the Soviet elite? What was unique in the development of rocket technology in the USSR?
Nikolay Viktorovich Lebedev, born 1942 (mining engineer) received at the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University and at the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute.
From 1964 to 1967, he served at the Tyuratam (NIIP-5) missile test range, first in the 311th missile regiment, in a group of engine engineers that tested the engines of the UR-100 and UR-200 missiles (UR-200 is one of the stages of the Proton and at the same time an independent combat missile), then in the missile launch escort (support) group at the Main Directorate of the test site. Note: Only that part of the Tyura-Tam test site, on which the “farm” of Korolev was located, is called Baikonur. The farms of Yangel and Chelomey were not included in Baikonur. After demobilization, he worked in a post office headed by Academician N.A. Pilyugin.
In the 1970s, he worked as a mining engineer-geologist in geological exploration expeditions of the USSR Ministry of Geosciences.
In the early 80s, he was invited in his main specialty to a specialized military unit for the construction of missile silos and other underground structures of the USSR Ministry of Defense. As part of this unit, he participated in the construction of mines and the installation of missile defense missiles in certain regions of the USSR. He took part in the construction of the Volga missile defense radar station in Belarus, which was part of the so-called "Ustinov shield".
Then, again at the training ground, Tyuratam supervised the construction of a number of structures for the Zenit missile system, and then took part in the construction of the Energia-Buran-Vulkan launch missile system. At this facility, he was responsible for the underground part of the complex and the ground 60-meter tower, the so-called structure 81. After the collapse of the USSR, in the early 90s, he was invited to work at the polar gas fields at Gazprom OJSC. He is the author of scientific and journalistic books "The Life of Natural Elements", historical and documentary "The Fate of the Guard", as well as a number of newspaper articles.
From the memoirs of a rocket scientist
As a start, let's pay attention to a small note in the once popular magazine "Abroad", published presumably in the period from 1967. to 1968 with reference to " International Herald Tribune". The said note reported that around May 10-12, 1961, a meeting was held in the Oval Office of the White House on what to do with these Russians, who had just dealt a terrible slap in the face to America's pride by launching Gagarin into space. Except the President John Kennedy the meeting was attended by the closest and most loyal employees of the administration: who made the main message Arthur Schlesinger, son-in-law of the President and, at the same time, the Minister of Energy, Robert McNamara, secretary of defense, and brother of the president Robert, who was responsible for the most "dirty" affairs of the administration. It was decided to urgently create a program to launch a rocket to the moon. McNamara formulated the main idea developed at the meeting as follows: We will have to impress upon each of those participating in the program that it is a crime against the nation to stop in the means while carrying out its tasks. We must act decisively without regard to such a trifle as conscience.». To the president's question: What will be the Russian reaction to such actions? his brother, Robert, unexpectedly replied, saying that he was taking over the Russians. Like, there are ideas and developments.
...in order to participate in the auction, you must have in your hands the force that convincingly proves that the trading counterparty is a serious person.
Rocket-Nuclear Parity
Note that at that moment the Americans outnumbered us both in the number of missiles and in the number of nuclear bombs. The United States has dozens of military bases around us. All this military force we could oppose only two factors: the power of the Eastern European military grouping and ardent Soviet patriotism.
Soviet leadership led by Stalin understood perfectly well that the patriotism of the people needed to be backed up with first-class weapons. Already on May 13, 1946, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted Resolution No. 1017-419 , aimed at radically accelerating the development of jet weapons. And since 1952, a real battle of designers in the field of rocket technology has unfolded between the USA and the USSR. The Americans pushed off from the previously designed Redstone missile, ours from the R-1 and R-2. By the end of the 50s, the Americans were creating a series of Jupiter, Thor, Atlas, Titan missiles, and our R-7 (Korolev) and R-12 (Yangel). By 1963, the R-14 and R-16 (Yangel) and R-9 (Korolev) were tested by the hands of our rocket scientists, and the Americans had Minutemen. Since 1957, the rocket race has been complemented by the space race, a struggle for priority and prestige.
Back in 1965, the test site Tyura-Tam, or as it was officially called, NIIP-5, was divided into three parts. The central part was the economy Queen. When we say "Baikonur Cosmodrome", we mean exactly this part. To the east, on the right hand of the cosmodrome, was the farm of the designer Yangel, and to the west, on the left hand, the farm of the designer Chelomeya, on the territory where the 92nd test site was located, the main structure of which was the assembly and testing complex (MIK).
Imagine its gigantic hall, which could accommodate, for example, the Moscow Yaroslavsky railway station. At its northern wall, on a railway transport trolley, an 8K84 or UR-100 rocket stood, undergoing installation tests. Compared to the space of the hall, it was relatively small, only 17 meters long and 2 meters in diameter. But a year will pass, and this baby, as one of the testers aptly said, "will beat all the eggs in the American rocket kitchen." Designers OKB-52, led by Chelomeya managed to endow it with simply amazing properties.
When the “START” button was pressed, a 15-ton cover began to move, protecting the mine and the rocket installed in it from an enemy nuclear advance strike (Fig. 1). At the same time, the gyroscopic flight control platforms began to unwind. As soon as the limit switches were clicked, fixing the complete retraction of the cover, components of spontaneously igniting fuel, asymmetric dimethylhydrazine (heptyl) and nitrogen tetroxide(oxidizer), as a result, in the bottom part of the mine, a high pressure of exhaust gases arose and the rocket, like a mine from a mortar, was simply thrown out of the container containing it to a height of 20-25 meters. All this took no more than five minutes after pressing the button. In the meantime, the main engines were gaining the necessary power and, without letting the rocket hang, carried it to the target. The flight range of the "weave" was 11 thousand kilometers, carrying the enemy as a "gift" one megaton of charge. This was the first missile capable of both manual and automatic evasion in the passive phase of the flight from oncoming missile defense strikes. A couple of years later, they began to install multiple warheads of individual guidance on it. But the most important highlight of the rocket was that it could stand ready for launch. decades, with minimal maintenance costs, in the form of routine electronic control, with exceptional manufacturability and ease of manufacture. As one of the designers figuratively put it, “ it could be made on a conveyor like cartridges for Kalashnikov assault rifles". It is to this missile that the Soviet people owe the achievement of military-strategic parity with the United States. By the end of 1968, not ten or one hundred, but a whole thousand (more precisely 940 pieces) of these missiles stood up for the defense of our Motherland. During its creation, many technical ideas were born that have not lost their relevance in the further development of third and fourth generation combat missiles, such as 15A18M " Governor", 15A35" Stylet", 15Ж60" Scalpel", 15Ж58" Poplar"and 15Ж65" Topol M". That is, those rockets that guard our peace in our time.
Fig.1. Launch position of the UR-100 rocket
The launch of any rocket is an unforgettable sight, and on the morning of April 19, when the pioneer launch of the “weave” was made, in particular. It was carried out by the combat crew of the 1st test group of Major Gulyaeva 311th missile regiment under the command of the captain of the 1st rank Zablotsky. I, then still a very young man, was also part of this calculation. Preparations for the launch lasted more than six months. First, a cargo model arrived at the landfill. Then came the electronic layout. Behind him is a filling layout. And only at the beginning of March they brought the actual flight version. For a whole month it was studied in detail in the assembly and testing complex (MIK) at the 92nd site. Then they took it to the 130th test site and installed it at the start. Several sessions of refueling and draining of fuel were made. Simultaneously, there were checks of remote control over the state of all used launch equipment. The day before the launch, the State Commission arrived, headed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces, Marshal Krylov. And finally, that morning.
In the midst of the still spring green Kazakh steppe, inside the square of the test site, fenced with barbed wire, in a half-mine five meters deep, there was a matte-white "glass" (container), wrapped in cables and hoses. And here is the launch. Instantly, a cloud of smoke and dust covers the launch complex, escaping between the walls of the container and the walls of the half-mine. At the same time, the rocket itself appears above this cloud, ejected from the glass by a gas cushion. Here she rose to fifteen or twenty meters and, as if saying goodbye, hovered over the launch pad, slightly shaking her tail. But when her main engines got the necessary thrust, the "baby" greyhound darted up. Somewhere there, already high, when the second stage was separated, it was lit up with a bright flash, and then dissolved into the depths of heaven. Half an hour later we were informed that the rocket hit exactly in the center of the measuring square on Kamchatka near the village of Klyuchi.
Americans would not be Americans if they did not try to "put a spoke in the wheel." And here it is appropriate to say that they have declared a uniform electronic war against us. A powerful electronic surveillance unit was operating directly against us, located, if my memory serves me, in Mazandaran(Iran) near the city Behshahr. It's one thing to simply track a launch. Ours, too, not without success, followed the American tests. Another thing is electronic interference in the flight of a launched rocket. Our product did not have time to break away from the launch pad, when a stream of various kinds of interference fell on its on-board electronic systems, from simple “jamming” of commands from the ground, to their purposeful distortion. Needless to say, what a danger to people is a missile that has lost control. In order not to be unfounded, I will say that in the summer of 1964, during the eighth, penultimate launch, the 8K81 rocket, which was already in flight, which will be discussed below, began to noticeably deviate from the course. The flight director had to urgently turn off the main onboard telemetry station and switch to the backup. Knowing the mores of the Yankees, our designers provided for: automatic registration of electronic impact on the on-board systems of the missiles being tested, "jumps" in frequencies in cases of detection of such an impact, installation, in addition to the main telemetry station, of two or even three backup ones.
The rumor about the creation of a miracle rocket quickly spread around the country, and the people met this news with relief. People were able to forget the nightmares that tormented them in the 50s, when sometimes a strong nighttime thunderstorm was mistaken for an atomic bombing. However, in the official press, even in such widely read newspapers as " News" or " Komsomolskaya Pravda" Articles began to appear immediately devoted to "our terrible lag" in rocket technology from the Americans. The main topic covered in these articles was that our clumsy rocket scientists use liquid fuel in rockets, but the Americans use solid fuel. Therefore, their missiles fly faster than ours, farther than ours and throw more cargo. Articles were signed by professors, doctors of sciences, heads of large research institutes. Decades have passed, and now the academician has finally enlightened the technical side of this issue Herbert Alexandrovich Efremov, General Director of NPO Mashinostroyeniye: " statements that the creation of a promising complex with a liquid rocket is the ruin of the country cannot be called anything other than a lie. The practice of domestic rocket science shows that liquid-propellant ICBMs, having a lower cost, have higher energy and operational characteristics. If we compare the cost of liquid and solid rockets, it turns out that a hundred-ton ICBM with a rocket engine will cost the budget 3-4 times less than a solid rocket of a similar class».
Chelomey stepped on the throat because he got too close to the moon
May 1965 at the southern wall of the MIK, occupying at least a quarter of it, towered HERCULES. That was the name of the first of the Protons, the product 8K82 or UR-500. A miracle of Soviet rocket technology was born, which in its various modifications, for almost fifty years, has been faithfully serving to launch heavy loads, both ours and ... and American, into earth orbit.
At that time, a high party-state commission headed by the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences M.V. Keldysh.
In this regard, I cannot but recall a conversation between three prominent people (members of this commission), which I became an unwitting witness to. Quite unexpectedly for all of us who were carrying out the preparatory work for the launch, three members of this commission appeared at MIK - himself Keldysh, and with him Korolev And Chelomey. They appeared without any accompaniment, apparently continuing a heated argument started somewhere. Particularly excited, shaking his gray hair Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh, pressing on Sergei Pavlovich Korolev:
« Here is a man working. Here is one of his products (we are talking about the UR-100). Vladimir Nikolaevich, it seems you promised to turn it over to the military in the fall? he threw, turning to Chelomey, the third of those present. Chelomei nodded in agreement. - Here is another product of his"- he nodded at the hulk of the "Proton" - " Already next year, he is going to test his “seven hundred. Where is your N-1? Where? Where did they go, released to you on the ship? Yes, you have reclaimed the 110th platform. The roof of your MIC, they say, you can even see from the station(railway station Tyuratam, N.L.) . But what is not visible is your results. If things go on like this, Brown will not only catch up with us, but also be the first to be on the moon. ».
« Well it's out of the question"Korolev said. and stared at the Proton towering in front of him . – « He decided to create a super engine for 700-800 tons of thrust on cryogenic fuel components. LET IT PICK UP UNTIL IT HAS BOUND THE WALL. WE'VE ALREADY BEEN GOING THIS».
« Well, what if we are wrong and he manages to overcome this threshold?»
« How? Wave your fingers in front of your nose? Do not make me laugh. Okay, now we're talking about something else. He…"- Korolev nodded towards Chelomey, -" with his seven hundred quite capable of reaching the moon. He doesn't face the same challenges that I face. But it all depends on what we want. If our task is to fly in, forgive me, take a shit there and fly back, he has the cards in his hands. I, you, as the president of sciences, and science in general, need a station there. That's what my H-1 is for. How much can you talk about it? We taldychim, taldychim, and everything is like peas against the wall».
« Well, at the expense of ... th» , - Chelomey intervened in the dispute - " I hope you got excited. Let's reach the moon, in the brains up there you look and it will brighten up. Maybe there will be extra money for your ship and moon base. After all, they now need prestige. And you to them - go to x ...».
« Well, don't hint at me about Khrushchev. You know how it was. I called, you see! Is it possible to organize a rocket launch on such a date? And I have nothing at hand except for a cartridge from Kalashnikov. I told him about it. And then I hear talk that Korolev got snickered. And every national ruble is dear to me».
« Enough, enough..."Keldysh stopped. - " people around».
After standing a little longer at the Proton, they, speaking quietly, went away, dissolving into the depths of the hall.
As the testers from Reutov, in 1961, in the bowels of OKB-52, the Chelomeev "wise men" formed an ambitious project called "Universal Rocket". It included the development of four liquid fuel rockets: 8K81, better known as UR-200, 8K82 - UR-500, 8K83 - UR-700 and 8K84 - UR-100. The first three reflected the sequence of working out the lunar carrier, and along the shortest path. Fourth, parity with the Americans was achieved. But they all made up a single package. The pioneer of this program was the two-stage rocket UR-200. Its length was 34.6 meters, the diameter at the base of the first stage was 3 meters, the launch weight was 138 tons. In 1963-64, the regiment in which I served made nine launches from ground launches of the 90th test site. All of them were successful, but the military did not take it into service, believing that the products supplied by Yangel were better for military purposes. But the highlight of this rocket was different. She, according to Chelomey's plan, represented the third and fourth stages of the future lunar carrier. Now he needed a completed second stage. Tests of the UR-200 had just begun, and in the spring of 1963 Chelomei won the go-ahead for testing the UR-500 rocket, the current Proton. Its first launch took place on July 16, 1965.
Fig.2. Design sketch of the UR-700 rocket with RD-270 engines
I remember that for safety reasons, almost all the people who worked on the left wing of the landfill were taken out of the so-called "Third Ascent", the main checkpoint of the landfill. I, in turmoil, with a group of fighters, got stuck together with a secret cargo at the Almaznaya intra-polygon railway station, located about five kilometers away, directly opposite the launch site 81, watching the launch from the roof of the station building. The spectacle was grandiose. First there was a huge outburst of flame. Then came a growing rumble. And when the marching engines roared together, it seemed that the sky was collapsing to the ground. To complete the apocalypse, an air wave passed through the ground, almost blowing me off the roof. Someone from the launch team later said that when the rocket broke away from the launch, it passed over the bunker in which the members of the state commission were sitting. At this moment, someone from the high authorities asked Chelomey: “What will happen if SHE collapses on us now?”. Chelomey grinned: “Nothing will happen. Neither us nor you."
On that day, all the Chelomeevites and all those involved in their success walked around the residential 95th site happy and proud. It seemed that the slogan, expressed not too loudly aloud, hung in the sky: “Give me the UR-700! Give me the moon!
Here it must be noted that at the moment she tore off the rockets from the launch pad, as the members of the combat crew said, not everything was fine with the electronics. Ground instruments recorded conflicting data on the parameters of the product's control systems. At some point, even the question arose of undermining it. This time everything worked out. But at the second launch, the rocket exploded when it leaves the troposphere at an altitude of about 8 kilometers. From the ground it was visible how the dense cloud cover, through which the rocket had passed, suddenly turned crimson. On the third start, as far as I heard, the rocket began to deviate from the set course, and she had to be torn down. Its fragments fell in the Karaganda region. Only the fourth launch went completely satisfactorily.
Although the Chelomey lunar project (OKB-52) was officially christened in 1971, in fact it was frozen by the country's top leadership back in 1966. And this despite the fact that Chelomey went to the finish line. What remained for him to do in order to fulfill his dream - to reach the moon? In essence, nothing. In his hands, practically, was everything to complete this task. The three upper steps were successfully worked out. The UR-100 rocket was also tested. A package of nine block modules, each of which was its modification, formed the first stage of the designed lunar carrier. In the middle of 1965, Academician Glushko helped Chelomey, without changing his idea, to drastically simplify the design by proposing an RD-270 engine with a thrust of 630 tons for the first stage of the UR-700 rocket being created. As a result, a system of nine blocks with four main engines each was replaced by the same nine blocks, but with one main engine. At the same time, the total thrust of the first stage not only did not decrease, but increased to 5670 tons.
There is something to think about. All the talk that Chelomey did not have time for something there is sheer nonsense. In those days, everything was written off as the usual insinuations that took place between competing ideas. But there was no competition between the UR-700 and the H-1. They solved different problems. Chelomey created his carrier to reach the Moon in a pioneer way, the cheapest and shortest. Over the past 50 years, the specialization of Proton has not changed. As he was a transport and cargo horse, he remains so to this day. H-1 is "a blade of a different temper." It was intended for a complete and systematic study of our satellite, with the creation of lunar scientific stations. This missile initially carried the possibility of wide modifications depending on emerging needs. Chelomey simply stepped on his throat because he was too close to the moon.
What is the Tyuratam Sphinx silent about?
More than forty years have passed since the announcement by the Americans of their landing on the moon. Naturally, representatives of NASA and the US leadership are in defense of the American version. But a special place in the unleashed propaganda campaign is occupied by the support of this version by prominent representatives of the former Soviet party nomenclature (near-missile officials, individual academicians, high-ranking designers, and even many famous cosmonauts). Without this support, the American legend would not last a day. After all, no one has ever asked the rocket men about this: the officers of the combat crews who made in the same Tyura-Tame in those days, rocket launches or those who carried out electronic tracking of launches, engineers who directly carried out engineering calculations and adjustment of units, assemblies and systems of tested missiles.
Fig.3. Tyuratam "Sphinx" (photo from the album "Excursions around the Cosmodrome")
When you enter the landfill, then at its main checkpoint, the “Third Rise”, on the right hand, you can see a remnant composed of red sandstone, from which a stone ridge stretches to the road. Over the millennia, the winds have processed it so that it has acquired a certain figure. You can clearly see a flat face, a lion's mane, a high neck, turning into a straight chest and two powerful paws. In a word, the sphinx, the Tyuratam sphinx, the symbol and guardian of the polygon. He remembers a lot. But the Sphinx is silent. The cosmodrome's staff of many thousands also found itself in the position of this sphinx. People were silent, bound by a non-disclosure agreement. Who wants to spend eight years in prison for speaking out. For me personally, these obligations ended only in 2005. Well, if you keep silent about the actual military secrets. But for the most part you are silent about the accomplished feat of Soviet engineers, soldiers and officers ...
For a significant part of the Tyura-Tam test site specialists, the fact that the Americans DID NOT FLY to the Moon was an open secret. There were two reasons for such a conclusion. First, both theoretical and practical IMPOSSIBILITY of creating a single-chamber engine ( F1) with a thrust of 700 tons. Korolev spoke about this (see above), all rocket practitioners knew about it. In a huge chamber, there are clots of unburned fuel mixture (like "explosive gas"), which do not burn out evenly, but as if by microexplosions. With huge linear dimensions, detonation occurs in the engine, which enters into resonance, which destroys the engine housing.
Decades have passed since the end of the lunar race. Many of its secrets are covered with moss of prescription, but the nature of my work, I had close working contacts with major specialists in the space sector. And so, one day, knowing my interest in the events of the lunar race, my comrades gave me a copy of the letter with the following content.
12/12/1966
CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU
Secretary General L.I. BrezhnevTo land astronauts on the moon, the US is developing the Saturn-5 launch vehicle with the Apollo spacecraft. This flight is expected by NASA in 1968-69. with a significant probability of completion in 1968. But, according to our intelligence and the practice of all our design work, the F-1 liquid-propellant engine has serious problems due to the almost unavoidable high-frequency and low-frequency oscillations. All attempts to create an analogue of F-1 have failed.
Therefore, in the USSR, to solve this problem, the N-1 carrier with the L-3 spacecraft is being developed. During the implementation of this project, a number of serious difficulties emerged, of which the determining factor was the delay in the development of reliable engines for both the carrier and the spacecraft. For the three stages of the N-1 launch vehicle and the first stage of the L-3 ship, engines have been developed at OKB-276 over a long period of years (for a thrust of 40 tons since 1959, for a thrust of 150 tons since 1961). During this time, about 600 starts of engines with a thrust of 40 tons and about 300 starts of engines with a thrust of 150 tons were carried out. However, even now the percentage of emergency starts of these engines at the stand is 20-30%. These statistics indicate that a significant amount of time is still required for the final development of engines, which is difficult to estimate. The engines of the last two stages L-3 (blocks I and E) are in the initial stage of development.
In connection with the foregoing, there is a threat that the United States will falsify manned flights to the moon and NASA will land two astronauts on the moon conditionally on TV. In this case, the subsequent landing of one cosmonaut on the Moon using the N-1 - L-3 system can be considered as evidence of the backwardness of the USSR in competition with the USA in the development of rocket technology only from the point of view of ideology and the mass media. Unfortunately, if rockets of the Saturn-5 type successfully take off and put some satellites into Earth orbit, it will be extremely difficult for us to challenge the priority, since there is no full-fledged system for tracking spacecraft in flight to the Moon in the USSR and in general it is hardly possible to make it one hundred percent guaranteed. Here, the solution of the problem falls entirely on the shoulders of the Central Committee of the CPSU and its higher bodies, especially in terms of exposing the fake attempts to fly NASA to the Moon - we responsibly declare to you that the United States is not capable of sending a man to the Moon over the next ten to fifteen years. It is possible that we, too, would first be better off sending machine guns to the moon.
It should also be noted that the boosting of Saturn-5, which has been repeatedly carried out in the United States in recent years, did not lead to a significant increase in the carrying capacity of the N-1 carriers (designed 95 tons in satellite orbit) and Saturn-5 (about 130 tons). The real figures are 45 and 65 tons, respectively. The creation of a modified carrier N-1 on liquid hydrogen with a carrying capacity of 130 tons or more, in fact, suffered a complete collapse at NASA and the USA.
Given the above, the group of chief designers ( Chelomei, Glushko, Barmin, V.I. Kuznetsov) a year ago (dated October 15, 1965) submitted a proposal to the Ministry of General Mechanical Engineering for the development of the UR-700 launch vehicle with the LK-700 spacecraft, which would more successfully solve the problem of achieving astronauts and issues of further competition with the United States in space exploration.
There is no reason to rush - America is lagging behind in many areas and often bluffing. Allow us to systematically develop our lunar program. We will win the moon race.
Sincerely! V. N. Chelomei, V. P. Barmin, V. I. Kuznetsov, S. P. Izotov, V. Ya. Likhushin, V. P. Glushko, V. T. Sergeev, A. D. Konopatov, A. M. Isaev,
Note. Typically, the texts of letters, including those that subsequently received a secrecy stamp, were written in a simple office. The preparation of a letter of this magnitude was carried out, as a rule, in the apparatus of one of the signatories of this letter. Such documents went through a series of drafts from the first draft to the finished document.
In those days, in the absence of computers, there was always a whole paper trail behind such documents. First of all, a copy remained with the signatories. Just in case, the primary version of the document could remain with the contractor. He kept it in his cherished place. That was the practice of life.
Here, for example, the famous rocket designer Bugrov, associate Queen, who was the designer of the H1 rocket. At the direction of the Politburo and on the orders of Glushko, in 1974, all documentation on the H1 was destroyed. And Bugrov in the film "The Time of the Moon" says that he has preserved all the working sketches of H1.
Soviet designers represented by S.P. Koroleva, V.P. Glushko and others came to an unequivocal conclusion: it is possible to make large rocket engines only in a closed circuit , when one (or both) components enter the chamber not in liquid form (liquid-liquid scheme), but as a hot gas (liquid-gas scheme), which sharply reduces the ignition time of fuel portions, and significantly localizes the problems of combustion frequency instabilities to reasonable limits.
The second circumstance was the haste with which American astronauts rushed into the depths of space on a rocket that passed only two tests, November 9, 1967, which is considered successful and April 4, 1968 , definitely unsuccessful. Tyura-Tama launchers, people who know what moral responsibility falls on the shoulders when launching a person even into near-Earth orbit, they unequivocally perceived such a passage as something from the realm of unscientific fiction - this does not happen. Major Nikolaev, the commander of the combat crew of the so-called "Gagarin" launch, which is located at the rocket test site No. 2 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and in the 60s carried out launches of all our cosmonauts of those years, expressing the general opinion, without hesitation, said publicly: " When the news came about the flight of the Americans to the moon, all the ground squirrels died of laughter in Baikonur, since the Saturn-5 rocket is nothing more than a myth. Even when comparing its characteristics with the characteristics of the royal N-1 and Chelomeevskaya UR-700, our variants of lunar carriers, it is clear that we are dealing with a simple layout, not something real ». Telemetrists also joined the opinion of the starters.
... the Americans did not have time to complete their adventure, as the top leadership of the USSR realized that enough tough opposition to the fact of official recognition of the Americans' flight to the moon, which could not but cause concern in its ranks. And so, in 1971-1972, General Kurushin the head of the training ground, arranged, at the suggestion from above, a uniform pogrom of subordinate officers. Those who were still lieutenants began their service with Korolev and General Shubnikov (G.M.) were ruthlessly scattered over distant garrisons and IPs. There, the vast majority of them either burned out from vodka, or eked out a miserable existence without any prospects for the future.
Shield of Ustinov
Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov not only patronized the development of missile weapons proper, but under his direct supervision a system of radar stations for monitoring and early detection of missile launches was deployed, which received the unofficial name "Ustinov's Shield". At his direct insistence, starting from the 60s of the last century, he began to create powerful information-reconnaissance and combat defensive means. For a country that possesses strategic offensive nuclear forces without such a system, without information and intelligence support for nuclear forces, resembles a blind and deaf person with a huge club in his hands. It is not known which country used its nuclear weapons? On whom to deliver a retaliatory nuclear missile strike?
Fig.4. D.F. Ustinov - Secretary of the Central Committee for the defense industry, candidate member of the Politburo, since 1976 - member of the Politburo and Minister of Defense of the USSR,
Therefore, the nuclear deterrence system can now be considered only in the aggregate of strike and information forces. The USSR had the greatest effectiveness of such a defensive system in 1985-1990. At that time, a network of powerful early warning radars for ballistic missiles and space objects was created in Russia: in Pechora, Murmansk, Irkutsk, Vyborg, in Belarus - in Gantsevichi, in Latvia - in Skrunda; in Ukraine - in Mukachevo, Sevastopol; in Azerbaijan - in Gabala; in Kazakhstan - on Balkhash. A circular radar field was created over the country. All missile-prone areas were under control. True, the north-east of the country remained uncovered, which was supposed to be covered by the Yenisei over-the-horizon radar station being built at that time. However, the United States accused the USSR that the deployment of the radar in this region of the country was contrary to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and demanded that it be dismantled. By that time, a huge radar station, for which 220 million full-weight Soviet rubles were spent, had already been created by 90%. Unfortunately, by that time Dmitry Fedorovich had finished his life, and the traitors Gorbachev, Yakovlev and Shevardnadze managed to push through the decision to demolish it.
Fig.5. On the left is the Volga radar, on the right is the Don radar
I, as a mining engineer, had to take a direct part in the construction of the radar station in Gantsevichi (Volga). In addition, in the course of preparation for this work, a number of other stations had to be visited. Work was carried out at a hurricane pace. Suffice it to say that the Belarusian station was built by us in just two years.
Our questions and answers Lebedev:
Question #1: Nikolai Viktorovich! Many of our readers (and we ourselves) have a poor idea of how the astronauts meet at the moment of their landing. How do they feel? How easy or difficult is it for them to readapt to Earth's gravity? Please tell us about it.
How ships and astronauts were met
N.V. Lebedev:“In 1965-67, I had the honor to be part of the missile launch support group at the Main Directorate of the NIIP-5 missile test site, located at site No. 1 in the immediate vicinity of the Tyura-Tam railway station. Our group included specialists in geodesy, meteorology, decontamination chemists, and special signalmen.
One of our most important objects was the observatory, located on the territory of the then cosmonauts' hotel near checkpoint-1. In it, in those days, the cosmonauts stopped before the flight, arriving from Zvezdny to the training ground. Dead silence reigned here. No one had the right to disturb their peace. This circumstance was occasionally used Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who sometimes hid here from the annoying crowd of testers, installers, builders, who always tried to solve their current issues with him directly. In such cases, he locked himself in one of the hotel rooms and demanded that the signalmen turn off all telephones: HF, ZAS, Kremlin, etc. A bus also called here for the astronauts to take them to the launch pad.
Our meteorologists, who provide rocket launches, did their main service in the aviation regiment attached to the test site, whose tasks included searching for and delivering spent stages that fell during rocket launches to the test site. Naturally, the pilots of the regiment were also entrusted with the rescue operations of astronauts. According to the plan of these operations, they flew to the area of the proposed landing of the descent capsule and delivered a team of rescuers and medical personnel there.
As a rule, the capsule was spotted even at the moment of its descent by parachute. Rescuers went first. Their task was to align the landed apparatus in a position convenient for extracting the astronauts, fixing it with jacks on the ground so that it would not tumble, and opening the hatches. The last operation was extremely important, since during the descent along the ballistic trajectory preceding the parachute section, the capsule burns and it was possible to partially jam the hatches due to thermal deformations.
Then the medical rescuers came into action, who removed the astronauts from the capsule and laid them on special stretchers, since their condition did not allow them to move independently, without outside help, some of them even received injections of a means that strengthens the tone. The extracted cosmonauts were transported by helicopter from the landing site to site No. 1 to the intensive care unit of the local hospital. There were already specialists from the head hospital for space medicine, located in Zvyozdny. After the initial examination of the cosmonauts, a decision was made on the urgency of sending them to Zvezdny. As a rule, this happened about three days after the return of the astronauts, but in urgent cases, the astronauts could be sent to Zvezdny almost on the same day.
Question #2: Nikolai Viktorovich! Recently, a number of forums actively discussed information about the alleged poisoning of the astronauts of the "Apollo - ASTP" during their return to Earth. In the stories about this event, a substance was mentioned - nitrogen tetroxide, which allegedly poisoned the astronauts. Please tell us about him.
Poison couple
N.V. Lebedev:“For space purposes, all rockets fly on liquid fuel. The use of solid propellant (gunpowder) in them is limited by the use of PJE (rotary jet engines) in some designs, with the help of which the orientation of a rocket or spacecraft in space is corrected. The composition of liquid rocket fuel includes an oxidizer and fuel, which, when mixed and subsequently burned, form combustion products that propel the rocket. Both are in the rocket, of course, in a liquid state and in different tanks. Their mixing takes place only in the combustion chamber, usually with the help of nozzles. Historically, the oxygen-hydrogen pair was one of the first to be proposed. It is still in use today. But for a number of technical reasons, the oxygen-kerosene pair is more widely used. Since the end of the 1950s, both in the USSR and in the USA, steam has been used in a number of rocket systems, in which nitrogen tetroxide is the oxidizer ( TA), briefly - "amyl", and the fuel is unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine ( UDMH), briefly - "heptyl". Both boil already at temperatures above 0 o C. Therefore, ground tanks for amyl and heptyl are always equipped with valve systems that allow them to “bleed” the pressure that arises inside them. And this causes the fact that from time to time it “floats” above these containers, that is, a “smoke” of brown fumes appears. Everyone who arrives at the landfill is explained about the simply incredible toxicity of both substances. So just one drop of heptyl, which is in a room of 15 cubic meters, kills all living things there within 10-12 minutes. Amyl is more toxic than heptyl 1200 times!
To illustrate, I will tell you the following incident that happened to me in 1965 while serving at the cosmodrome. The working day is over. It was getting dark. After a hot day, I just wanted to breathe fresh air. Therefore, my friends and I decided not to go from the 130th test site in a stuffy bus, but to return to the 95th one (the left "Chelomeevskoye" shoulder of the test site) on foot, despite the considerable distance. We walked along the asphalt road. In conversations, they did not pay much attention to how ahead, from the side of the 90th platform, where the huge MIK towered, a car appeared, driving in our direction. Rides, well, God bless her. Only when it approached about twenty meters, and the driver gave a signal, did they understand that a tanker was coming. It was striking that above the top lid of his barrel it “floats” slightly. Usually, both heptyl and the oxidizing agent were transported at the test site in an automobile escort. One car in front, with a loudspeaker, warning oncoming people of the danger. One car in the back. The drivers of the entire traveling column always drove their cars in IP-5 insulating gas masks. Why this time the tanker was traveling unaccompanied, it is not clear? We rushed in all directions. The tanker slipped through without slowing down, dousing us from a distance of 7-10 m with a sharp smell of an oxidizing agent (that is, TA). As a result of the meeting, one breath was enough for me to remember him for the rest of my life. My head ached instantly and a splitting headache kept me awake all night. In the morning I went to the doctor. After the tests, the doctor said that I would live, but he does not guarantee the appearance of children with me. Here he hit the mark. Only after ten years of our life together, my wife gave birth to my daughter.
Question #3: Nikolai Viktorovich! Simultaneously with the ASTP flight, our Salyut-4 orbital station (crew P. Klimuk and V. Sevastyanov) was in space. Please tell us if during the preparation of the ASTP flight the question of participation in this project of our orbital station was discussed.
N.V. Lebedev: “In 1972, the program for the joint flight of the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft was approved. Immediately after her statement, in near-cosmic circles and even in brief comments in the wide Soviet press (Komsomolskaya Pravda for 1972), there was information that one of the stations of the Salyut series would be involved in joint research in near-Earth space. This topic has been discussed for two years. However, in 1974, as if by magic, she completely disappeared from the discussion.
The rumors that Apollo is a scam, in which the launches of Saturn-5 launch vehicles were real at best, started already in December 1968, during the flight of Apollo-8 around the moon. The campaign to expose the Apollo begins in 1974 with the release of the first book on the subject, We Never Went to the Moon: A Thirty Billion Fraud by Bill Kaising and Randy Reid. Moreover, Kaising worked at the Rocketdyne company, where engines for the Saturn-5 were manufactured. This fact gave special weight to his opinion.
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Americans have not been to the moon The role of the USSR Russia's official position Chinese scientists refute US lunar mission The big space lie about the moon landing |
The theory of falsification of the US lunar program was most vividly expressed in the feature film "Capricorn-1", filmed in the same USA in 1978. He talked about how NASA faked the flight with the help of special effects. True, not to the Moon, but to Mars, but the hint was obvious.
The well-known American film director Stanley Kubrick, the author of "Space Odyssey - 2001", admitted that, by order of NASA, he imitated some alleged episodes of the astronauts' activities on the Moon in the film set. But there is no malicious intent here: NASA just wasn't sure that the TV broadcast from the surface of Selena would be of high enough quality to give viewers an idea of what the astronauts were doing there. So the agency recreated on Earth what should have happened on the Moon.
The most famous Russian author, Yuri Mukhin, wrote the book Anti-Apollo: The US Lunar Scam. A relatively new argument in anti-Apollo conspiracy theories concerns the engine. If the United States was really able in the mid-1960s to create such a powerful oxygen-kerosene engine as the F-1 (there were five of them on Saturn-5), then why did they turn to Russia in the late 1990s with a request to sell them almost half as powerful RD-180, also running on oxygen and kerosene?
Is this not confirmation that the Saturn 5 was actually a flying "rattle", the purpose of which was to give the impression of a super-powerful carrier, supposedly capable of delivering people to the moon?
They flew to the moon, but the films were lost ...
Causes serious suspicions and that circumstance. that, together with the original video recording of the first steps of people on the moon, the films with the telemetry recording of the operation of the lunar module systems and the data on the health of Armstrong and Aldrin transmitted by telemetry to Earth during their stay on the moon also disappeared: a total of about 700 boxes with various kinds of films. However, according to Florida Today, film and television evidence is missing not only for the Apollo 11 mission, but for all eleven flights of the Apollo program, including near-Earth, near-lunar, and landing. In total - 13,000 films.
Lies to Save the Nation
Americans are such a people that fooled, fooled and wakes to fool all of humanity. Of course, among them there are many honest people who do not want to hide the truth. But they can not be attributed to the "discoverer" of the North Pole, American Robert Peary. Only in 1970, a camp was found in Greenland, where Piri sat for two months, not intending to go to the pole. And then he came and told everyone that he was there. Piri's diaries, found in the parking lot, told about everything.
But who cared then? The road is a spoon to dinner ... The train has already left, and now the Americans will be forever proud of their Piri - the "discoverer" of the North Pole. Until now, in some geography textbooks, one can read that the first person to visit the North Pole was the American Robert Peary. So it is now, all space passions remained in the 20th century, so the Americans will forever remain the people who first set foot on the moon.
Ambitious America, which considered itself the greatest country in the world, could not bear the space successes of the USSR.
President Kennedy had no choice but to presumptuously declare:
“By the end of the decade, we will land on the moon. Not because it's easy, but because it's difficult."
America, busy bombing Vietnam, threw insane money on the Great Task - to wipe the nose of the Russians.
And in 1969, in the presence of almost a million people gathered at the cosmodrome, a super-powerful hulk, the Saturn-5 launch vehicle, launched live.
She carried the Apollo spacecraft and three astronauts. "Apollo" flew up to the Moon, the lander separated from it, which landed safely on the moon, and Neil Armstrong got out of the capsule, saying the prepared: “This is a small step for a man, but a huge step for all mankind” .
For some reason, the eyes of an American do not shine with happiness, like those of our Yuri. Astronauts who have been on the moon are extremely taciturn and do not seek meetings, unlike our sociable astronauts. Armstrong generally lived in a castle with a descending bridge. So 82-year-old Neil Armstrong took his secret to the grave on August 24, 2012.
The world applauded. The Americans set up their flag, collected stones, took pictures, filmed a movie ...
Then the capsule took off from the lander, docked with the Apollo, then - a safe splashdown in the Pacific Ocean and an American triumph for all time.
A triumph, but the mother-in-law does not believe!
It was the name day of America, she went crazy with happiness, neither before nor after did the Americans rejoice like that. Then there were five more successful expeditions ...
Of the Soviet space minds, no one doubted, except for the General Designer Mishin, who replaced the deceased Korolev. During the live report, he smoked all the time and repeated:
“It’s impossible, Apollo won’t be able to break away from the earth’s orbit and head towards the moon…”
One must think he knew what he was saying ... But then the cheerful voice of the American commentator said: "Apollo has left Earth's orbit and is heading for the Moon" . Mishin could not understand anything, got up, left, slamming the door ... He realized that the Americans are smarter than us. We all believed it, but my wise mother-in-law would never believe it.
Then, more and more often, the voices of skeptics began to be heard, claiming that there were no flights to the moon, but there was a hoax. The American space agency NASA twirled a finger at the temple and declared that it would not discuss this issue with anyone. Why argue with cretins? And such cretins turned out to be journalists and their fellow bloggers ...
From the fundamental works, the book by Y. Mukhin first came out "Anti-Apollo" .
A recently published work by physicist A. Popov "Great Breakthrough or Space Scam" represents a huge amount of analyzed facts, which can be dismissed only by the Main Argument In All Disputes - You don’t understand anything!
The blogosphere is divided into three unequal parts: skeptics; fans of Americans; and the most numerous wise comrades - those who do not care.
Stubborn whys
— Why are the shadows cast by the stones clearly converging at an angle, while the shadows from the Sun are always parallel? Spotlight in the studio?
- Why is the surface of the moon illuminated unevenly, while the Sun should flood everything equally? Not enough lighting fixtures?
- Why is a crushed cockroach visible in the photograph of Armstrong's footprint?
- Why do astronauts jump 50 cm on film frames, while they should jump 2 meters?
- Why, when every gram of roads had to be transferred to an electric car (rover) and ridden on it?
- Why is the dust from under the wheels of the rover swirling like in the air.
- Why do the shadows give the estimated height of the Sun 30 degrees, while it was at that time at an angle of 10 degrees?
- Why is the astronaut clearly visible even when the Sun shines directly at his back? Backlight?
Why are there no stars in the lunar sky?
- Why did the engines of the landing module have to sweep away tons of dust from its place (Armstrong wrote: “We raised the dust hundreds of meters”), and under the nozzles of the engines the dust is pristine, as if the module was put by a truck crane? Etc.
Skeptics of lunar flights argue that astronauts' spacesuits on the moon, 80 centimeters thick, can serve as a salvation from radiation.
- One American specialist generally claims that the radiation belt around the Earth is insurmountable for a living being.
- During the "flight" to the moon, Armstrong wanted to go out into space for some kind of sting. Footage of Armstrong's spacewalk is exactly the same as astronaut Shepard's spacewalk footage from the Gemeni spacecraft three years earlier. Only in a mirror image and the color is slightly changed.
- Footage of how the Earth gradually decreases in size as the Apollo moves away from it - a cartoon made from a single photograph.
- "The moon is approaching" - a similar cartoon.
- A spectacular movie of flying over the Moon, when the shadow runs over the craters - shooting a huge lunar globe that NASA has.
- Lunomobile, in size it cannot fit into a capsule, even when folded.
- In the preparation of "flights to the moon" died in car accidents and otherwise 11 astronauts. Sad record. Shut the mouths of those who disagree?
launch vehicle
Launch vehicle "Saturn-5"
Some conspiracy theorists believe that the Saturn V rocket was never ready to launch, and make the following arguments:
After a partially unsuccessful test launch of the Saturn-5 rocket on April 4, 1968, a manned flight followed, which, according to N.P. Kamanin, was “the purest adventure” from the point of view of safety.
In 1968, 700 employees of the Marshall Space Research Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Saturn V was being developed, were fired.
In 1970, at the height of the lunar program, the chief designer of the Saturn-5 rocket, Wernher von Braun, was dismissed from the post of director of the Center and removed from the leadership of rocket development.
After the end of the lunar program and the launch of Skylab into orbit, the remaining two rockets were not used for their intended purpose, but were sent to the museum.
The absence of foreign cosmonauts who would fly on the Saturn-5, or would work on the superheavy object launched by this rocket into orbit - the Skylab station.
The lack of further use of F-1 engines or its descendants on subsequent missiles, in particular, the use instead of them on the powerful Atlas-5 rocket.
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 04/13/2019
The version about NASA's failures in the issue of creating hydrogen-oxygen engines is also being considered. Supporters of this version claim that the second and third stages of the Saturn V had kerosene-oxygen engines, like the first stage. The characteristics of such a rocket would not be enough to launch an Apollo with a full-fledged lunar module into a lunar orbit, but it would be enough for a manned spacecraft to fly around the Moon and drop a greatly reduced model of the lunar module to the Moon.
Photoshop made its way to the moon
Retouched NASA image in original and gamma corrected form. After gamma correction, digital retouching of the scanned image appears on the photo.
Retouched NASA image in original and gamma corrected form. After gamma correction, digital retouching of the scanned image appears on the photo.
The main debunker of this whole lunar production turned out to be ... Photoshop. After all, no one knew that 30 years after the "landing on the moon" there would be this damned computer program for processing images. When, with its help, the photographs were given maximum brightness and contrast, instead of an absolute black sky, painted backdrops appeared in the pictures, on which stripes of light from searchlights and shadows from astronauts became clearly visible. And traces of retouching were literally everywhere. The picture was especially touching: an astronaut at the American flag, directly above the flag - a distant Earth. With an increase in brightness-contrast in the lunar sky, the astronaut's shadow became clearly visible, and the Earth turned out to be a cardboard circle,
And then even cunning mathematicians, by combining two photographs taken with a pause of several seconds (hence, the camera shifted 20 centimeters to the side), calculated the distance to the lunar mountains, which are visible behind the astronauts. According to the globe, they are 5 kilometers away, according to measurements - 100 meters. The back, with painted mountains, definitely. And the line between the sandbox and the backdrop is very clearly visible ...
Then the fans of the Americans admitted through their teeth: “Well, yes, something was filmed in Hollywood for clarity. It's the Americans. But on the moon they were, were, were!
What color is the moon? According to NASA - the Moon is gray, according to Soviet scientists - brown. On December 15, 2013, the Chinese space mission Chang'e-3 transmitted images from the moon: The moon is brown! Here, NASA supporters (Vitaly Yegorov, aka Zelenyikot) caught on and came up with an explanation: “the white balance was not corny on the cameras.” This video proves that NASA supporters are wrong.
Convincing proof of the fakery of photographs allegedly taken on the moon, which simultaneously depicted an astronaut, an American flag and the Earth. The proof is based on an analysis of the Earth's appearance using the Celestia astronomical program.
The video uses photographs, the author of which is NASA, the materials of which are the property of all mankind. Photos published on flickr by link.
This video is published under a free Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
To the moon - without preparation?
The hundred-meter hulk Saturn-5 was supposed to deliver a module with a capsule to the moon, a three-story building high. The first test of the rocket with stretches was called successful. But during the second unmanned takeoff, the rocket wobbled and exploded.
A fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 09/30/2017
Yale University professor David Gelernter, science adviser to the US president, denies even the possibility that the Americans were on the moon. And he argues...
“How can we organize a mission to Mars by an American team by the mid-2030s if we haven’t even been to the Moon? The idea itself is ludicrous, as is the entire Obama administration."— said the scientist. — "Apollo's lunar landing is a hoax in human history worse than global warming."
What is the logical conclusion in such cases? That's right, you need to test the rocket in unmanned mode until it starts flying like a clock. Then, again, without pilots, you need to send it to the Moon with its help and do all the necessary operations. It is clear that there should be many tests and, according to statistics, half of them will fail.
But the Americans are sending three astronauts to the moon in three weeks. Apollo 8 flew around the Moon remarkably well and returned to Earth beautifully. Also, Saturn-5 let us down by throwing Apollos-9, 10 to the Moon. And then it was Apollo 11's turn with Armstrong and the others. And everything is like clockwork. The most sophisticated space technology suddenly refused to fail. What god helped the Americans?
The lander has never landed on the moon without people. The landing capsule, accordingly, did not take off.
Nevertheless, all six American expeditions to the moon went off without a hitch. According to the theory of probability, this simply could not be
Our lunar rocket took off four times and exploded four times, after which the Soviet program was closed, since the Americans "were ahead of us anyway."
And it was supposed to first send two lunar rovers to our satellite. They had to carefully examine the landing site and choose the most even one. For with an inclination of more than 12 degrees, the lander will either not land or the capsule will not take off from it.
Then a spare rocket was supposed to land on the radio beacons from the lunar rovers. If she landed safely, the lunar rovers would examine her for the fact that she could safely launch from the moon. Only then would you launch the module with ONE astronaut. The second cosmonaut, and also the lunomobile, is an unaffordable luxury when every gram counts.
The Americans, however, did not touch these little things. After all, they were kept by the cosmic God.
Fantastic landing accuracy
And in one more question, the Americans wiped our nose - exactly the landing (splashdown). During landing, Gagarin was blown away for hundreds of kilometers, he was searched for almost a day from helicopters. And then the hits were not much closer.
But the splashdown accuracy of the American returnable capsules was from 2 to 15 kilometers. Amazing result. Our teeth gnashed with envy ... And only by the end of the 80s it became clear that, according to the laws of physics, landing with an accuracy of more than 40 kilometers was unattainable. But in the 60s, no one knew this yet.
Stones were collected on the moon. Where do you share?
And further. The Americans together "collected on the moon" as much as 400 kilograms of soil. The Soviet automatic station "Luna-16" brought only 100 grams. When the Americans were offered to exchange samples for research, they dragged on for almost three years, and only in 1972 they gave us as much as ... 3 grams.
Skeptics claim that it was then, finally, that the Sekveyer automatic station secretly flew to the moon and brought the same 100 grams of lunar powder. And no one has ever seen those 400 kilos of moonstones, they are kept behind seven locks and are not issued to anyone.
In total, the Americans gave us 28 grams of regolith - lunar sand, which three of our automatic stations delivered about three hundred grams. Moonstone - none!
There was a case. when a pebble was presented to a prince, but after the death of the prince, this pebble turned out to be a piece of petrified wood.
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 12/23/2017
Tracked down, tracked down, but not tracked down
The Americans, like the gypsies who inflate a horse with air in order to sell it, fictitiously increased the size of the launch rocket. A. Popov made out the takeoff of the Saturn-5 rocket in frames. And here's what I found. A quarter of a second before the separation of the first stage, a bright explosion occurs on the surface of the rocket. And for a hundredth part, it becomes clear how the outer case of this hulk collapsed, under which a body much smaller than the much less powerful American Saturn-1 rocket was found.
All the same evil tongues suggested that the Americans simply increased the size of Saturn-1 with the help of a casing. When she took off and disappeared from sight, her remains fell into the ocean.
Unfortunately, our prominent specialist and honored cosmonaut, respected Alexei Leonov, like everyone else, fell for the American lure of deceit. He fiercely defends the Americans and repeats all the time: “We tracked all stages of the Apollo flight. Alas, not tracked ...
Our space specialists followed the flight as well as the whole world, i.е. according to the "picture" provided by NASA. Only two Soviet scientific vessels that were in the Atlantic Ocean could follow the takeoff of Saturn-5. So, an hour before the “takeoff”, our ships were surrounded by the American Navy, helicopters, which turned on the jammers at full power.
Kennedy's Plans Failed
Yes, in the beginning the Americans honestly and enthusiastically took up the realization of Kennedy's dream. But a few years later, having threatened 25 billion, they were convinced that this was still impossible. We need more weeks-months-years, billions-billions... And the Russian turtles have already circled the moon. How could this be explained to taxpayers, to Congress?
And then NASA and the CIA created the Great Hoax during the Cold War.
Of course, many of us would like the Russian tricolor to be the first flag set on the Moon.
But, apparently, it will be the Chinese flag.
The role of the USSR
Yu. A. Gagarin and S. P. Korolev
One aspect of the "lunar conspiracy" theory is also attempts to explain the recognition by the Soviet Union of the American landing on the moon. Supporters of the "lunar conspiracy" theory believe that the USSR had no conclusive evidence of NASA falsifications, other than incomplete human intelligence data (or that the evidence did not appear immediately). The possibility of collusion between the USSR and the USA to conceal the alleged scam is assumed. The following versions of the reasons that could have prompted the USSR to enter into a "lunar collusion" with the United States and stop their lunar flyby and lunar landing manned lunar programs at the last steps of implementation are called:
1. The USSR did not immediately recognize the scam.
2. The leadership of the USSR refused to public exposure for the sake of political pressure on the United States (threats of exposure).
3. In exchange for silence, the USSR could receive economic concessions and privileges, such as the supply of wheat at low prices and access to the Western European oil and gas market. Among the possible assumptions are also personal gifts to the Soviet leadership.
4. The United States had political compromising information on the leadership of the USSR.
A fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 11/18/2017
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 12/09/2017
Opponents express doubts on all counts:
1. The USSR closely monitored the US lunar program both according to open sources and through a wide network of agents. Since falsification (if it existed) would require the participation of thousands of people, among them with a very high probability would be an agent of the Soviet special services. In addition, the lunar mission was subjected to continuous radio-technical and optical monitoring from various points in the USSR, from ships in the World Ocean and, possibly, from aircraft, and the information received was immediately subjected to verification by specialists. Under such conditions, it is almost impossible not to notice the anomalies in the propagation of radio signals. In addition, there were six missions. Therefore, even if the deception had not been discovered immediately, it would have been easily discovered later.
2. This probably would have been possible in the 1980s, but not in the conditions of the Moon Race and the Cold War. In the USSR and in the World in those years there was euphoria from the successes of Soviet cosmonautics, which reinforced the thesis fundamental for the USSR and all Marxist movements about the "superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist one." For the USSR, the defeat in the "Moon Race" had significant negative ideological consequences both within the country and in the world, but the proof of the failure of the United States and falsification (if it really took place) was a very strong trump card in promoting the ideas of Marxism in the world, which would allow to give a new breath to the communist movements in the West, which by that time had begun to lose popularity. Against this background, the possible bonuses from the "collusion" with the United States for the USSR would not look very tempting. It should not be forgotten that the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in the United States were marked by a fierce internal political struggle, and if there had been falsification, American politicians themselves could have exposed it in the course of the struggle. In this case, the USSR would not have received anything from its silence.
3. The principle of "Occam's razor" applies here. The reasons for the USSR's entry into the Western European oil and gas market have been well studied and it is not necessary to involve a possible conspiracy between the USA and the USSR to explain them. The price for the supply of wheat to the USSR was, although somewhat lower than the exchange price, but this is due to the huge volumes of deliveries, self-delivery of products by the Soviet merchant fleet and the payment system that was beneficial to the West. The version about personal gifts is completely doubtful, since in such a vital issue for the superpowers, these gifts, obviously, should have been very valuable. Here it is even difficult to guess their content. In addition, after the collapse of the USSR, information about them would certainly become publicly available.
4. Before and after the Race to the Moon The United States conducted a continuous and tough information campaign to discredit the leadership of the USSR, using both real compromising materials and fakes created by special services. Among the leaders of states, a kind of "information immunity" to this kind of propaganda has developed, and it is unlikely that in such an environment any new materials would have been taken seriously with political consequences for the USSR.
A fragment of the program “Secrets of Chapman. What was really there? from 02.06.2017
Russia's official position
Making it clear to the public that there should be no doubt about the truth of the statement about the flights of American astronauts to the moon, neither the top leadership of the country, nor the domestic official science, in response to a direct question, provide a single piece of evidence that would sweep away all doubts and would become an unconditional confirmation of the correctness of their position on this issue.
And if Russia, as one of the leading space powers in the world, and in the 20th century the USSR the leader in the space race, cannot bring through the mouth of its leader or official science a single convincing fact proving or refuting the flights of American astronauts to the moon, then all the information about these flights published in textbooks, scientific and popular science literature, shown in newsreels, posted in the media, the Internet, displayed on postage stamps, badges, coins ah, etc., is a simple repetition of the version proposed by the Americans and is based either on the naive belief of people in this version, or, most likely, on the fulfillment by the authors of these products of the will of the highest officials of the state.
What Putin Says About the Moon Landing
What is the position of official Russia today on the issue of flights of American astronauts to the Moon? This question is best asked to the head of state, who, by his status, should be better than anyone else aware of the reliability of this global event.
A. Anisimov: Good afternoon, Vladimir Vladimirovich, my name is Alexey Anisimov, Novosibirsk. I have a question. Do you think the Americans landed on the moon, well, landed on the moon?
V. V. Putin: I think yes.
A. Anisimov: There is a version that ...
V. V. Putin: I know this version, but it seems to me that it is impossible to falsify such an event. This is the same as some claim that on September 11, the Americans themselves blew up these twin towers, they themselves directed the actions of the terrorists. Complete nonsense! Brad, this is impossible! ...Complete nonsense! The same applies to the moon landings: it is impossible to falsify an event of this magnitude.
A. Anisimov: Thank you.
V. V. Putin: We can say that Yuri Gagarin did not fly either - you can invent anything you like. Meanwhile, let's not forget about it, after all, our compatriot took the first step into space.
What conclusions can be drawn from this dialogue?
First. VV Putin knows the version according to which the Americans falsified the flights to the Moon.
Second. It turned out that V.V. Putin, being the head of state - a pioneer in space exploration, forty years after the flights of American astronauts to the moon, does not have reliable data that would unambiguously answer the question posed: yes, American flights to the moon are real, their reliability is confirmed by such and such facts.
Third. V. V. Putin, although he had the opportunity to request information confirming or refuting the official version of the flights of American astronauts to the moon, in the archives of the special services, the foreign ministry and scientific organizations involved in the study of space, but for unknown reasons did not do this, but expressed his point of view as an ordinary citizen who does not always have the opportunity to obtain reliable information from competent sources.
Putin's point of view is that American astronauts landed on the moon, although no new evidence is provided to confirm this, it just seems to him that it is impossible to falsify an event of this magnitude.
But if enough money is allocated, then anything can be falsified. The problem is only as a fake. And the higher the quality, the more likely the falsification will be perceived as reality.
But, as you know, doubts about the reliability of the American flights to the moon arose in the United States immediately after the completion of these flights and were not dispelled for forty years. It is believed that the basis for these doubts was the results of a close study of materials related to the flights of American astronauts to the Moon, but it can be assumed that the primary source of these doubts was a leak of information, intentionally or accidentally made by one of the organizers or performers of lunar flights.
But be that as it may, in reality, in the end, V.V. Putin turned out to be right that it is impossible to falsify such an event, and to be more precise, it is impossible to pass off the falsification of such an event as reality.
The response of the highest-ranking official does not contain any new information confirming the presence of American astronauts on the Moon, but only indicates that the head of state has developed his own personal opinion on this issue, based on indirect data and analogies.
It is surprising that an official, who, by his status, has access to any information owned by the state, did not cite a single fact, including from competent sources, confirming the reliability of these flights, although he is familiar with the version of the falsification of flights.
Thus, the answer of the head of state to the question whether the Americans landed on the moon did not put an end to the dispute about the possible falsification of NASA manned flights to the moon.
Roscosmos has no information
Having expressed his opinion on this issue, V.V. Putin outlined the position of the state, namely, the flights to the moon declared by the Americans correspond to reality. This position is supported not by facts, but by the authority of the head of state, and, by default, this position should be guided by Russian state structures and official science.
However, having received the installation that flights to the Moon are a reality, Russian government agencies and official science did not receive convincing facts from NASA or the country's leadership confirming the reality of these flights to present them to the public.
The question of the presence of Americans on the moon was raised before V.V. Putin and in 2012.
So, V. Grinev in his article “To be or not to be?” ( Newspaper "In Their Own Names", N14, April 2, 2013) writes:
“In December of the past year, a conference was held by the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, at which everyone could ask the head of state a question of interest to him ... and I asked the question in writing: "Have Americans been to the Moon or not?" . The question was not heard on the air, but an answer was soon received from the president's office that my question had been accepted and sent to Roskosmos. Some time later, a response was received from Roskosmos signed by the Chief Scientific Secretary of the NTS A. G. Milovanov. …Turns out, “Roscosmos does not have information confirming your point of view regarding the landing of Americans on the moon”. ... One can understand the answer of A. G. Milovanov from two angles: either A. G. Milovanov really does not know about the landing (or non-landing) of the Americans on the moon - which is impossible to believe, or A. G. Milovanov, for one reason or another - which is more likely - did not consider it necessary to be frank with me.
At first glance, it would seem that the right decision was made - to refer this issue to the relevant department dealing with space issues. But neither Roskosmos nor its predecessors participated in the NASA program to send a man to the Moon and, accordingly, do not bear any responsibility for the accuracy of reports about these flights. Therefore, formally, Roskosmos cannot have information either confirming or refuting the landing of American astronauts on the moon.
Of course, such an agency as Roskosmos can be presented as an expert whose activities are most related to the issue under discussion and which, dealing with space topics, can resolve a long-standing dispute. However, as can be seen from the excerpt from the letter of the Chief Scientific Secretary of the NTS of Roscosmos, Roscosmos does not act as an expert on this issue. And how can he take on such a role when such famous cosmonauts as G.M. Grechko and A.A. Leonov, who has no doubts about the flights of American astronauts to the moon, allow the Americans to make additional filming of "lunar episodes" in the studio.
The question arises, where should the question of the reliability of the lunar expedition be directed? Without a doubt, to the bodies of the foreign intelligence service (formerly the KGB of the USSR) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the years of the Cold War, employees of these departments successfully obtained information important for the security of our country (atomic weapons, military-technical developments, the military potential of the enemy, etc.). It is impossible to imagine that such strategically important information as the first flight of a man to the moon would go unnoticed by these departments.
Nevertheless, as follows from the above article, the task of confirming or refuting the presence of American astronauts on the Moon is set before Roscosmos, as if the responsibility of this agency or its predecessors was to determine the reliability of information provided by other states in the field of space exploration.
Roskosmos is formally right in answering that it does not have information confirming the falsification of the landing of American astronauts on the moon. Firstly, Roscosmos officially could not obtain such information from any sources (from higher management, other ministries and departments, foreign states and citizens), Secondly, the task of analyzing and evaluating the reliability of information about the flights of American astronauts to the moon was not set before Roscosmos.
Roskosmos's response does not refute, but does not prove the version accepted by the state that the flights of American astronauts to the moon really took place.
Probably, it would be more correct to ask Roskosmos to present evidence confirming the flights of American astronauts to the moon. But since V.V. Putin cited only one indirect argument as confirmation of these flights, then, apparently, it would be a problematic task for Roscosmos to prove the presence of American astronauts on the moon.
Voluntary a moratorium on the dissemination of information about these flights will allow not to “lose face” and preserve the scientific authority of the authors of works on the flights of American astronauts to the natural satellite of the Earth in the event that direct evidence is received about the falsification of lunar expeditions by the Americans.
Chinese scientists refute US lunar mission
Chinese scientists started exploring the moon not so long ago. And the first practical results were obtained about 10 years ago, when the research apparatus was launched " Chang'e-1» to the satellite of the Earth. Throughout the year, Chang'e-1 collected and transmitted data. These were photographs of the surface, from which a three-dimensional map was subsequently formed.
The second launched vehicle studied a certain area of the Moon, where it was planned to land the next lunar module called " Chang'e-3" in 2013. China has become the third country in the world to successfully land a research vehicle on the surface of an earth satellite. True, for technical reasons, the module failed to complete all the tasks.
In addition, Chinese scientists are constantly monitoring the space object with the help of modern telescopes and equipment. The purpose of these studies is a detailed study of the surface of the Moon, as well as the search for a landing site for astronauts from the United States. Parts of the alleged American lunar landing site were photographed, as well as an area within a radius of 50 kilometers around.
In the course of these observations, it was possible to examine the lunar craters in detail. Even traces of impacts of large meteorites were visible. The giant telescope "Red Star" was sent to exactly the place that, according to NASA documents, is listed as the area where the American lunar module was left after the Apollo expedition. However, the landing stages of the American spacecraft, as well as the star-striped flag, did not fall into the field of view of scientists.
Based on the research carried out, representatives of the PRC made a statement on the official website of the China Space Agency that the Americans had not been to the moon. This caused a strong reaction from the public, due to the fact that many do not believe in the flights of astronauts from America to the moon.
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 01.12.2018
The big US space lie about the moon landing
Russia has been and remains the leading space power. But at the same time, she has to literally survive in a serious struggle for orbit. Those who are commonly called "our Western partners" directly declare their superiority in space. And they are trying to achieve this superiority by all available means. Dozens of military satellites are launched into the sky, missile threats are announced and they are preparing to fly to Mars. At the same time, the fight is not always fair. For example, Russian cosmonauts in foreign blockbusters are shown as unshaven men in hats with earflaps. Or even forget about their existence. At the same time, Americans fly into space on Russian engines and are trained in Russian cosmonautics centers. So who is the boss in orbit?
Video of the TV channel "Zvezda" dated 08.10.2018 │ "Hidden threats" with Nikolai Chindyaykin
The Washington Post website, citing unnamed sources, reported that NASA may soon announce a new contract with one of the American firms to build a "shuttle" to deliver astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This is done in order to
According to the publication, in the coming weeks, NASA will announce a long-awaited decision: the conclusion of a multibillion-dollar contract to build an American spacecraft that will breathe new life into the struggling US space program. “Instead of paying $70 million for a seat on the Soyuz, this contract will allow the United States to send astronauts into space from American soil for the first time in years,” according to the Washington Post.
Among the contenders for the next "contract of the century" are SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and the Boeing concern. SpaceX and Boeing are offering "capsules" to carry astronauts to the ISS, while Sierra Nevada is developing a design for a new space plane similar to a smaller version of the Space Shuttle.
According to the publication, the first flight of the new American ship may take place in 2017.
An interesting point - among the participants in the project is the company Blue Origin, the owner of which Jeffrey Bezos who also owns the Washington Post.
"Constellation" in the fog, "Orion" is almost invisible
Anxiety about the dependence of the American space program on the Russian Soyuz has been expressed for a long time. Demands to put an end to this "vicious practice" are regularly voiced by politicians of various calibers, but the Americans have not yet been able to change the situation.
The crisis of the US space program began on February 1, 2003, when the reusable spacecraft Columbia crashed with 7 astronauts on board. As part of the Space Shuttle program, this was the second disaster with human casualties. An investigation into the circumstances of the incident showed that the main cause of the tragedy in 2003, as in 1986, when the Challenger ship was lost, were serious flaws in the design itself.
The Space Shuttle project, which in the early 1980s was considered a real breakthrough in space, turned out to be many times more expensive than planned. An even more serious problem was the accident rate of the "space shuttles", which led to thousands of serious failures of various systems in flight and two disasters that resulted in the death of 14 people. In addition, the resource of the ships during operation turned out to be an order of magnitude lower than the calculated one.
In January 2004 US President George Bush announced a radical change in the goals of American manned flights. America intended to return to the Moon and make a manned flight to Mars. NASA was given the following task: to fulfill its obligations for the construction of the ISS in the minimum necessary volume, to complete work with the ISS by 2015, to complete the operation of the Space Shuttle in 2010, to create a new manned space system capable of flying to the Moon, and in the future to Mars.
The new ambitious program was named "Constellation". In her favor, the NASA budget was revised - for the sake of Constellation, funding for other programs was cut.
New US President Barack Obama, who came to power in the midst of the global economic crisis, announced a cut in funding for NASA and, in particular, the Constellation program, part of which was the creation of a new manned spacecraft Orion.
NASA's original plans called for Orion's first unmanned test flight in 2013, its first manned flight in 2014, and a mission to the Moon in 2019. By 2011, Orion had changed its name to MPCV (Multi-Purpose Manned Vehicle), the first unmanned flight was postponed to 2014, and manned to 2017.
In March 2014, it was announced that the first unmanned test flight could take place no earlier than December 2014. At the same time, we are talking about the launch of a ship with a Delta 4 launch vehicle, while the development of a heavier launch vehicle, originally intended for the project, continues. As for the first manned flight of the new ship, it is scheduled for 2021.
It should be noted that the signing of a contract between NASA and the Lockheed Martin concern for the development, construction and testing of this ship took place eight years ago - in August 2006.
Bipolar planetary nebula NGC 6302. This cluster has one of the most complex structures among known nebulae. The central star of the nebula was discovered only in 2009, although the object itself was known as early as 1906.
NASA "catches a private trader"
When it became clear that the dates for the appearance of a new manned spacecraft were being postponed, NASA began to delay the completion of the Space Shuttle program. But on July 21, 2011, along with the safe landing of the Atlantis spacecraft, the program was nevertheless completed.
From that moment to this day, the delivery of American astronauts to the ISS is carried out exclusively by Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
For each seat in the Soyuz, NASA pays Russia $70 million. Initially, it was assumed that the need for this would disappear by 2016, along with the advent of a new manned spacecraft. However, at the beginning of 2013 Barack Obama signed a law allowing NASA to make such payments until 2020. The decision was forced - the United States did not have a new manned spacecraft.
To still overcome the crisis, NASA has allocated tens of millions of dollars to private firms to promote several manned spacecraft projects at once.
Among the NASA grantees are the already mentioned Boeing and Sierra Nevada, which received $18 and $20 million respectively for their projects.
Musk, I know you!
SpaceX also receives money from NASA, but for the implementation of the project to create a cargo ship. It is this project that has moved further than others - the cargo ship "Dragon" has not only been tested, but also made three successful commercial flights to the ISS. According to the contract, "Dragon" must carry out 12 flights to the ISS with cargo, for which SpaceX will receive $ 1.6 billion from NASA.
SpaceX owner Elon Musk has long and actively criticized "space dependence on Russia", promoting his project as an alternative to it.
In May 2014, against the backdrop of aggravated Russian-American relations, Musk introduced a manned version of the "Dragon" - "Dragon V2". The seven-seater ship, according to Musk, could make its first unmanned flight in 2015, and with a crew in 2016.
NASA, however, believes that manned flight on the new spacecraft will become possible no earlier than 2017-2018.
The owner of SpaceX promises the United States not only independence from Russia, but also cheap flights - $ 20 million for an astronaut instead of $ 70 million for a seat in the Soyuz.
Inside NASA, however, experts are careful not to make big statements. As they say, not everything is so simple.
To date, the "Dragon" has made three successful cargo flights, but they were not without criticism. In addition, the launches were repeatedly postponed due to technical problems.
But risking cargo and risking the lives of astronauts are not the same thing. SpaceX needs to prove the absolute reliability and safety of its ship. The history of world cosmonautics teaches that it is simply unrealistic to do this within the time frame called by Elon Musk.
Musk himself, by forcing a manned project, risks, but not in the same way that NASA risks. The disaster of 2003 is still in the memory of Americans, and a new failure could put an end to the reputation of the entire agency.
First Americans in space
In this chapter, I want to talk not only about the flights of the Mercury ships that took place in 1961-1963, but also about those who piloted these ships.
It will be more logical if I start with a story about the pilots.
The first group of astronauts was formed in the USA in 1959. It happened earlier than in the Soviet Union. The requirements for candidates were strict: excellent health, age under 40, height up to 180 centimeters, higher education, qualifications as a jet pilot and at least 1,500 flight hours. Applicants were also required to have a test pilot school graduate diploma. The American requirements for anthropometric data were based on the dimensions of the spacecraft cabin. Soviet doctors did the same. The Vostok descent vehicle was slightly smaller than the Mercury cabin (although in general the Soviet ship was larger and heavier than the American one), so our doctors were planning to 160 cm (with a margin, they could have been 170 cm), and the Americans 180 cm.
Of the 508 military test pilots who at that time were in the US Armed Forces, 110 met these requirements. 68 were invited for an interview in Washington. Of these, 36 pilots were selected and offered to undergo a medical examination. Consent to this procedure was given by 32 pilots. Of these, seven people were chosen, who on April 9, 1959 were presented to the press as future astronauts.
This group, now known as Mercury 7, included John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Malcolm Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Donald Slayton, Alan Shepard, and Walter Schirra.
All of them had considerable flying experience, almost all of them participated in hostilities.
John Herschel Glenn was the oldest in the seven astronauts. He was born July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio. In 1943 he graduated from the flight school of the Naval Aviation Training Center in Texas, after which he took part in the Pacific War. Behind him 59 sorties.
After the end of World War II, he continued to serve in the aviation units of the fleet and until December 1950 he trained young pilots at a base in Texas. Then there was Korea, where Glenn flew the F-86. His track record includes 90 sorties during the Korean War and three victories over MiGs.
In 1954 he graduated from the test pilot school in Maryland and took up test work. In 1957, he made a non-stop transcontinental flight from Los Angeles to New York on the F-8U Crusader supersonic aircraft, setting a flight speed record.
Virgil Ivan Grissom was born April 3, 1926 in Mitchell, Indiana. Since 1944 - in the ranks of the US Air Force. In 1950 he graduated from Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanics.
Member of the Korean War 1950-1953. Made about 100 sorties.
After the end of the Korean War, he served as an instructor pilot at Bryan Air Force Base, Texas. In 1953 he graduated from the Air Force Institute of Technology, and in 1956 from the test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base.
By the time Grissom was enrolled in the astronaut corps, he had 4,600 flight hours, including 3,500 hours on jet aircraft.
Malcolm Scott Carpenter was born on May 1, 1925 in Bolder, Colorado. He graduated from the University of Colorado in 1949 with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering. Received flight training in Pensacola, Florida and Corpus Christi, Texas. Participated in the war with Korea in 1950-1953, flew patrol aircraft over the waters of the Yellow Sea. After graduating from the Patuxent River Test Pilot School, Maryland in 1954, he worked in the Electronic Systems Department of the US Navy Aviation Test Center. He later trained at the Naval Air Intelligence School in Washington DC.
Leroy Gordon Cooper was born March 6, 1927 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He began flying on his own at the age of 17 on his father's plane. He served in the army, then in the navy, then in aviation. In 1945 he joined the Marine Corps. Later he began studying at the Naval Academy, but dropped out and entered the University of Hawaii, graduating in 1949. While in the army, he attended evening courses at the University of Maryland for four years. In 1956 he graduated from the Air Force Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering. In 1957 he graduated from test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base and served there as a test pilot and engineer.
Donald Kent Slayton was born March 1, 1926 in Sparta, Wisconsin. In the US Air Force since 1942. Member of the Second World War, made 56 sorties as a B-29 bomber pilot. In the spring of 1945, together with his squadron, he arrived on the island of Okinawa and made seven sorties to Japan.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1949, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and worked for the Boeing Company. In 1951 he was again called up for military service. He served at air bases in Germany. After returning to the United States, in 1956, he graduated from test pilot school and served at Edwards Air Force Base.
Alan Bartlett Shepard was born November 18, 1923 in East Derry, New Hampshire. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1944, he took part in US military operations in the Pacific. In 1950-1953 and 1955-1957 he worked at the US Navy test pilot school, participated in the testing of the F-3H Demon, F-8U Crusader, F-4D Skyray and F-11F Tigercat fighters. In 1958 he graduated from the Naval War College. Attended civilian flight school.
Group "Mercury-7"
Walter Marty Schirra was born March 12, 1923 in Hackensack, New Jersey, into a family of pilots - both his father and mother were pilots. In 1940-1941 he studied at the Mechanical Engineering College in Newark, New Jersey. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1945, he served in the aviation units of the fleet. Member of the Korean War 1950-1953. He also graduated from the Naval Aviation Officer School at the University of Southern California and the Test Pilot School at the Naval Aviation Test Center at Patuxent River.
These seven were to pilot the Mercury and conquer space.
In total, within the framework of the Mercury program, six flights were carried out: two suborbital and four orbital. It was originally planned that there would be more of them. But then it became clear that these missions could not bring anything new to the treasury of knowledge. Well, as we know, the Americans know how to save money, so it was decided to limit ourselves to two "jumps" and four trips into orbit. Moreover, each flight that took place was accompanied by such a heap of problems that it was not worth playing with death once again.
The first manned flight under the Mercury program took place on May 5, 1961. This happened a year later than previously planned, and 23 days after Yuri Gagarin opened the way to space for mankind. In a sense, the Americans were already following the well-worn path, although this path was different from the one that the designers in the USSR took.
In the Mercury program, the first manned flight had the designation MR-3 (Mercury-Redstone-3) and its own name "Freedom-7" (Freedom - Freedom). Alan Shepard was the first American to touch space. When he took his place in the cabin of the ship, all of America, as in December 1957 (see Chapter 14), clung to radios and televisions. But we had to wait more than two hours: first, clouds came running up, threatening to disrupt filming, then failures in one of the systems were revealed. And yet the pre-launch preparations were brought to an end.
The launch was given at 9 hours 34 minutes 13 seconds local time. At the same moment, classes in schools and work in institutions were stopped, and traffic stopped. Nearly 70 million Americans watched and listened to the live coverage from Cape Canaveral.
Shepard's flight was very short - 15 minutes 22 seconds from launch to splashdown. The first 142 seconds was the withdrawal. The engine cut-off occurred half a second earlier than planned at an altitude of 59.7 kilometers. Shortly thereafter, the ship separated from the carrier, but continued to gain altitude.
And 3 minutes and 10 seconds after leaving the launch pad, the astronaut turned on the manual control mode and began to control the spacecraft. This fact has already been forgotten, but this was done for the first time in the world. "Mercury", like the Soviet "Vostok", could fly completely automatically, but in the USA they decided already during the first mission to entrust the main operations to the pilot. First, Shepard lowered the bow of the ship, then raised it a little, then successively deflected it to the right and left.
After 5 minutes 11 seconds, the ship reached the apogee of the trajectory - a height of 187.4 kilometers. After that, the ship's braking mode was turned on. The astronaut also performed this operation manually. Manually, he also maintained the orientation of the apparatus while braking lasted. All this could not have been done, the ship would have sat down anyway, but the maneuver was practiced with an eye on a future orbital flight.
The descent of the capsule proceeded as it was calculated, without deviations from the regular regime and without surprises that threatened to turn into troubles. At an altitude of 3.2 kilometers, a parachute was opened, under the dome of which the capsule descended to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, 130 kilometers northeast of Grand Bahama Island. Four minutes after splashdown, a rescue helicopter hovered over the capsule.
And six minutes later, the capsule with the astronaut was delivered aboard the military vessel "Lake Champlain".
The second flight was made by Virgil Grissom on July 21 of the same year on a ship named the Liberty Bell 7 (Liberty Bell - Liberty Bell). A small note. All proper names of the ships of the "Mercury" series had the digital index "7". Thus, it was emphasized that members of the Mercury-7 group make flights on them.
The second flight was also a "jump into space". Structurally, Grissom's ship was almost an exact copy of Shepard's. It was distinguished by the presence of a large window in the shape of a trapezoid, while Shepard used only a periscope and two side round 25-centimeter windows. And the access hatch on the pyrobolts was much lighter, which made it easy to open it both from the inside and outside.
The launch of the Liberty Bell-7 went without problems. The flight itself went just as smoothly. Grissom's flight mission was not as stressful as Shepard's: he had to spend less time on control of the ship, but more time to devote to observations of the earth's surface.
Grissom's problems arose at the very last moment, when the capsule had already landed on the water surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The flight from the estimated splashdown point was 15 kilometers, so the rescue helicopter took a little longer to fly up to the ship and hook it with a cable. There was nothing wrong with that, if, 10 minutes after splashdown, the pyrobolt charges had not suddenly worked, shooting off the side hatch. Water immediately began to flow into the capsule.
Grissom was saved by the fact that he had an excellent reaction of the test pilot and had time to prepare for the exit from the capsule. Throwing off his helmet, the astronaut literally flew into the ocean. One of the rescue helicopters managed to pick up the sinking capsule with a cable and stepped aside, dragging it through the water. Two other rotorcraft, interfering with each other, tried to save the astronaut. This was not done right away. The "swim" lasted almost 4 minutes and the pilot was picked up from the water just a second before he went to the bottom. But the capsule could not be saved. The pilot of the helicopter, on the cable of which the device “dangled”, discovered a drop in oil pressure and overheating of the engine, so he was forced to get rid of the load.
Monument at Cape Canaveral dedicated to the group "Mercury-7"
For exactly 38 years, the Liberty Bell-7 capsule rested at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 4890 meters. Only on the night of July 19-20, 1999, it was able to be raised to the surface as a result of an expedition organized by the Discovery TV channel. Now it can be seen in the exposition of the Kansas Museum of Space in Hutchinson.
The first "real" space flight took place on February 20, 1962. John Glenn became the pilot of the Friendship-7 (Friendship) spacecraft and, accordingly, the first American to orbit an artificial satellite of the Earth.
In fact, this flight was also planned as a suborbital one. But the vain Glenn insisted that suborbital launches be stopped, and instead they began to prepare an orbital launch. He was appointed on December 28, 1961.
But it failed to take off the first time. At first, they did not have time to prepare the rocket for launch in time, then there were delays either due to weather conditions or due to technical problems. During these days, Glenn managed to visit both at home and at the Langley Research Center, and even visited President Kennedy at the White House. In terms of the number of launch delays, Glenn's flight is among the leaders - it was postponed 10 times.
And then came the long-awaited day of launch. Early in the morning, the astronaut took his place in the ship, and at 9 o'clock local time, a nationwide television broadcast from the cosmodrome began. After 47 minutes, the American "Let's go!" sounded on the air. – “We are on the way!”
The launch went well. Favorably developed events on the first orbit around the Earth. But then, one after another, problems began to arise. First, the automatic orientation system failed, and the astronaut had to manually orient the spacecraft almost until the end of the flight.
At the 96th minute of the flight, a communication session with President Kennedy broke down, and right there, in the Mission Control Center, telemetry received information that the inflatable landing shock absorber and heat shield were not fixed. And this meant that after braking, the screen would fall off the ship and it would burn up in the earth's atmosphere. Unless, of course, the sensor is lying.
By the beginning of the third orbit, the fuel supply in the manual attitude control system had dropped to 60%, and the astronaut was advised to put the spacecraft into a drift. But the Friendship-7 flew in a strange way: the instruments showed zero deviation, and the pilot clearly saw that it reached 40-50 degrees. I had to work it out manually.
Four hours after the launch, the ship began to land. In order not to lose the heat shield, the brake propulsion system was not shot off, and Glenn had to manually stabilize the Friendship 7.
Fortunately, everything ended well. The splashdown occurred 267 kilometers east of Grand Turk Island. After 21 minutes, the capsule with the astronaut was already aboard the destroyer Noah. Glenn's flight lasted 4 hours 55 minutes 23 seconds.
The second orbital flight was to be made in April 1962 by Donald Slayton. His ship has already been given a name - "Delta-7". But then the unexpected happened. During the passage of the next medical examination, Slayton was found to have heart failure, and he was removed from the flight. A place in the cockpit of the next "Mercury" was given to Malcolm Carpenter, and the ship was renamed "Aurora-7". The launch was scheduled for May 24, 1962. A rare case during the first manned flights in the United States - the launch took place on the first attempt.
Carpenter's flight turned out to be like two drops of water similar to Glenn's flight. Although there were far fewer technical problems, the planned scientific experiments were only partially completed. True, they managed to launch the world's first sub-satellite - 98 minutes after the launch, the astronaut performed a drop from the antenna compartment of an inflatable target - a Mylar sphere with a diameter of 76 centimeters.
Minor troubles happened during the landing. When deorbiting, the pilot did not notice that the manual stabilization control mode was on and quickly used up fuel. As a result, the flight of the calculated landing point amounted to almost 400 kilometers. After splashing down, Carpenter had to wait almost two hours for rescuers.
In the same 1962, another manned flight took place under the Mercury program. Walter Schirra was entrusted to execute it. The ship, called "Sigma-7", was adapted for a six-orbit flight in near-Earth orbit. Some changes have been made to the design of the device compared to the previous one. To avoid excessive fuel consumption for orientation, they introduced a toggle switch to turn off the engines in the electric-remote control mode, removed the thermal insulation from the braking propulsion system and installed two five-meter short-wave antennas there to improve communication. Made a number of other improvements.
Climbing into the cabin of the ship early in the morning of October 3, Walter Schirra found a sandwich in the glove compartment, and near the steering wheel - the ignition key. It was joked by members of the starting team. The launch took place with a 15-minute delay due to a radar malfunction in the Canary Islands. Having risen above the launch pad, the carrier suddenly began to turn around, almost reached the emergency angle, but then leveled off. The rocket engine worked 10 seconds longer than the estimated time, as a result, the ship ended up in orbit with an altitude greater than that of the previous two Mercurys.
The main task of the pilot in this flight was to stretch the small - only 27 kilograms - fuel of the attitude control system and not get into the difficult situation in which Carpenter found himself. The astronaut coped with this task, but difficulties arose in another way. Even on the first orbit, Schirra felt that it became hot in the spacesuit - the temperature had risen to 32 degrees. As it turned out later, the cause was dried silicone grease. Fearing that when the regulator was turned several notches, the heat exchanger would immediately freeze, the astronaut removed the heating by half a notch. While he was doing this, on Earth they were deciding whether to land the ship after one orbit? But by the time the decision was made, the temperature stopped rising and the flight continued.
As Sigma 7 was on its fourth orbit over California, a two-minute segment of the conversation between Schirra and John Glenn, who was in Mission Control, was broadcast live for the first time.
The ship splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 507 kilometers northeast of Midway Island. For a full 30 seconds, the capsule went under water, but then surfaced and leveled off. As Schirra himself later recalled, in those moments he felt very uncomfortable. But everything ended well.
The last manned flight under the Mercury program took place in May 1963. By that time, work was already in full swing on the project of the new Gemini spacecraft (Gemini - Gemini), so NASA decided that it was time to finish with risky solo flights. But it was still decided to carry out a daily flight. It was entrusted to Gordon Cooper to carry it out.
The ship "Faith-7" (Faith - Faith) was significantly different from its counterparts. The upgrades carried out to a greater extent allow calling it a spaceship than the previous devices of the series. Experts counted 183 changes made to the design. Of these, 19 are rated as significant.
The third fuel tank was included in the orientation system, pouring another 4.5 kilograms of fuel into it. Doubled the capacity of two of the six on-board batteries. They installed a low-frequency television device to monitor the pilot's condition and halved the feed rate of the on-board tape recorder. Increased oxygen supply. And so on. So that the mass of the capsule does not exceed the capabilities of the rocket, the periscope was removed from it, which made it possible to save 34.5 kilograms, part of the orientation equipment and spare transmitters.
The main task of the Feit-7 mission was to study the impact of long-term space flight factors on the human body and the astronaut's ability to control the spacecraft.
Of course, the flight was long in those days. Today, when expeditions into orbit last for half a year, this can be taken with a smile. But you had to start somewhere.
Launch of the Atlas launch vehicle
According to the plans, Cooper's flight was to begin on May 14. The astronaut had already taken his place in the cockpit, but then one problem after another began to arise. First, the radar in Bermuda failed. Then, for more than two hours, they could not start the diesel engine and take the service tower away from the rocket. When they coped with this problem, the Bermudas again “distinguished themselves”: the data converter failed. After four hours of torment, the launch was postponed for a day.
Gordon Cooper's reaction to what was happening was interesting. Convinced that he would not fly away at the estimated time, he decided to take a nap. and fell asleep right in the ship preparing for the launch. And getting out of the capsule, he joked that the training was very realistic and went to fish.
The next day, the launch took place with only a 4-minute delay due to a malfunction in the ground equipment. But Cooper and this time had a little nap.
Feith-7's launch into Earth orbit was uneventful. For the first two turns, the pilot had to deal with only minor "dirty things" of the temperature controller. Otherwise, everything was fine, so the astronaut was given the command to proceed with the planned experiments. 11 of them were included in the flight task.
At the beginning of the third orbit, Cooper fired a target sub-satellite from the brake propulsion unit - a ball with a diameter of 148 millimeters and a mass of about 4.5 kilograms with two xenon flash lamps. The astronaut tried for a long time to see a new artificial object, which he himself created, but was able to do it only on the fourth orbit, when the ball moved away from the ship by 15 kilometers.
This sub-satellite was not the only one. It was assumed that the pilot would also launch an inflatable one and a half meter sphere and, by the tension of the 30-meter cable, determine the atmospheric resistance at altitudes from 160 to 260 kilometers. But it was not possible to do this - the pyro charge of the container lid did not work.
The further flight program included observations and photography of the earth's surface, which Cooper did brilliantly. His photographs were recognized as the best taken by that time from space heights. They managed to see many details, up to the smoke of a steam locomotive in Africa.
From the 10th to the 13th orbit, the ship lay in a drift, and the astronaut slept. His sleep was intermittent: either his hands floating in weightlessness interfered, then he had to catch a camera that had flown away, then he was disturbed by the rise in temperature inside the spacesuit.
On the morning of the second day, the pilot received congratulatory telegrams from the President of El Salvador and the Minister of Supply of Australia, and sent greetings to the heads of African states gathered in Addis Ababa. As we can see, not only Soviet cosmonauts were engaged in such things.
Until the nineteenth orbit, the flight was normal, and then problems began that almost cost Cooper his life. Suddenly, the overload indicator lights up. And although it showed only 0.05 units, the attitude control system began to work out the signal, as if the descent in the earth's atmosphere had already begun. At the same time, the pilot clearly saw that all objects continued to be in weightlessness. Probably the reason for everything was the liquid that the astronaut spilled when he tried to cook his own food. She got on the console, causing the sensor to give incorrect information.
But all this was still half the trouble. The trouble came a little later, when Cooper had already received from the Earth all the necessary instructions for the descent. First, the content of carbon dioxide in the ship's atmosphere increased, and then two short circuits occurred at once in the automatic orientation power supply network. And if so, then Cooper had to do all the other operations manually. According to the stars and lights of the night Shanghai, he turned the ship to descend from orbit and, on command from the Earth, turned on the brake propulsion system. Manually "held" the ship while the engines were running. Manually shot the brake installation. Manually orientated for entry into the atmosphere. The parachute worked normally and soon the Faith-7 splashed down safely on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Experts then analyzed Cooper's actions and admitted that if there had not been a pilot on board the ship, the flight would have ended in disaster.
This completed the first phase of the American manned program, and preparations began for new flights under other programs.
And now I will take this opportunity to tell you about how the fate of the first American astronauts developed after the completion of Mercury.
Six of the seven members of the Mercury-7 group received their portion of "star fame" back in 1961-1963, but they continued to prepare for new space flights in the future. True, not everyone succeeded in doing this.
John Glenn was a NASA astronaut for some time, but he was well aware that he was unlikely to make a second flight in the foreseeable future. In US government circles, they decided not to risk the life of the first American to make an orbital space flight, and unofficially imposed a ban on his participation in new expeditions to orbit. In 1964, Glenn retired and entered politics. His career in the new field was more than successful: in 1974 he was elected a senator from Ohio, and in 1984 he ran, albeit unsuccessfully, for the presidency of the United States.
And yet Glenn managed to visit space for the second time. In the mid-1990s, he proposed to the NASA leadership to send him back into orbit. Glenn wanted to prove that even at that age (and by this time he was over 70), it was possible to live and work in space. In 1998, such a flight took place. Glenn is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest person to ever leave Earth.
Glenn is currently retired but is still fit and healthy. He does not dream of new flights into space, but he follows with interest everything that happens in this area.
The second time was able to visit space and Virgil Grissom. After the end of the Mercury program, he was transferred to training for flights under the Gemini program. On March 23, 1965, Grissom flew with John Young on the Gemini 3 spacecraft. This was the first manned flight on the new ship. It lasted 4 hours 53 minutes and was not easy. But, thanks to the high training of the crew members, primarily Grissom, the mission ended successfully.
Then in the biography of Grissom there was the Apollo program. He was appointed to command the first ship, which was supposed to launch into space in February 1967. Many believed that he would be trusted to be the first Americans to set foot on the lunar surface. But these plans were not destined to come true. On January 27, 1967, Virgil Grissom died during a ground test of the ship. More about this tragedy will be discussed in the chapter "Fire at Cape Canaveral".
Elements of the spacesuit of astronauts from the "Mercury"
Alan Shepard, the first American to travel to outer space, took an active part in the Apollo program and in February 1971 set foot on the surface of our natural satellite. Until 1974, he remained the commander of the American astronauts. Then he left NASA and worked in American industry. After his retirement, he headed the Mercury-7 Foundation, a non-profit organization that supported students studying space sciences at US colleges. Died July 21, 1998.
Gordon Cooper left the NASA astronaut squad in 1970, having managed to visit orbit once more - in August 1965, he spent 8 days in space with Richard Gordon. Participated in the Apollo program. After his retirement, he worked in the private sector of American industry. Died October 4, 2004.
Walter Schirra became the most "flying" of the first seven. In December 1965, he flew on the Gemini 6, and in October 1968 he commanded the first manned Apollo. Retired since 1969. He headed the Advisory Bureau for Environmental Protection. Then he headed the Technology Perches division of the Jones-Manville company. Died May 3, 2007.
Malcolm Carpenter was the only one of the Mercury pilots who was not destined to fly into orbit again. He worked for NASA for several more years. He participated in the design and development of the lunar cabin for Apollo, acted as assistant director of the Center for Manned Flight in Houston, led a group of aquanauts at the Sealab-2 underwater marine laboratory. Spent 30 days at a depth of about 75 meters. During this experiment, he negotiated with Gordon Cooper, who flew on the Gemini 5 spacecraft. After a car accident in 1969, he left the astronaut corps and was engaged in private business. Currently also retired.
But Donald Slayton has been waiting for his finest hour for almost 15 years. He was scheduled to make a second orbital flight in May 1962, but was withdrawn from training due to minor heart problems that were identified during the next medical examination. Soon he was appointed head of the Astronaut Division, where he had to be responsible for all affairs in the NASA astronaut corps. Among other things, he had to manage the selection and formation of crews. It was a fairly high position in the structure of the aerospace department, but Slayton did not leave his dream of flying into space. And he got his way. By strict observance of the regime, he got rid of heart problems and was again included in the astronaut corps. In 1973, he was appointed to the crew of the Apollo, which was to fly as part of the Soviet-American experiment ASTP (Experimental Flight Apollo - Soyuz). This flight took place in July 1975. In the future, Slayton participated in the development of reusable spacecraft "Space Shuttle". In 1982, he left NASA and worked in the private sector of American industry. Died June 13, 1993. From the book How We Train Dogs author Zapashny Askold
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