Hammer & Sickle on the Moon first

[Princz]

The 1966 Apollo 1 deaths of the three US astronauts exposed many flaws in the program. What if the deaths had occurred in one of the orbital tests, or the fixing of the flaws had caused such a delay that it enabled the Soviets to get their men on the Moon first in 1971? The Soviet manned lunar mission was well developed and they could have done it. At that time they were not technologically markedly behind the Americans, and in some
areas, like solid rocket motors and metallurgy, were ahead.
www.geocities.com/HotSprings/2839/huntfism.mpg

What would have been the result on the American psyche if at all?
As bad as Sputnik 1957 and Gagarin 1961? How would it have affected Brezhnev, Soviet thinking and Cold War policy, arrogance, aggressiveness, bombasity etc, if at all?

[DStahl]

Interesting speculation...I think a Soviet moon landing would have energized the US space program even further, just as Sputnik and the USSR's early triumphs energized it initially.

But I think that the overall incompetence and inefficiency of the Soviet political-economic system would still have doomed the USSR to eventual collapse. Even if they had won the Moon race they would still had to cope with the well-known problems back on Earth.

[Humphrey]

So if they landed on the moon first would we try to be the first on mars sooner than currently?

[Colt]

I don't think that they could have gotten to the Moon before the Americans.. Even if they had the technology. Just a little conspiracy to start your day. :wink:

I agree that it probably would have galvanized the American space program even further. That or start WWIII. -Colt

[russ_watters]

The 1966 Apollo 1 deaths of the three US astronauts exposed many flaws in the program. What if the deaths had occurred in one of the orbital tests, or the fixing of the flaws had caused such a delay that it enabled the Soviets to get their men on the Moon first in 1971? All new technology has bugs. The entire design approach of the Soviet moon shot was however fatally flawed. It was a single piece landing vehicle as opposed to the 3 piece vehicle of the US and required a rocket many times the size of the Saturn V to get it into space. I quite simply would not have worked. I think I even read they were glad when it came time to scrap the program rather than watch it fail.

As the movie quote goes: "Our Germans are better than their Germans."

And it was true.

[Tuckerfan]

So if they landed on the moon first would we try to be the first on mars sooner than currently?One would hope so. One of the things that helped the US win the Cold War was that the rest of the world saw that we were the only nation to reach another world.

[Donnie B.]

So if they landed on the moon first would we try to be the first on mars sooner than currently?One would hope so. One of the things that helped the US win the Cold War was that the rest of the world saw that we were the only nation to reach another world.
With due respect, Tuckerfan, I'd classify this as Bad Politics. The lunar landings were a great achievement, but it's hard to argue they had any significant impact on the Cold War. It was, after all, 20 years from Apollo 11 to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

There were so many other aspects to the geopolitical saga (including internal forces inside the Soviet Union) that the Space Race seems like something of a sideshow. At best, it caused some minor attitudinal changes in a few borderline client states, but I doubt you could name a single country that realigned because of Apollo. Certainly no major alliances shifted. So all that's left is public perceptions of the two sides, which may have been impacted somewhat -- but whether that made any difference in the Cold War is highly debatable.

[Donnie B.]

The entire design approach of the Soviet moon shot was however fatally flawed. It was a single piece landing vehicle as opposed to the 3 piece vehicle of the US and required a rocket many times the size of the Saturn V to get it into space. I quite simply would not have worked. I think I even read they were glad when it came time to scrap the program rather than watch it fail.

As the movie quote goes: "Our Germans are better than their Germans."

And it was true.
Well, actually, the N-1 was not significantly different in size from the Saturn V. The main difference was that Soviet rocket engine technology was by that time lagging behind that of the US. They had nothing like the F-1 engine, so they had to design the N-1 with a plethora of smaller engines - 30 or so in the first stage alone. This design was fatally flawed indeed (no N-1 ever flew successfully, whereas every Saturn ever launched fulfilled its mission) but not because of their lunar mission profile. They just didn't have the horses.

The Soviet lunar mission was not a one-piece spacecraft, by the way. They had a single-stage, single-man lander not too different from the LM. So they picked LOR as the optimal mission profile, just as the US did.

I would agree that the US got the cream of the German rocket engineers, but I don't really know whether they were directly involved in the F-1 engine design. They were concentrated in Huntsville doing the overall booster designs, but some specialists may have gone to Rocketdyne to work on engines. Anyone know the details?

[dgruss23]

Princz wrote: What would have been the result on the American psyche if at all?
As bad as Sputnik 1957 and Gagarin 1961? How would it have affected Brezhnev, Soviet thinking and Cold War policy, arrogance, aggressiveness, bombasity etc, if at all?

Would we just have given up as the Soviets did? We gathered a lot of lunar samples and set up other scientific equipment that is still in use today.

I have a book I picked up in a second hand bookstore that is a paperback copy of a Sir James Jeans book on physical science (sorry can't remember the name). The reprint date is 1958 (so it was printed after Sputnik) and on the front of it the publishers printed a little note that was meant to look like a reminder note pinned up on a bulletin board. The note said: "Any Russian schoolboy could understand this book, can you?"

Obviously that note was part of the push for science that happened after Sputnik. I'm inclined to think that if the Soviet Union had beaten the United States to the Moon that we still would've gone there to show that we can do it do and probably to show that we can do it better. The driving force obviously was national pride, but I think there was an issue about national security (having the best technology available) and a part at least was the science.

My thoughts.

[glen chapman]

Regardless of what the US would have done, the Soviet program would still have ended in failure.

Why the Soviets had so much success in the early days, was due to their head planner. Can't put my finger on his name right now. He was a brilliant team leader, politcal animal, and get the job done kind of guy.

With his death the Soviet space progam collapsed, as much through political backstabbing, as lack of direction. Too many people trying to create positions of power, rather than getting on with the job.

How would the Americans have reacted to being second to the Moon, by being the first to have a base there. That's something the Russians could never have done. The sheer resources needed would have been beyond them.

I agree with another poster though. There would be an American flag on Mars right now - or in a studio in the Nevada desert depending what conspiracy people could cook up :)

Glen

[Peter B]

Why the Soviets had so much success in the early days, was due to their head planner. Can't put my finger on his name right now. He was a brilliant team leader, politcal animal, and get the job done kind of guy.

Glen

Korolev.

[Yul]

[Yul]

There is a good summary of the Soviet Lunar program on astronautix.com

The premise is not to speed up the Soviet effort but to slow down the US Lunar program. I can see a number of possibilities:
- the Nazi rocket scientist do not participate in the US space program. This was actually not very difficult to happen: Von Braun and his team had to travel for some days with military trucks full of blueprints etc. to meet the US Army. Note that if they have been captured by the Red Army, it would not mean automatically the USSR would have a super-dooper space program but this is a different issue. A
Soviet landing might occur in late 70s or even mid 80s.
I can imagine the President Nixon in a very Kennedy-like speech announcing that "this country shall land a man on Mars and safely return him to the Earth by the end of the decade..."

- US gets into much more serious trouble in Vietnam/Angola/etc. This will preoccupy the public intereest, and take away money from manned space flight.
The US space program will more oriented towards utilitarian military applications such as unmanned spy and communication satellites. The Moon race could be
considered by both sides only as a military technology race.
The USSR may have a chance of winning it only as a result of extremely large overspending that might lead to the demise of the communist system - just as happened in the late 80-s in OTL. An interesting story might be that of the last Soviet cosmonaut stranded on the Moon - say, a medical doctor Polyakov - if memory serves my right, he was the one who flew during the Soviet times and landed after the Soviet Union was no more.

- as you mentioned - technical problems early during the space program that will turn the public opinion against the space exploration as a waste of human/etc. resources. I expect the Soviet Lunar landing will cause a pendulum effect - a witch hunt of the guilty "of why we allowed the communists to occupy the Moon" and a
crash program to build a Moon base.

PS: why was Princz banned for starting this thread? Is the BA so right-wing? Is this board beholden to Fox News?

[TriangleMan]

PS: why was Princz banned for starting this thread? Is the BA so right-wing?

I believe Princz was a banned poster formally known as Prince (hehehe, might have to start calling him TPFKAP, The Poster Formally Known As Prince). I think he occasionally pops up in another incarnation, such as Princz, and gets rebanned.