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Post by Bill Thompson on Mar 10, 2006 15:47:11 GMT -4
There were missions that the Russians conducted where they tested if living tissue could survive the journey from Earth to The Moon and back. These were done years before Apollo. Now that the HB's seem to be saying that the only reason for disbelieving that we went to the moon is because of the radiation belts, knowledge of (what I think were called) the Zond Missions would give them pause.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Mar 10, 2006 18:07:30 GMT -4
You might think so, but one HB who had the Zond missions brought up in arguments against him simply argued that either the organsms concerned had higher radiation tolerance than man, or else the Russians swapped the dead, radiation-fried cargo of the Zond capsules for some specimens in better health before unveiling them to the world! Classic HB logic: create an argument where every possible scenario points to your conclusion.
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Post by voyager3 on Mar 11, 2006 15:36:27 GMT -4
Changing subject slightly, Weren't the Zonds intended to be unmanned test flights for the Soviet manned lunar programme? I think I saw somewhere before that the Soviet's were considering sending a cosmonaut on a circumlunar flight before Apollo 8 using a Zond launched by a Proton rocket. How close were the Soviets to carrying out such a mission?
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Post by PhantomWolf on Mar 11, 2006 21:33:10 GMT -4
Very close. The actual lunar capsule was the LOK, it was a modified Soyuz, the Zonds are quite different, and I believe not man rated. They had to launch them with the N-1 rocket, and had they achieved it, they would likely have managed a manned circumlunar flight t least prior to Apollo 11. Unfortunately for them, the N-1 was a massive failure, and with the inability to fix the problem, their lunar program was sunk.
There is speculation that after the N-1 ws nt ready for launch prior to Apollo 8, their main attempt come just before Apollo 11. They were planning to launch the LOK on the N-1, then launch a Soyuz with a three man crew to meet the LOK. Two of the crew would then spacewalk to the LOK, and head about the moon watching the landing of the Luna 15 smple return probe and at least deminising the US's achievement with Apollo 11. With the failure of both the N-1 and then Luna 15 the whole thing sort of fell apart on them.
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Post by gwiz on Mar 13, 2006 4:32:35 GMT -4
Very close. The actual lunar capsule was the LOK, it was a modified Soyuz, the Zonds are quite different, and I believe not man rated. They had to launch them with the N-1 rocket, and had they achieved it, they would likely have managed a manned circumlunar flight t least prior to Apollo 11. Unfortunately for them, the N-1 was a massive failure, and with the inability to fix the problem, their lunar program was sunk. Not quite right, Zond was intended to be a manned vehicle, basically a Soyuz without the large orbital module that gives the crew more space to work in. This would not have been a problem as only a one-man crew was planned. The launch vehicle was the Proton, but at the time this was not much more reliable than the N-1. Prior to Apollo 8, only three had got beyond low earth orbit. The first of these (Zond 4, Zonds 1-3 were a completly different programme) wasn't launched towards the moon, but was successful apart from a guidance problem that meant it would have landed in the Atlantic Ocean. The Soviets had no means to recover it from there, so blew it up. Zond 5 was the successful circumlunar flight with the biological payload. Zond 6 was a repeat circumlunar mission which had problems. The cabin sprung a leak which lowered the pressure to the extent that a crew would have been killed and the onboard electronics fried itself with arcing. This led to failure of the height sensing radar during re-entry and post-landing jettisoning of the parachutes occuring prior to landing instead. The Soviets didn't mention the Zond 6 crash landing at the time (they published moon photos that they'd recovered frtom the wreckage), so the two apparent successes gave NASA the incentive to change Apollo 8 to a lunar orbital mission. Zonds 7 and 8 were also flown around the moon, qualifying the Zond for manned missions, but the subsequent manned flights were cancelled as looking too much like second best to Apollo. LOK was an enlarged version of the Soyuz which would have performed the role of the Apollo CSM in the Soviet moon landing programme. Because of the N-1 problems, it was never successfully launched.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Mar 15, 2006 5:57:20 GMT -4
so the two apparent successes gave NASA the incentive to change Apollo 8 to a lunar orbital mission.
Wasn't 8 changed to a lunar orbit because the LM wasn't ready for testing?
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Post by gwiz on Mar 15, 2006 6:25:46 GMT -4
You're right, the first manned LM was delayed, so they decided to fly the first manned Saturn 5 mission without it. This would have been the D mission, which was eventually flown on the fourth Saturn 5 as Apollo 9. The original crew for the D mission slipped to Apollo 9, whiles the crew for the E mission (high apogee Earth orbit with LM) were moved up to the third Saturn 5 for the new C' mission which flew as Apollo 8 (C was Apollo 7, E was eventually cancelled as Apollo 9 was such a success).
However, the details of the C' mission were not fixed until later. Options were a high apogee orbit as originally planned for E, a lunar swing-by or lunar orbit. After the success of Apollo 7 and Zond 5, the lunar orbit option was selected.
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