Plausibility of a Successful N1F-L3M and Soviet Lunar Base in the 80s?

iVC

Donor
There is great magnum opus written by Boris Yevseevich Chertok, a prominent Soviet and Russian rocket designer, called 'Of Missiles and Men' or 'Rockets and People'. It's a four-volume book dedicated to soviet space program since 1930's through WW2 till 1990's. He died aged 99 in 2011 and till 2010 he was actually giving a lectures to Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology students.

I was glad to found his works were translated by NASA:
1. Boris Chertok. Rockets and People, Volume 1, 2005
2. Boris Chertok. Rockets and People, Volume 2: Creating a Rocket Industry, 2006
3. Boris Chertok. Rockets and People, Volume 3: Hot Days of the Cold War, 2009
4. Boris Chertok. Rockets and People, Volume 4: The Moon Race, 2011

In his third and fourth books he describes steps taken by soviet government and space academics circles for controlling cutting and closing up the moon race.
 

Archibald

Banned
Pre- Energiya there were two Soviet LH2 engines. There was the small RD-56 by Isayev which was developed into the KVRD. It was to power the Block Sr and was extensively tested by 1974, when work stopped because of Energiya / Buran.The RD-56 was essentially the Soviet RL-10, small, high specific impulse for upper stages.
The RD-56 was resurrected in the late 80's into the KVRD. Not that Proton really needed it: Russia tried to sold to India for the PSLV and GSLV but the U.S State Department blocked the dea (in the name of ICBM proliferation).

And there was a much bigger beast, the RD-54 & RD-57 by Lyulka.. Lyulka is best known for its jet engines which powered generations of Sukhois. Just like Kuznetsov they tried their hand at rocket engines for the Soviet lunar program. The RD-54 had 40 tons of thrust, 6 times more than the RD-56, but it was never completed.

Variants of the N-1 were drawn with RD-54 and RD-56 but the RD-56 was prefered even if it was small thrust only. The bitting irony was that the RD-54 was cancelled as too ambitious, then Buran and Energiya needed far more LH2 advanced engines.
 
I don't think Block Sr hydrolox upper stage would take as long as the (much larger) RD-0120 and (much MUCH larger!) Energia core stage. The hydrolox KVD-1 engine had been in development since the early '60s and was reasonably mature, and Block Sr development was formally kicked off in 1971. I'd guestimate they could have gotten it up and running within 5 years, so by 1976. I'd certainly expect it to be ready before its L3M payload had finished development. So I don't think Block Sr would be the pacing item.

That's right.

OKB-456 Glushko RD-0120 is big hydrolox engine: Thrust 1,517.100 kN, Specific impulse: 455 sec. (analog to SSME)
OKB-2 Isayev RD-56M is much smaller: Thrust 73.58 kN, Specific impulse: 461 s. (analog to RL-10A-3A)
but RD-56M program was under development from 1970 to it cancellation in 1974 as Glushko killed the N1 program.
and here another problem Glushko was major rocket engine producer in USSR with OKB-456.
Glushko was hostile to others soviet engine producer like Isayev OKB-2 or Kuznetsov OKB-276 (N1 engines)
if the N1F-Sr L3M project had go on, Glushko would be enemy of that program. (Together with Chelomei of OKB-52)

The Machinations in 1970s Soviet Space program beat every Shakespeare tragedy...
 

Archibald

Banned
I have to buy Anatoly Zak book. Even Asif Siddiqi didn't found a lot about N-1 related projects. His description of the MKBS is useful, but light. Being Russian certainly helped Zak accessing archives.
Still Siddiqi book has some fascinating details. For example, no less than fifteen Soyuz LOK (lunar Soyuz) had been build by 1974, when the L3 program was cancelled.
Even today, fate of all the soviet lunar spacecrafts build is mostly uncertain. While every single bit of Apollo is secured in museums, there might be a lot of Soviet lunar ships gathering dust here and there - in Moscow, Baikonur, and elsewhere.
 

Archibald

Banned
Also Fan of Dragonball :happyblush (first series in French)

The French dub was silly, particularly with Vegeta. He had a high pitched voice that was quite annoying. And it didn't get better with DBZ Kai.
First time I watched DBZ videos on Youtube, in English, I was surprised by how different Vegeta voice was. I think it was far better - louder and deep, very much like the character. Plus Kakarotto (never translated as such in French, only Goku, which is silly, since Kakarotto is the real - Saiyen - name).

"THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN MATCH THE POWER OF A SAIYEN ELITE WARRIOR LIKE ME. YOU ARE A WORTHLESS PIECE OF TRASH, KAKAROTTO."
 
... So what you're saying, in essence, is that focusing solely on the N series rockets early on, developing two series within that family, the N1 and N2, and combining those two (the N2 "Block A" becoming the N1's "Block B") would avoid the problems that caused engine failures and pogoing on OTL N1, allowing for earlier development?
No. Earlier development, the product of a decision in the early 1960s to go with Korolev's plan for the N pair (and there might possibly even be an N-3, taking the V block of an N-1 (Cyrillic alphabet, V is the third letter) to make something Soyuz-launcher size would logically begin with a focus on developing the N2 first. I'd like to hope in TLs where the Russians do things better are not crazy ASB, but there is no reason here to think they do things a lot better procedurally than they did OTL. But an N2, particularly one not so ambitious as one made from the OTL stretched 95 tonne to LEO N1 Korolev promised later in the 1960s, but derived from a more modest but hence more realistically attainable early decade draft design, is much smaller than an N1, and a much less ambitious push. Mishin did all kinds of kludgy expedients on N1 OTL to get its weight down and its fuel supply up. He replaced metal helium pressurant tanks with plastic ones, he stripped out most of the telemetry(!) I don't know if you think of the N1 Blok A first stage as 24 or 30 engine--I think of it as 24 because the outer ring of that many engines is all that Korolev originally designed in, and the central hexagon of 6 more were not added until pretty late in the 60s--part of Mishin's desperate struggle to get the N1 up to the promised target of LEO and hence translunar capability.

So--if you have more relaxed targets for performance, for a smaller rocket (one basically in the same class as Proton) that only has, I forget which, either 4 or 8 of the engines that ultimately are going to go on the N1 first stage in much larger numbers, and you proceed in documented Soviet fashion to make items with indifferent quality control and hastily throw together a working rocket for testing rather than wait on the outcomes of years of ground testing the engine, I'm thinking that the first couple tests are going to be surefire failures, because we don't even have the engines tested in advanced mode, and they have their own teething and tantrums to go through before we even begin to isolate the unknown unknowns of the stage itself, or put better numbers on the known unknowns. But beyond basic engine reliability American practice would have had down much closer to pat, at the price of delaying installation in the first test article until years of such testing had elapsed already, and the sort of stage related shaking down American practice would be getting to after proving the engines were well known and the Soviets throw into one big exciting test, we at least here have a robust stage design that does not monkey around with basic standards--not yet anyway; they might finally get the N2 to launch, all stages operating OK, we might then find the payload is smaller than estimated. Perhaps then the designers would turn to expedients like plastic helium tanks--hopefully not ripping out the telemetry instruments. Or they might just accept the somewhat lower performance figures, and hope maybe to make up for it later with new editions of the rocket engines (at least 2, perhaps 3, generations of the engines meant for N1 were developed OTL) or some other future trick.

I'm saying that if the N series is go decision happened early in the 60s, and Korolev was immediately given the resources and authorization to get cracking on N2 ASAP, this series of test article N2 rockets might have flown, with the early ones blowing up at some stage or other, way before 1969. Perhaps '66? Maybe '67. By the beginning of 1968 at the latest (I guess--ask a real engineer or professional student of Soviet rocketry if that is fast, slow or right on the dot) the N2 itself is operational.

Nothing avoids the problems that caused the N1 to crash OTL. What it might do is expose those problems so someone could start working on fixing it. The pogo itself is said, to be a question of the installation on the Blok A. That won't be tested until a Blok A for N1 is ready to be tested. But other problems that perhaps fed into the OTL failures might show up much earlier and be solved.

Then the next round is to develop and test the Blok A. Perhaps, if there is no pressing target date for this one to be shaken down by, just maybe they borrow the von braun method of a test tank launch instead of a whole expensive N2 stack on top. At this point the engines should be shaken down already, given they are the same ones used on what is now the Blok B. (In a sense that means that when they take the final step, and mate the modified N2 atop the tested Blok A, the engines on B are a bit different and never flight tested before, because they will have different nozzles for superior vacuum performance. However even given Soviet OTL practices of cursory ground testing, they will have undergone some testing in their current form I think, and anyway the engine as a whole is the same core as the well tested one, just with a different nozzle.

Testing the Blok A is the first time that we take not 4 or 8 (whichever number B was supposed to have) of the first stage engines but 24 of them, mounted in a circle on the bottom of the spherical Blok A oxygen tank. The individual mounting of each Blok B engine on the N2 version would be quite similar to be sure, to a similar, though smaller, spherical oxygen tank. But with 24 instead of at the most 8 engines being fed by a kerosene manifold reaching around the oxygen tank somehow, perhaps we will encounter some kind of resonance phenomena? The stage should be static fired before a flight test, and I think this is one thing the Soviets took a lot of shortcuts on.

But again--the OTL tests were done with 30, not 24, engines, with an additional cluster of 6 in a hexagon in the center bottom of the sphere, and for those to be fed kerosene fuel they'd need either a pipe running through the LOX sphere (could be done, but I don't think it would be; the fuel would be running through a cryogenic volume and would have to be insulated making the pipe through the sphere thicker, and the whole idea violates the integrity of the sphere) or else an even more elaborate and lengthy reacharound pipe system is needed to supply this island of engines with fuel.

And I can't swear to it but I seem to recall all detailed discussion agreed these central added six engines were in fact involved in the anomalies and shutdown orders during at least one of the launches.

The kicker that finally gets me frothing mad about them is that they were installed to only burn for 30 seconds or so!

Getting rid of them will not guarantee other related problems will not need to be fixed. Clearly the KORD control program needed to be much more carefully written and the sensor hardware debugged. Though I seem to recall that on the second attempt, some vibration--IIRC this was in fact a surge following the sudden (but programmed) shutdown of the central engine--hammered the other 24 engines hydraulically through the fuel lines and this caused some of the turbomachinery to shatter, resulting in little bits of one engine being sucked in the fuel lines into the intakes of another one's turbopump. Clearly if stuff like that is happening, there are all sorts of unconsidered issues to be addressed. If this sequence is correct, then of course the KORD program would have no choice but to shut down all the engines anyway. That it was triggered by the shutdown of the central engines says two things--one, the central engines were a pesky pain, but two, the design engineers did not correctly think through the hydraulic consequences of their engine shutdown methods. Suppose a Blok A with 24 engines had passed several launch tests with no launch anomalies but then on the fourth launch, one engine fails suddenly--this does little harm since the manner of failure involves let us say a fuel line that starts to leak and the pressure drops gradually. And then the KORD computer does its job and orders the shutdown of the opposite engine. The boost is far along enough that losing that thrust, being down to 11/12 of nominal, is not a problem. Everything would be fine--but the programmed emergency shutdown of the opposite engine, which recall had nothing wrong with it itself, happens too abruptly, the hydraulic shock knocks out the two engines next to it, KORD shuts the opposites down (the ones flanking the original failed engine) and now we are down six engines, in two patches, 1/4 of the total--now the numbers are worrying, perhaps already past the launch failure red line anyway. Besides, thanks to the wrongly designed shutdown sequence, the cascade continues and I need not go on. The N1 certainly will not!

Actually I suspect N1 Blok A involved some programmed shudown of some of the 24 engines anyway, in lieu of designing them to throttle. Then again I believe they were designed to throttle somewhat because they were not gimbal mounted--yaw and pitch were to be accomplished by varying the thrust on opposite sides?

I'm not sure of that--and I think what I would do is design them to gimbal in one dimension, tangent to the circumference instead, and that would save having to design in any throttle at all. Having both gimbal and throttle would be best of course, and there would be considerable advantage to avoiding even single dimension gimbaling. Details, details! Which might be tweaked to be other than OTL by the way.

So to sum it up--OTL Korlev and Mishin played wait and hurry up, proposing what I think was a decent though ambitious design quite early in the decade, then sat around waiting for a green light they didn't get for years, at which point all of a sudden Korolev was on the spot to promise a single launch for a complete Moon landing and return mission, which demanded he stretch a decent if dusty design to the point of fingers crossed marginality, then rush to get it built ASAP all of a sudden, with a bunch of weight saving expedients thrown in at the last minute, and every component of it gets tested for the first time on the first all up test launch. No surprise that fails!

But if instead Korolev is working on the smaller N2 design, with no last minute rushed in weight saving kludges, everything proceeding methodically, then probably given their reluctance to test separate components for years in the American manner, or pay for all up static tests, they lose several N2, but this happens in 1965 or '66, and eventually they figure out the problems. This filters out most but probably not all the problems that crashed N1 OTL, and in addition shows, via more launch failures, and solves upper stage problems in the V, G, and if tested D bloks as well that the program never got around to OTL. Say this process takes two years, and the shaking down of A blok takes a year and a half before they have complete confidence, and N2 testing starts in 1967 early--this means they have a functional N2, suitable for scheduling even crewed launches on, in early 1969. It is approximately Proton class but they have just missed the boat on beating Apollo 8 to get the first crew near the Moon. And in the summer, the Blok A is still buggy when Apollo 11 launches, so the Soviets must concede the Kennedy unilateral Moon challlenge at every step. But--in early 1971, they have an N1 that is not capable of 95 tons to orbit, but is capable of say 75. And they have a Proton class ker-lox launcher, and might even consider downsizing an N2 to form an "N3" using the V blok of an N1 as the first stage, with G blok as second and D blok as third if needed, for a Soyuz class launcher replacement.

At no point does any OTL known problem or God knows how many further gremlins were lurking in the works get wished away, and I assume above they do not adopt ATL superior QC either. The earlier start, more robust basic design going with more modest goals, and drawn out sequence of first N2 then N1 filter out most problems--in the sense of they expose them via catastrophic failure, and then they are solved--before it comes down to testing the massive Blok A stage.

In your opinion would the N1/N2 combo rocket still remain all kerosene, with multiple launches to LEO for assembling the Lunar Expeditionary Complex?
Yes and no. Yes to kerlox, for the first version of N1 ready in a 1969-72 time horizon, No to LEO assembly. Or at least, Earth Orbit Rendezvous is an option but not necessarily the best way to use multiple launch approaches. Korolev kidded himself into thinking they could do a kerosene engine TLI starting with 95 tonnes in LEO and the remnant headed for the moon, comprised of a Soyuz, a tiny little LK lander and a D blok ker lox stage that would first brake the combination into LLO and then brake the LK by itself down to near landing speeds as a crasher stage. The LK would land, the first and possibly last cosmonaut on the Moon gets out, plants a red flag, then gets back in and after not doing a lot more than that, just some small moonrock samples, gets in and launches back to the Soyuz, spacewalks back into it with the rock samples in hand, and they fly the Soyuz home to Earth. LOR like Apollo, like Apollo from a single launch--unlike Apollo, the mass margins are incredibly tight though.

Let us guess that while this is incredibly dangerous and marginal to do with 95 tonnes, it is not so crazy with more tonnes in LEO to start with--lets say, 120 would be just fine. Does it not follow then than if 120 tonnes can be evenly divided into 60, that two 60 tonne launches might also get it done? There is more than one way to combine two 60 tonne launches than docking them in LEO though. As it happened, if we assign a single 60 tonne launch for the LK alone, sending it unmanned from LEO to be braked into LLO around the Moon by a single Blok D devoted only to the LK, and then use a second 60 tonne LEO package to send a crewed Soyuz with its own D Blok stage to brake it and perhaps with leftover propellant from that, later assist in sending the Soyuz back before it switches to its internal hypergolic fuel, and rendezvous with the LK in LLO, we have two launch LOR with no EOR involved. Well, what if the first generation N1 is capable of putting not 60 but 75 tonnes into LEO? Now each of the two launches has 15 more tonnes of margin to play with. We can make the LK much bigger perhaps; with the Soyuz quite able to rely on internal hypergolic fuel to get out of LLO and back to Earth we can use ample residual fuel from its Blok D to add to the crasher braking function of the LK's own Blok D, either by maneuvering to dock the Soyuz Blok D in sequence ahead of the LK blok D, or perhaps by transferring propellant from the former to fill the latter. Thus a bigger, far less marginal, LK, perhaps one suited for two cosmonauts and several days stay, can be accommodated.

This still may not be good enough; the Americans just did Apollo which accomplished the same thing so the USSR is saying in effect "Me too! Second!" They can afford to go ahead and do that, but they might prefer to back off and wait until they can do something spectacularly better on the Moon.

But they may not have to wait until they have the hydrogen upper stages. What could be done with three launches? Maybe now is the time for EOR after all, instead of sending ships in sequence to hunt each other down around the Moon, assemble them in LEO. Maybe the crewed Soyuz goes independently on the third launch, but the first two involve sending two 75 ton "pieces" to a LEO assembly point, perhaps at an established Salyut type station, or near one--the cosmonauts there observe the docking of the two from a distance of some kilometers through telescopes perhaps. Say the first launch is nothing but a supersized Block G--doubled up on engines, and incorporating the whole 75 tonne mass in its tanks, with a docking port designed to go into the tail of the other one which is a supersized Block D plus a big LK, essentially, big enough for 3 cosmonauts for several weeks, say an entire Lunar day night cycle--a month! This goes up second, since LOX boil off can be controlled or even prevented in LEO, and once they dock, the assembly is rocketed off, not to LLO, but to Earth-moon Lagrange 1, between the Earth and the Moon. The Soyuz also goes there, which would save a lot of delta-V versus going to the Moon, and so it has extra fuel to help replenish the lander's giant Blok D crasher. The lander fuel supply is adequate to get, not the entire lander, but a small 3 crew flight capsule, back up to L1--the trip might take some days with minimal energy, to be sure. The descent to the Moon is direct from L1, as is the ascent back to it, no Lunar parking orbit. Because of the metastability of the L1 location the Soyuz can be left uncrewed while all three cosmonauts descend to the Moon.

I have not done the math on any of this and will not have time to until the weekend, but my point is, with 3x75 tonnes in LEO, one can really do quite a lot even with nothing better than kerosene.

But, of course, at that point the Soviets will surely feel the pressure to develop some sort of hydrogen engines themselves, with American designs so badly eclipsing theirs. To be sure, the Soviet ker-lox engines were quite good of their type, getting considerably better Isp than American ones would, by some 10 percent or so, though of course no Soviet single chamber rocket engine came to matching the F-1 for sheer thrust. Developing hydrogen versions of the G blok, and possibly V blok, should significantly improve the TLI mass ratios, and perhaps the LEO orbited mass will be raised too. Say this part takes until 1980 or so, they still are not dead in the water and can do something impressive with their vintage 1970 ker-lox version while developing the hydrogen stages. And really, it need not take all the way to 1980, that's just an outside worst case figure.
...I wonder if the L3M spacecraft would have enough delta-v to both land on the moon and return to Earth? That is, would a single-stage lander with the return capsule inside as above in the first post, be feasible?...

I think anything can be made feasible if you throw enough development money at it and stick to it, but I have to ask, why do it that way?

It is because of the long stay of course. LOR is far more efficient. Yes, it should be possible to launch a Soyuz landing capsule direct from the Lunar surface to a Trans-Earth trajectory that is nearly on target for an Earth atmospheric reentry. One had better not send the capsule all by itself, never mind that three or even two crew are cramped in a capsule designed for minimal habitability. Remember the Soyuz design includes a light but large Orbital Module the crew can enter from their return capsule, to give them room to live and breathe and not go crazy while in orbit. And it includes a service module, to provide for orbital delta V and course correction. If whatever stage launches a minimal return capsule back to Earth is adequate, the equivalent service module on the return leg can be pretty small, much smaller than the rather large standard Soyuz, as far as reaction mass and engines go--but it had better have that as midcourse corrections are just about certain to be needed. Also I believe the Soyuz service module like the Apollo one provided all sorts of utility support, air supply, electricity, etc to the crew capsule. So you can't get away with just launching a 2 or 3 tonne return capsule from the Lunar surface, you must have some tonnes of support systems too. I'm going to guess that getting the total down to 6 tonnes will be painfully spartan and risky. Let's say it really has to be 8 tonnes all up. Well, now, all of that mass must be landed on the Moon. And the actual Moon exploration and basing equipment is not included in it, that's all auxiliary. Oh yes, we must land enough propellant and engines to propel the 8 tonne return vehicle back to Earth. Will 25 tonnes landed be quite enough? I am not sure. But the design would look different from your pictures anyway.

Now if only LOR were possible! If there is a Soyuz, braked to LLO by a tailored blok D engine/tank that is now spent and has been crashed to the moon, its internal tanks are full, and has plenty of delta V to head back to Earth with plenty of course correction margin, and it has the extra habitable space of an Orbital Module so three crew will be fine for the time it takes.

Now instead of launching some 8 tonnes to get two or three cosmonauts home directly from the surface, we would only need based on Apollo experience, at the most 2 tonnes, plus propellant to launch it, but not all the way back to Earth, just to LLO and rendezvous with the Soyuz. Possibly a minimal life support capsule for 3 can be cut down way below 2 tonnes, so we are looking at an overall reduction of a system I believe would mass 16 tonnes at least to get crew home in an entry survivable capsule directly, down to no more than 4 tonnes tops, meaning if we were capable of landing the full 16 tonne direct return package, but we only need 4 for LOR, then we have freed up 12 tonnes of extra Moon exploration supplies and equipment, or we have reduced the mass of the package to be landed on the Moon by those 12 tonnes. Or more, I think I underestimate the minimal return requirements.

The catch is, of course, that leaving one's return ride to Earth in LLO is one thing when the stay on the surface is just a few days. But over time the return vehicle in orbit will drift into an orbit unsuitable for the surface vehicle to reach. Even if one knows that eventually the orbital vehicle will return to a useful inclination, there is no ability to abort and return any time; one has to wait for the return vehicle to drift back into a suitable window to be reached and to be aimed at a suitable TEI path.

But there is more than one way to approach this. For one thing, an equatorial mission can allow a parking orbit that aside from drift caused by mascons, will stay suitable for both purposes indefinitely.

For another, this is why I introduced L-1 into this. L-2 is more fashionable and might be what serious designers ultimately do settle on, but conceptually I think L-1 should get some attention. It is closer to Earth than the Moon rather than farther away. I believe a big advantage of L2 is that by swinging close past the moon and firing at perilune, one can reach it with especially little delta v--but the approach to L-1 should be pretty easy too. L1, between Earth and Moon, is a good point to channel communications from Nearside to Earth; an L-2 based mission that went to Near side would have to set up a relay station at L-1 anyway.

Staging the Soyuz, or perhaps some more ambitious developed surface to orbit vehicle, at L-1, the transfer from L-1 to the Nearside surface is more difficult, more energetic than from LLO. A vehicle to return to L1 from the surface would have to mass more than 4 tonnes I think, because for one thing the rocket delta V requirement is somewhat greater and for another, the time of transit is far longer. From surface to LLO is a matter of an hour or less; from surface to L1 a matter of days. The return capsule better be pretty habitable! In fact I envision it being the same thing as the major module they live in during their long stay. So it alone may mass say three tonnes, and the whole thing at a guess masses 9 or 10. Say 10 tonnes all up--that's still a lot less than 16, and the crew is a lot happier! From L1, having docked this habitation module to the Soyuz, a standard Soyuz might have plenty of delta V to shove not only itself but the whole hab module back to Earth--and if so, they keep its familiar comforts all the way back, until it is time to enter the entry capsule and abandon it and the service module, much like Apollo 13. With a mission model like that, perhaps the Soyuz they left Earth in had the habitation module instead of the standard Soyuz orbital module--it would weigh extra and require a more powerful emergency launch escape system but why not, the Soyuz goes up an N1!

Direct from Luna to Earth is possible but probably very dumb then. I think staging through L1 is the way to go. In fact they might build a Mir type station there. Or at L2 of course. Or both!
 
For another, this is why I introduced L-1 into this. L-2 is more fashionable and might be what serious designers ultimately do settle on, but conceptually I think L-1 should get some attention. It is closer to Earth than the Moon rather than farther away. I believe a big advantage of L2 is that by swinging close past the moon and firing at perilune, one can reach it with especially little delta v--but the approach to L-1 should be pretty easy too. L1, between Earth and Moon, is a good point to channel communications from Nearside to Earth; an L-2 based mission that went to Near side would have to set up a relay station at L-1 anyway.
But if you're on the Nearside you don't need a relay station, because you can just talk directly to Earth. It's only Farside missions that require communications satellites.
 
But if you're on the Nearside you don't need a relay station, because you can just talk directly to Earth. It's only Farside missions that require communications satellites.
I'm thinking of the Earth return vehicle stationed at L1 here mostly. If we station it at L2, conceptually right at the imaginary "point" anyway, it is blacked out behind the Moon. Of course for this reason when Farhquahar did his magisterial study the relation of Lagrange points to future NASA options, he suggested the L2 base should swing widely around in a halo orbit that would spend most of its time off to the side somewhere in line of sight with Earth; therefore Earth could relay between it and landed missions on Nearside.

But the touted advantage of L2 Rendezvous for crewed missions to the Lunar surface is, Return Anytime. If we put a return vehicle in say low polar orbit it is only good for getting back to Earth twice a month--from a polar landing site we can leave the surface any time we like and join it but we have to wait for it to line up with Earth to depart LLO and go home. From an equatorial location we can go home anytime, but only from low enough latitudes to reach an equatorial orbit without too much delta V. The point of Langrange staging is, the "points" stay put relative to any point on the Lunar surface, the trajectory to it relative to the Lunar surface is fixed (pretty much, with minor fluctuations due to the slightly elliptical Earth Moon orbit). That's fine if the halo orbit around the "point" is tight enough, but the wide ranging one Farquahar recommended would, I suppose, have a period of a month or so, and where it would be and how fast it would be moving relative to the "fixed" frame of the Lunar surface and slightly fluctuating string of Lagrange points would have tremendous bearing on whether the surface crew could achieve a trajectory to match it or not. Clearly if we stage out of L2, we need two "bases," a local rendevous parking zone, and wide-ranging comsat to poke around Earth's skirts to put the point in communication. I suppose a constellation of wide ranging L2 halo comsats can also get a less oblique angle on the Nearside-Farside Boundary zone and bridge that gap too, so they are good to have.

However, if we have a Nearside mission we don't need communications with Farside at all--unless we stage out of L2 and then we do.

I was also thinking that stationing the return vehicle at L1, it might also serve as a com relay. Earth is ten times as far away as L1. Earth based antennae need to be 100 times as sensitive to pick up weak signals from the Lunar surface--but of course on Earth we have lots of resources to make big antennae if we don't have to lift them to L1, so I suppose Earth is the prime communications relay. Still it will involve considerably longer speed of light time delays than relay through L1, referring here to point to point on the Lunar surface.

So it is a question of how great the magnitude of the delta V savings is in taking the least delta V paths to L2 versus L1. And then recalling that least delta V paths are slower than other paths we might prefer to get places sooner. L1 is closer to Earth than the Moon is, L2 is farther away; if time is a factor, L1 has got some advantage. But the main one is that the parked return craft is always in plain and direct communication with both the landed party and with Earth, and at a fixed location for sudden "return anytime" aborts.
 
That's fine if the halo orbit around the "point" is tight enough, but the wide ranging one Farquahar recommended would, I suppose, have a period of a month or so, and where it would be and how fast it would be moving relative to the "fixed" frame of the Lunar surface and slightly fluctuating string of Lagrange points would have tremendous bearing on whether the surface crew could achieve a trajectory to match it or not.
No, it actually wouldn't. Around L-2 the energy landscape is rather flat, so you can do a very great deal with little delta-V. That's why it (and L-1) are so popular...
 
So, for a Nearside mission, why use L-2? It could only be because the delta-v advantages are significantly superior. It seems clear that L-1 will always have a small but significant transit time advantage, for a given acceptable delta-v, versus L-2, so the delta V advantage of L-2 must be pretty large to compensate.
 
So, for a Nearside mission, why use L-2? It could only be because the delta-v advantages are significantly superior. It seems clear that L-1 will always have a small but significant transit time advantage, for a given acceptable delta-v, versus L-2, so the delta V advantage of L-2 must be pretty large to compensate.
Well, there are several reasons. First, L-2 is more universal. As you mention, it's better for Farside missions and it's no worse for Nearside missions from an operational perspective. If you spend the amount of delta-V needed to get to L-1 on getting to L-2, the transit time difference between getting to L-1 from LEO and getting to L-2 from LEO becomes rather minimal--not zero, but more a matter of hours than days, so not too significant if you're planning on long stays on the Moon. It's also better as a base for post-Lunar missions because it naturally allows a lunar swing-by maneuver in addition to an Earth swing-by. So it just makes things a bit simpler if you use L-2 for all of your missions instead of basing some at L-1 and some at L-2, without any major impacts on the actual mission.

Second, it does have a significant delta-V advantage, as you mention, but at a heftier transit time increase, as you also mention. This is obviously very advantageous in the longer run because it makes it easier to move cargo up to the staging area without impacting the crew very much. For a scenario with multiple launches but separate injections to circumlunar space, as with your scenario involving the LOK and LK being sent to the Moon by separate launches of the N-1, this is also very advantageous; the uncrewed LK can mosey on along while the LOK takes the faster (but more costly) route, thereby allowing the LK to be proportionally larger than would otherwise be possible. However, if you're launching everything such that it travels to the Moon all together, then it's not as much of an advantage if you can't tolerate longer flights to the destination.

In the event, the Soviets are not really in a position to make use of either advantage and are more likely to just stick to more traditional approaches in any program that they have, so it doesn't really make much difference.
 
I was surprised by how different Vegeta voice was. I think it was far better - louder and deep, very much like the character. Plus Kakarotto
Aah the humor of Akira Toriyama, Vegeta = vegetable, Kakarotto = Karrotte = german for carrot x'D
Sorry, for this totally off topic post :winkytongue:
 

iVC

Donor
Glushko was hostile to others soviet engine producer like Isayev OKB-2 or Kuznetsov OKB-276 (N1 engines)
if the N1F-Sr L3M project had go on, Glushko would be enemy of that program. (Together with Chelomei of OKB-52)

I could quote Chertok writing about his meeting with Glushko and Ustinov which effectively decided the fate of lunar programme.
 
There is great magnum opus written by Boris Yevseevich Chertok, a prominent Soviet and Russian rocket designer, called 'Of Missiles and Men' or 'Rockets and People'. It's a four-volume book dedicated to soviet space program since 1930's through WW2 till 1990's. He died aged 99 in 2011 and till 2010 he was actually giving a lectures to Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology students.

I was glad to found his works were translated by NASA:
1. Boris Chertok. Rockets and People, Volume 1, 2005
2. Boris Chertok. Rockets and People, Volume 2: Creating a Rocket Industry, 2006
3. Boris Chertok. Rockets and People, Volume 3: Hot Days of the Cold War, 2009
4. Boris Chertok. Rockets and People, Volume 4: The Moon Race, 2011

In his third and fourth books he describes steps taken by soviet government and space academics circles for controlling cutting and closing up the moon race.
Thanks! I'll have to check those out along with the Asif Siddiqi book.

No. Earlier development, the product of a decision in the early 1960s to go with Korolev's plan for the N pair (and there might possibly even be an N-3, taking the V block of an N-1 (Cyrillic alphabet, V is the third letter) to make something Soyuz-launcher size would logically begin with a focus on developing the N2 first. I'd like to hope in TLs where the Russians do things better are not crazy ASB, but there is no reason here to think they do things a lot better procedurally than they did OTL. But an N2, particularly one not so ambitious as one made from the OTL stretched 95 tonne to LEO N1 Korolev promised later in the 1960s, but derived from a more modest but hence more realistically attainable early decade draft design, is much smaller than an N1, and a much less ambitious push. Mishin did all kinds of kludgy expedients on N1 OTL to get its weight down and its fuel supply up. He replaced metal helium pressurant tanks with plastic ones, he stripped out most of the telemetry(!) I don't know if you think of the N1 Blok A first stage as 24 or 30 engine--I think of it as 24 because the outer ring of that many engines is all that Korolev originally designed in, and the central hexagon of 6 more were not added until pretty late in the 60s--part of Mishin's desperate struggle to get the N1 up to the promised target of LEO and hence translunar capability.

So--if you have more relaxed targets for performance, for a smaller rocket (one basically in the same class as Proton) that only has, I forget which, either 4 or 8 of the engines that ultimately are going to go on the N1 first stage in much larger numbers, and you proceed in documented Soviet fashion to make items with indifferent quality control and hastily throw together a working rocket for testing rather than wait on the outcomes of years of ground testing the engine, I'm thinking that the first couple tests are going to be surefire failures, because we don't even have the engines tested in advanced mode, and they have their own teething and tantrums to go through before we even begin to isolate the unknown unknowns of the stage itself, or put better numbers on the known unknowns. But beyond basic engine reliability American practice would have had down much closer to pat, at the price of delaying installation in the first test article until years of such testing had elapsed already, and the sort of stage related shaking down American practice would be getting to after proving the engines were well known and the Soviets throw into one big exciting test, we at least here have a robust stage design that does not monkey around with basic standards--not yet anyway; they might finally get the N2 to launch, all stages operating OK, we might then find the payload is smaller than estimated. Perhaps then the designers would turn to expedients like plastic helium tanks--hopefully not ripping out the telemetry instruments. Or they might just accept the somewhat lower performance figures, and hope maybe to make up for it later with new editions of the rocket engines (at least 2, perhaps 3, generations of the engines meant for N1 were developed OTL) or some other future trick.

I'm saying that if the N series is go decision happened early in the 60s, and Korolev was immediately given the resources and authorization to get cracking on N2 ASAP, this series of test article N2 rockets might have flown, with the early ones blowing up at some stage or other, way before 1969. Perhaps '66? Maybe '67. By the beginning of 1968 at the latest (I guess--ask a real engineer or professional student of Soviet rocketry if that is fast, slow or right on the dot) the N2 itself is operational.

Nothing avoids the problems that caused the N1 to crash OTL. What it might do is expose those problems so someone could start working on fixing it. The pogo itself is said, to be a question of the installation on the Blok A. That won't be tested until a Blok A for N1 is ready to be tested. But other problems that perhaps fed into the OTL failures might show up much earlier and be solved.

Then the next round is to develop and test the Blok A. Perhaps, if there is no pressing target date for this one to be shaken down by, just maybe they borrow the von braun method of a test tank launch instead of a whole expensive N2 stack on top. At this point the engines should be shaken down already, given they are the same ones used on what is now the Blok B. (In a sense that means that when they take the final step, and mate the modified N2 atop the tested Blok A, the engines on B are a bit different and never flight tested before, because they will have different nozzles for superior vacuum performance. However even given Soviet OTL practices of cursory ground testing, they will have undergone some testing in their current form I think, and anyway the engine as a whole is the same core as the well tested one, just with a different nozzle.

Testing the Blok A is the first time that we take not 4 or 8 (whichever number B was supposed to have) of the first stage engines but 24 of them, mounted in a circle on the bottom of the spherical Blok A oxygen tank. The individual mounting of each Blok B engine on the N2 version would be quite similar to be sure, to a similar, though smaller, spherical oxygen tank. But with 24 instead of at the most 8 engines being fed by a kerosene manifold reaching around the oxygen tank somehow, perhaps we will encounter some kind of resonance phenomena? The stage should be static fired before a flight test, and I think this is one thing the Soviets took a lot of shortcuts on.

But again--the OTL tests were done with 30, not 24, engines, with an additional cluster of 6 in a hexagon in the center bottom of the sphere, and for those to be fed kerosene fuel they'd need either a pipe running through the LOX sphere (could be done, but I don't think it would be; the fuel would be running through a cryogenic volume and would have to be insulated making the pipe through the sphere thicker, and the whole idea violates the integrity of the sphere) or else an even more elaborate and lengthy reacharound pipe system is needed to supply this island of engines with fuel.

And I can't swear to it but I seem to recall all detailed discussion agreed these central added six engines were in fact involved in the anomalies and shutdown orders during at least one of the launches.

The kicker that finally gets me frothing mad about them is that they were installed to only burn for 30 seconds or so!

Getting rid of them will not guarantee other related problems will not need to be fixed. Clearly the KORD control program needed to be much more carefully written and the sensor hardware debugged. Though I seem to recall that on the second attempt, some vibration--IIRC this was in fact a surge following the sudden (but programmed) shutdown of the central engine--hammered the other 24 engines hydraulically through the fuel lines and this caused some of the turbomachinery to shatter, resulting in little bits of one engine being sucked in the fuel lines into the intakes of another one's turbopump. Clearly if stuff like that is happening, there are all sorts of unconsidered issues to be addressed. If this sequence is correct, then of course the KORD program would have no choice but to shut down all the engines anyway. That it was triggered by the shutdown of the central engines says two things--one, the central engines were a pesky pain, but two, the design engineers did not correctly think through the hydraulic consequences of their engine shutdown methods. Suppose a Blok A with 24 engines had passed several launch tests with no launch anomalies but then on the fourth launch, one engine fails suddenly--this does little harm since the manner of failure involves let us say a fuel line that starts to leak and the pressure drops gradually. And then the KORD computer does its job and orders the shutdown of the opposite engine. The boost is far along enough that losing that thrust, being down to 11/12 of nominal, is not a problem. Everything would be fine--but the programmed emergency shutdown of the opposite engine, which recall had nothing wrong with it itself, happens too abruptly, the hydraulic shock knocks out the two engines next to it, KORD shuts the opposites down (the ones flanking the original failed engine) and now we are down six engines, in two patches, 1/4 of the total--now the numbers are worrying, perhaps already past the launch failure red line anyway. Besides, thanks to the wrongly designed shutdown sequence, the cascade continues and I need not go on. The N1 certainly will not!

Actually I suspect N1 Blok A involved some programmed shudown of some of the 24 engines anyway, in lieu of designing them to throttle. Then again I believe they were designed to throttle somewhat because they were not gimbal mounted--yaw and pitch were to be accomplished by varying the thrust on opposite sides?

I'm not sure of that--and I think what I would do is design them to gimbal in one dimension, tangent to the circumference instead, and that would save having to design in any throttle at all. Having both gimbal and throttle would be best of course, and there would be considerable advantage to avoiding even single dimension gimbaling. Details, details! Which might be tweaked to be other than OTL by the way.

So to sum it up--OTL Korlev and Mishin played wait and hurry up, proposing what I think was a decent though ambitious design quite early in the decade, then sat around waiting for a green light they didn't get for years, at which point all of a sudden Korolev was on the spot to promise a single launch for a complete Moon landing and return mission, which demanded he stretch a decent if dusty design to the point of fingers crossed marginality, then rush to get it built ASAP all of a sudden, with a bunch of weight saving expedients thrown in at the last minute, and every component of it gets tested for the first time on the first all up test launch. No surprise that fails!

But if instead Korolev is working on the smaller N2 design, with no last minute rushed in weight saving kludges, everything proceeding methodically, then probably given their reluctance to test separate components for years in the American manner, or pay for all up static tests, they lose several N2, but this happens in 1965 or '66, and eventually they figure out the problems. This filters out most but probably not all the problems that crashed N1 OTL, and in addition shows, via more launch failures, and solves upper stage problems in the V, G, and if tested D bloks as well that the program never got around to OTL. Say this process takes two years, and the shaking down of A blok takes a year and a half before they have complete confidence, and N2 testing starts in 1967 early--this means they have a functional N2, suitable for scheduling even crewed launches on, in early 1969. It is approximately Proton class but they have just missed the boat on beating Apollo 8 to get the first crew near the Moon. And in the summer, the Blok A is still buggy when Apollo 11 launches, so the Soviets must concede the Kennedy unilateral Moon challlenge at every step. But--in early 1971, they have an N1 that is not capable of 95 tons to orbit, but is capable of say 75. And they have a Proton class ker-lox launcher, and might even consider downsizing an N2 to form an "N3" using the V blok of an N1 as the first stage, with G blok as second and D blok as third if needed, for a Soyuz class launcher replacement.

At no point does any OTL known problem or God knows how many further gremlins were lurking in the works get wished away, and I assume above they do not adopt ATL superior QC either. The earlier start, more robust basic design going with more modest goals, and drawn out sequence of first N2 then N1 filter out most problems--in the sense of they expose them via catastrophic failure, and then they are solved--before it comes down to testing the massive Blok A stage.


Yes and no. Yes to kerlox, for the first version of N1 ready in a 1969-72 time horizon, No to LEO assembly. Or at least, Earth Orbit Rendezvous is an option but not necessarily the best way to use multiple launch approaches. Korolev kidded himself into thinking they could do a kerosene engine TLI starting with 95 tonnes in LEO and the remnant headed for the moon, comprised of a Soyuz, a tiny little LK lander and a D blok ker lox stage that would first brake the combination into LLO and then brake the LK by itself down to near landing speeds as a crasher stage. The LK would land, the first and possibly last cosmonaut on the Moon gets out, plants a red flag, then gets back in and after not doing a lot more than that, just some small moonrock samples, gets in and launches back to the Soyuz, spacewalks back into it with the rock samples in hand, and they fly the Soyuz home to Earth. LOR like Apollo, like Apollo from a single launch--unlike Apollo, the mass margins are incredibly tight though.

Let us guess that while this is incredibly dangerous and marginal to do with 95 tonnes, it is not so crazy with more tonnes in LEO to start with--lets say, 120 would be just fine. Does it not follow then than if 120 tonnes can be evenly divided into 60, that two 60 tonne launches might also get it done? There is more than one way to combine two 60 tonne launches than docking them in LEO though. As it happened, if we assign a single 60 tonne launch for the LK alone, sending it unmanned from LEO to be braked into LLO around the Moon by a single Blok D devoted only to the LK, and then use a second 60 tonne LEO package to send a crewed Soyuz with its own D Blok stage to brake it and perhaps with leftover propellant from that, later assist in sending the Soyuz back before it switches to its internal hypergolic fuel, and rendezvous with the LK in LLO, we have two launch LOR with no EOR involved. Well, what if the first generation N1 is capable of putting not 60 but 75 tonnes into LEO? Now each of the two launches has 15 more tonnes of margin to play with. We can make the LK much bigger perhaps; with the Soyuz quite able to rely on internal hypergolic fuel to get out of LLO and back to Earth we can use ample residual fuel from its Blok D to add to the crasher braking function of the LK's own Blok D, either by maneuvering to dock the Soyuz Blok D in sequence ahead of the LK blok D, or perhaps by transferring propellant from the former to fill the latter. Thus a bigger, far less marginal, LK, perhaps one suited for two cosmonauts and several days stay, can be accommodated.

This still may not be good enough; the Americans just did Apollo which accomplished the same thing so the USSR is saying in effect "Me too! Second!" They can afford to go ahead and do that, but they might prefer to back off and wait until they can do something spectacularly better on the Moon.

But they may not have to wait until they have the hydrogen upper stages. What could be done with three launches? Maybe now is the time for EOR after all, instead of sending ships in sequence to hunt each other down around the Moon, assemble them in LEO. Maybe the crewed Soyuz goes independently on the third launch, but the first two involve sending two 75 ton "pieces" to a LEO assembly point, perhaps at an established Salyut type station, or near one--the cosmonauts there observe the docking of the two from a distance of some kilometers through telescopes perhaps. Say the first launch is nothing but a supersized Block G--doubled up on engines, and incorporating the whole 75 tonne mass in its tanks, with a docking port designed to go into the tail of the other one which is a supersized Block D plus a big LK, essentially, big enough for 3 cosmonauts for several weeks, say an entire Lunar day night cycle--a month! This goes up second, since LOX boil off can be controlled or even prevented in LEO, and once they dock, the assembly is rocketed off, not to LLO, but to Earth-moon Lagrange 1, between the Earth and the Moon. The Soyuz also goes there, which would save a lot of delta-V versus going to the Moon, and so it has extra fuel to help replenish the lander's giant Blok D crasher. The lander fuel supply is adequate to get, not the entire lander, but a small 3 crew flight capsule, back up to L1--the trip might take some days with minimal energy, to be sure. The descent to the Moon is direct from L1, as is the ascent back to it, no Lunar parking orbit. Because of the metastability of the L1 location the Soyuz can be left uncrewed while all three cosmonauts descend to the Moon.

I have not done the math on any of this and will not have time to until the weekend, but my point is, with 3x75 tonnes in LEO, one can really do quite a lot even with nothing better than kerosene.

But, of course, at that point the Soviets will surely feel the pressure to develop some sort of hydrogen engines themselves, with American designs so badly eclipsing theirs. To be sure, the Soviet ker-lox engines were quite good of their type, getting considerably better Isp than American ones would, by some 10 percent or so, though of course no Soviet single chamber rocket engine came to matching the F-1 for sheer thrust. Developing hydrogen versions of the G blok, and possibly V blok, should significantly improve the TLI mass ratios, and perhaps the LEO orbited mass will be raised too. Say this part takes until 1980 or so, they still are not dead in the water and can do something impressive with their vintage 1970 ker-lox version while developing the hydrogen stages. And really, it need not take all the way to 1980, that's just an outside worst case figure.


I think anything can be made feasible if you throw enough development money at it and stick to it, but I have to ask, why do it that way?

It is because of the long stay of course. LOR is far more efficient. Yes, it should be possible to launch a Soyuz landing capsule direct from the Lunar surface to a Trans-Earth trajectory that is nearly on target for an Earth atmospheric reentry. One had better not send the capsule all by itself, never mind that three or even two crew are cramped in a capsule designed for minimal habitability. Remember the Soyuz design includes a light but large Orbital Module the crew can enter from their return capsule, to give them room to live and breathe and not go crazy while in orbit. And it includes a service module, to provide for orbital delta V and course correction. If whatever stage launches a minimal return capsule back to Earth is adequate, the equivalent service module on the return leg can be pretty small, much smaller than the rather large standard Soyuz, as far as reaction mass and engines go--but it had better have that as midcourse corrections are just about certain to be needed. Also I believe the Soyuz service module like the Apollo one provided all sorts of utility support, air supply, electricity, etc to the crew capsule. So you can't get away with just launching a 2 or 3 tonne return capsule from the Lunar surface, you must have some tonnes of support systems too. I'm going to guess that getting the total down to 6 tonnes will be painfully spartan and risky. Let's say it really has to be 8 tonnes all up. Well, now, all of that mass must be landed on the Moon. And the actual Moon exploration and basing equipment is not included in it, that's all auxiliary. Oh yes, we must land enough propellant and engines to propel the 8 tonne return vehicle back to Earth. Will 25 tonnes landed be quite enough? I am not sure. But the design would look different from your pictures anyway.

Now if only LOR were possible! If there is a Soyuz, braked to LLO by a tailored blok D engine/tank that is now spent and has been crashed to the moon, its internal tanks are full, and has plenty of delta V to head back to Earth with plenty of course correction margin, and it has the extra habitable space of an Orbital Module so three crew will be fine for the time it takes.

Now instead of launching some 8 tonnes to get two or three cosmonauts home directly from the surface, we would only need based on Apollo experience, at the most 2 tonnes, plus propellant to launch it, but not all the way back to Earth, just to LLO and rendezvous with the Soyuz. Possibly a minimal life support capsule for 3 can be cut down way below 2 tonnes, so we are looking at an overall reduction of a system I believe would mass 16 tonnes at least to get crew home in an entry survivable capsule directly, down to no more than 4 tonnes tops, meaning if we were capable of landing the full 16 tonne direct return package, but we only need 4 for LOR, then we have freed up 12 tonnes of extra Moon exploration supplies and equipment, or we have reduced the mass of the package to be landed on the Moon by those 12 tonnes. Or more, I think I underestimate the minimal return requirements.

The catch is, of course, that leaving one's return ride to Earth in LLO is one thing when the stay on the surface is just a few days. But over time the return vehicle in orbit will drift into an orbit unsuitable for the surface vehicle to reach. Even if one knows that eventually the orbital vehicle will return to a useful inclination, there is no ability to abort and return any time; one has to wait for the return vehicle to drift back into a suitable window to be reached and to be aimed at a suitable TEI path.

But there is more than one way to approach this. For one thing, an equatorial mission can allow a parking orbit that aside from drift caused by mascons, will stay suitable for both purposes indefinitely.

For another, this is why I introduced L-1 into this. L-2 is more fashionable and might be what serious designers ultimately do settle on, but conceptually I think L-1 should get some attention. It is closer to Earth than the Moon rather than farther away. I believe a big advantage of L2 is that by swinging close past the moon and firing at perilune, one can reach it with especially little delta v--but the approach to L-1 should be pretty easy too. L1, between Earth and Moon, is a good point to channel communications from Nearside to Earth; an L-2 based mission that went to Near side would have to set up a relay station at L-1 anyway.

Staging the Soyuz, or perhaps some more ambitious developed surface to orbit vehicle, at L-1, the transfer from L-1 to the Nearside surface is more difficult, more energetic than from LLO. A vehicle to return to L1 from the surface would have to mass more than 4 tonnes I think, because for one thing the rocket delta V requirement is somewhat greater and for another, the time of transit is far longer. From surface to LLO is a matter of an hour or less; from surface to L1 a matter of days. The return capsule better be pretty habitable! In fact I envision it being the same thing as the major module they live in during their long stay. So it alone may mass say three tonnes, and the whole thing at a guess masses 9 or 10. Say 10 tonnes all up--that's still a lot less than 16, and the crew is a lot happier! From L1, having docked this habitation module to the Soyuz, a standard Soyuz might have plenty of delta V to shove not only itself but the whole hab module back to Earth--and if so, they keep its familiar comforts all the way back, until it is time to enter the entry capsule and abandon it and the service module, much like Apollo 13. With a mission model like that, perhaps the Soyuz they left Earth in had the habitation module instead of the standard Soyuz orbital module--it would weigh extra and require a more powerful emergency launch escape system but why not, the Soyuz goes up an N1!

Direct from Luna to Earth is possible but probably very dumb then. I think staging through L1 is the way to go. In fact they might build a Mir type station there. Or at L2 of course. Or both!
I have to say the Lagrange point mission profile is a very cool idea. You're right that a long-term stay would have to take into consideration that the orbiting craft would gradually drift to a new orbit. So, like Apollo, a Big!LK/L3M analogue would need to be a 2 stage lander that would rendezvous with a Soyuz in L1 or L2 after 30 or 45 days or so. The "Hab" module from the lander would travel back on the return leg until separation just before reentry. I would also think this would add a layer of redundancy for life support, maybe, until some fix could be made to life support systems in the Soyuz? You mention there might be also be about 12 tonnes of weight left for auxiliary equipment. This would probably consist of experiments, exercise equipment to maintain muscle mass (tho the moon has more gravity than there would be on a space station and a month or so isn't that long), as well as potentially a LRV to explore?

In the above scenario, 3 launches would be needed as you said. First, a block D booster or perhaps some other hydrogen/oxygen booster for the injection to a Lagrange point. Second would be the big lander for 3 crew, which would then dock with the booster stage. The last stage of course would be the Soyuz, after the LEK has made its destination, to rendezvous with the lunar complex. BTW I wasn' t sure if on the Soyuz there would a different hab module instead of the normal orbital module, like on the bigger lander? I would think the LK hab on the Soyuz would be redundant if you're bringing the LK hab module back. Unless I'm misunderstanding?

I can also see the Soviets, with a perfected N1, sending up the MKBS that was cancelled in 1974, perhaps as practice for the long duration stays on the moon and as a sort of assembly plant in LEO for the LEK, which would then be sent to either L1 or L2. Or it could end up one of the Lagrange points.

In the event, the Soviets are not really in a position to make use of either advantage and are more likely to just stick to more traditional approaches in any program that they have, so it doesn't really make much difference.
Why not? Shevek has laid out a fairly plausible scenario. If the Soviets decided early on to commit significant resources to the N series of rockets, then why not try something else that's new and slightly risky?
 
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That's right.

OKB-456 Glushko RD-0120 is big hydrolox engine: Thrust 1,517.100 kN, Specific impulse: 455 sec. (analog to SSME)
OKB-2 Isayev RD-56M is much smaller: Thrust 73.58 kN, Specific impulse: 461 s. (analog to RL-10A-3A)
but RD-56M program was under development from 1970 to it cancellation in 1974 as Glushko killed the N1 program.
and here another problem Glushko was major rocket engine producer in USSR with OKB-456.
Glushko was hostile to others soviet engine producer like Isayev OKB-2 or Kuznetsov OKB-276 (N1 engines)
if the N1F-Sr L3M project had go on, Glushko would be enemy of that program. (Together with Chelomei of OKB-52)

The Machinations in 1970s Soviet Space program beat every Shakespeare tragedy...

Glusko was and will always be an enemy of any N1 related programme, which is why ensuring he never gets his hands on the programme is a mandatory pre-requisite. If Glushko is in charge of OKB-1/TsKBEM/Energia then N1-L3M isn't happening, full stop. If he isn't in charge, then Block Sr development will continue to use the Isayev Bureau's engine anyway, regardless of Glushko's opinion.
 
Was he a proponent, or simply the expert because he had been assigned the job to design a base? He certainly appears to have done a very thorough, detailed job of designing the base, but I'm not sure how much he was prepared to push for a moon base.

Everything I've read about the man makes him sound like a true believer.

I believe it was driven by the direct return strategy. L3M had only one manned spacecraft, not a separate lander and orbiter, hence the return capsule had to come to the moon. The initial design put it on top, but then you'd have to spacewalk to get between the return capsule and the main living area. You'd also have to either give the capsule a window that lets you see to land, or do that spacewalk before landing on the moon. You'd also have to have a capsule big enough to get the whole crew in and out of spacesuits, as well as storage space for the suits themselves (unless they stay suited for the entire trip to and from the moon). By putting the capsule inside the hanger, you can transfer directly in shirtsleeves.

Hm. Makes sense.

fasquardon
 
Hm. Makes sense.

fasquardon

Another alternative would be to keep the capsule on top and put a hatch in the heatshield to access the lander habitat. Chelomey proposed that for TKS and tested it in the late '70s, but maybe this was still considered too risky at the time L3M was cancelled, or not feasible with the higher re-entry temperatures of a lunar return. (Or it could have just been rejected by Mishin because it was Chelomey's idea.)
 
Was he [Barmin] a proponent, or simply the expert because he had been assigned the job to design a base? He certainly appears to have done a very thorough, detailed job of designing the base, but I'm not sure how much he was prepared to push for a moon base.

In Fact there were allot of Soviet Moon base design studies in 1970s
Anatoly Zak Book "Russian in Space" has entire chapter devoted on Thirty different Soviet Moon base design
Alone 26 were study during N1 program, from simple temporal outpost up to full sized soviet Lunar Colony !
 
Why not? Shevek has laid out a fairly plausible scenario. If the Soviets decided early on to commit significant resources to the N series of rockets, then why not try something else that's new and slightly risky?
The primary reason is that the whole idea of Lagrange point basing was very new and very obscure in the 1970s, so the Soviets aren't very likely to even consider it in the first place, especially not if they're doing their planning in the 1960s (when just staging in lunar orbit was novel). Secondarily, they're not likely to be thinking overly much about post-lunar missions since just getting to the Moon is itself going to be very difficult and expensive, and they're not likely to do a split-LOR like Shevek proposes because that introduces certain risks I'm not sure they'll like, so there's no advantages to using Lagrange point basing even if they thought about it (which they probably won't).
 
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