Soviets Attempt a Moon Orbit - 1968

wormyguy

Banned
In December 1968, the Soviet Union had its last opportunity to attempt to beat the United States to a manned circumnavigation of the moon. A Proton rocket was readied at Baikonur, and a crew was prepared to perform the mission. However, the Soviet authorities decided against it at the last minute, given the horrible record of test moon circumnavigations with the Proton - 10 of 11 test launches failed or resulted in the death of their biological payloads, and none would have been survivable for humans. That turned out to be a good decision, as when that very rocket was launched, it too was a failure.

However, what if the Soviets had decided to be reckless and attempted the launch?

What would have been the implications of a failure, and especially what would have been the implications of a successful mission, several days before the Americans launched Apollo 8?
 
Well, a failure probably means OTL-parallel with the abandonment of the Luna program, but an unlikely success (1/11 success rate!?!? Damn :eek:) could really up the ante on the US side and maybe give a (likely short-term) boost of life to the Luna program.
 

Archibald

Banned
I remember that the famous Alexei Leonov was to be in the prime crew for this Zond mission.
The Zond actually worked correctly in the end, but not before august 1969 - too late !

Even if they had beaten Apollo 8, they could not have entered lunar orbit - not enough energy. From LEO you need 3km/s to make a loop around the moon; to achieve orbit, you need 4+ km/s.

They would have needed some high-energy liquid hydrogen stage - and in fact the soviet developed such stage for the N-1 giant rocket, called the RD-56.
It come nevertheless too late, after 1974. The N-1 being cancelled, the RD-56 was bizarely never adopted to any soviet rockets, and ended on... the Indian GSLV, 30 years later !
 

wormyguy

Banned
Even if they had beaten Apollo 8, they could not have entered lunar orbit - not enough energy. From LEO you need 3km/s to make a loop around the moon; to achieve orbit, you need 4+ km/s.

They already did achieve lunar orbit, twice (although one of those missions resulted in the death of the biological payload). All that would be necessary is to do one loop around the moon, then immediately return back to Earth. Sustained orbit is unnecessary for the purpose of beating the Americans.
 
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