WI: Soviets on the Moon (but barely)?

What are people's thoughts on the likely outcome should the Soviet Union land someone on the moon JUST before Apollo 11 without making any other particularly big changes. By this I mean a Soviet space program that is recognizably the same as ours, with more or less the same spacecraft facing off against OTL's NASA... It will take more resources to accelerate the program but my idea is to keep that to a minimum and get the Soviets there more though luck and risk taking than putting them much ahead of where they were OTL.

While I grant it's stretching credulity to actually beat NASA I could certainly see it being less than an ASB scenario. POD could be something along the lines of a quick and aggressive Soviet response to Kennedy's timeline leading to N1 (with its eventual lunar oriented configuration) and the LOK/LK etc. being prioritized two or three years earlier than OTL. Zond probably still runs into problems surrounding the Proton, and I suspect the re-entry troubles they had aren't going to disappear, but lets say that Zond ends up being a testbed for deep space re-entry; while the hope had been to fly a manned circumlunar (free return) before Apollo got flying again after the fire the reliability is nothing like acceptable before LOK and N1 become available.

N1 didn't fly until February 69 OTL, and thats just not soon enough, but with more development time and some optimism lets say that the first unmanned flight goes up (more or less successfully, though given that rocket's history probably barely) in early 68. A second unmanned flight goes smoothly (sooner after the first than OTL without the first mission being a total loss) in, lets say, April 68. Soyuz 3 flies as OTL in October, but uses the LOK, orbital Soyuz having been placed on hold in favour of the lunar program after the Soyuz 1 crash. Soyuz 4 and 5 (in January 1969) are replaced with a single LOK and an LK docking in earth orbit (no N1 involved, both are launched on R7s (LK might take a Proton actually, but doesn't need a crew)) being both the first Soviet manned docking and a flight test of the lander. Depending on how generous you're feeling there might be a second Soyuz/LOK on hand with a single crew member to retrieve the LK pilot should things go badly and film the test if they don't (I like the idea, but suspect in the end it would go along the lines of this mission being ready to go, and either not launching in time or failing to rendezvous, film or otherwise carry out its purpose if the attempt is made). February sees the first crewed N1 take an LOK and LK stack to lunar orbit, and May 1969 (around the time of OTL Apollo 10) has the second full manned lunar stack (and fourth N1 flown) land a single Cosmonaut on the moon for a few hours on what is officially still a test mission.

At this point Apollo 10 could conceivably become a landing mission to at least put the first American landing within days of the Soviet, but I somewhat doubt that NASA's ethos at the time would allow it. In any case, Apollo 11 goes off as OTL. I could well imagine the Soviets placing a hold on the landings after the first mission TTL between the obviously high risk and the intention they always had to involve backup LKs and Lunokhod rovers to help alleviate the shortcomings of the rather tiny single man lander. That said, a second mission in November is very possible, and I am sorely tempted to say that they try to fly another in 69 but lose the crew one way or another, leading to the full Soviet moon program amounting to only two or three more landings that don't happen until around 1971 and 72 with the full 2 LKs and Lunokhod as a ground target mission profile. Either way, Apollo isn't going to be much affected as far as I can tell, and the Soviets are not likely to land on the moon more than 3-5 times total themselves (and I would think are VERY likely to get some people killed along the way).

What really interests me is what would happen next with something like this. Anyone can see that the Soviet capabilities are clearly inferior to American at this point, but there is certainly not the clear American victory in the so called Moon race we had OTL. Meanwhile the Soviets are still going to be able to beat the American into orbit with a space station, and N1 working out better means Salyut may be quit a bit more capable (or at least bigger, I could certainly see even the early stations having two or three crews on board at once, and I think a small lunar orbiting platform would be a serious possibility). Beyond that the Soviet program is quite likely to peter out into the same kind of 70s they had OTL, with very poor success rates, crew losses and all in all not much being done; what I really wonder is what people think this will do to NASA?

Is this enough to keep the pressure on for a continued highly aggressive program? Will it be feasible at this point to either call the moon race an outright victory (between technical superiority and still meeting Kennedy's deadline)? Could we see the American's use OTL's Soviet claim that there never WAS a race (saying that Kennedy only said by the end of the decade, not necessarily first)? Could the shuttle emerge with more money and an ramped up timeline as a technological display? How about earliest possible Mars landing with Apollo derived hardware, with a reduced but bigger than OTL budget? Certainly a lot of possibilities, but I'm really looking for thoughts on what's likely. I can't see Nixon being any more a space fan than OTL, but it seems to me this scenario makes him even less able to defund the program than OTL.

PS: forgot to mention that my other big assumption (though it comes out of the frankly crazy risks they are already taking) is that the Soviets would be willing to start flying crews on the nearly completely automatic LK almost as soon as vehicles are ready. You might be able to cram a single unmanned test into the TL, but its tight, and I like the idea of one of the compromises the accelerated timeline makes is that the LK is considerably more manual than OTL. Whatever happens, when the LK did eventually fly unmanned from what I know it actually worked pretty well, and was probably one of the least problematic bits of the whole plan.
 
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I have to imagine that any 'successful' Soviet moonshot, with the criteria you offer, would end up with a dead cosmonaut on the moon or near it.

Which raises another interesting question, of course, for politics: what if the Soviets got there first, but their man died in the process?
 
I have to imagine that any 'successful' Soviet moonshot, with the criteria you offer, would end up with a dead cosmonaut on the moon or near it.

Which raises another interesting question, of course, for politics: what if the Soviets got there first, but their man died in the process?

Realistically I agree, but outright failure on the first landing attempt doesn't seem all that likely to do much for NASA. The big question for me if something like that does happen (and as I wrote that it could well happen in November) is what the Soviet (or American at that) response would be should Apollo 12 or 14's mission become recovering a Soviet body from the lunar surface.
 
In terms of politics, though, the USSR can claim superiority and another dead hero, while the US is somewhat shaken - both by the possibility that their efforts might fail and that the Soviets got there before them. It might prompt the Space Race to continue later than it did OTL, or peter out entirely.
 
Would it be a bad look do you think if the Americans sacrificed the first mission to pick up the dead cosmonaut and try to figure out what went wrong?
 
I think the Soviets' best chance for upstaging the Americans would be with a manned lunar flyby using the Zond capsule launched by the Proton booster. They carried out some successful unmanned tests but they couldn't get Proton man rated. To carry out a landing they need the N1 and it had too many issues plaguing it, so perhaps they put the landing mission on hold and divert resources into making Proton man rated. The mission would still be highly risky but if successful they could have beaten Apollo 8 by a few weeks, while not an orbital mission in the eyes of the World they would have been first to send men around the Moon.
 

AndyC

Donor
How about a PoD where Sergei Korolev didn't die on the operating table in 1966? If he'd been able to drive the N1 program, maybe he could have solved the problems and got it running in time?
 
Like it...

There was a very basic US lander that had the astronaut seated in an open cockpit on something not unlike an unshrouded LEM landing unit. The idea was for a recovery unit for a stranded astronaut. Something like that with an MMU-type resource backup for the pilot, could let a two-man mission succeed. The orbiter would be a Soyuz or Voskhod capsule with an additional liquid-fuelled stage. Bearing in mind that even the Vostok had capacity for ten days of supplies, a stripped-down mission using Korolev's own designs is possible. The rest is using available boosters to go for Earth Orbit Rendezvous and assembly and Lunar Orbit Rendezvous.

Apollo 10 COULD have landed, albeit very briefly; I read an account that the co-pilot said to the commander "Go on - do it!" when they were in the LEM. So the result MIGHT have been a landing. But NASA was scared of this. I enclose a wikipedia item from the Apollo 10 page :-

Upon reaching lunar orbit, Young remained alone in the command module Charlie Brown while Stafford and Cernan flew separately in the LM. The LM crew checked out their craft's radar and ascent engine, rode out a momentary gyration in the lunar lander's motion (due to a faulty switch setting), and surveyed the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquility. The lunar module on this flight was not fueled to land, however. "A lot of people thought about the kind of people we were: 'Don't give those guys an opportunity to land, 'cause they might!'" said Cernan. "So the ascent module, the part we lifted off the lunar surface with, was short-fueled. The fuel tanks weren't full. So had we literally tried to land on the Moon, we couldn't have gotten off."[11] The fueled Apollo 10 LM weighed 30,735 pounds (13,941 kg), compared to 33,278 pounds (15,095 kg) for the Apollo 11 LM which made the first landing.

So there you are - NASA could have done it earlier. A dirty trick played on Stafford and Cernan.
 
I have to imagine that any 'successful' Soviet moonshot, with the criteria you offer, would end up with a dead cosmonaut on the moon or near it.

technically theyd still be the first...nowhere is it stated that they had to be alive when they reached it to claim the prize of prestige
 
Those individual cosmonauts would be heroes, but the USSR would not get bragging rights, it'd look exactly like what it was a cheap shot to beat the American yet again, that failed, and cost the lives of the brave cosmonauts doing so.
 
Back to the Nazis...

...Hitler wanted 'Aryan supremacy' in record-holding for aviation and killed men to do so. The organisation recognising the records stipulated thereafter that the record-holder had to live for at least 24 hours after making the record. So up yours, Herr Hitler...

...A Cosmonaut would have to return and survive the celebrations before his record became 'official'.
 

AndyC

Donor
Arguably, according to the rules for aeronautical records, the first man to successfully fly in space was Al Shepard.
 
1. You certainly need a POD at the beginning of the 60's. The Soviets delayed too long in greenlighting the N1 and the lunar vehicles. By the time Korolev finally gets approval for the N1 in 1965-66...it's just too late.

2. I agree with others that such an effort was still likely to end in disaster...if not on the first lunar flight, then not long after. But if it had happened - if the Soviets somehow manage to make at least a couple manned missions to the Moon, I think one butterfly effect would be an extension of the Apollo Program. Webb almost certainly gets authority to order a second buy of Saturns in 1968. The goal now has shifted from merely getting to the Moon or beating the Soviets to it, to doing much more than they can manage. How far that would extend, it's hard to say...would it go as far as LESA? I tend to doubt it. But there would probably (I think) be several more manned missions authorized, possibly including one or two extended missions with an LM Truck/LPM.
 

Geon

Donor
Apollo 10

At this point Apollo 10 could conceivably become a landing mission to at least put the first American landing within days of the Soviet, but I somewhat doubt that NASA's ethos at the time would allow it.

Given the political climate of the time and that the President was Richard Nixon, I have a strong suspicion that NASA would have been "strongly urged" to make Apollo 10 the U.S.'s first landing attempt on the Moon. If we knew that the Soviets were that close to a successful Moon landing I don't see Nixon settling for the U.S. coming in second in the space race.

Geon
 
Interesting scenario, but in order for the USSR to beat the US to the Moon - insofar as Manned Lunar Landing are concerned - even if only by 12-14 days, the following changes would need to be made IMHO:


1) No attempt to raise the N-1 maximum LEO payload via re-engineering - The N-1 was originally design to carry a payload of 75,000Kg to an LEO orbit of 300Km at 63 degrees inclination. When they decided to use an LOR Manned Lunar Mission, they had to increase the payload to 95,000Kg, in part by lowering the orbital altitude and inclination - this took it up to 84,000Kg IIRC - while the rest of the payload increase required substantial modifications to the LV which made reliability suffer tremendously.

2) No single-launch LOR mission - This required shaving the mass of the LOK/LK system down to the absolute minimum, with no safety margin whatsoever. As a dual-launch, dual LOR mission, the mass margin is there for a successful mission to occur.

3) Keep Mishin away from the bottle - This could well have done more to wreck the Soviet Moonshot than everything else put together. Still makes for a great Anti-Drinking Campaign though!:D

4) Start much earlier, and with sufficient funding - You really need to start N-1 development in 1960/1 to give them the time they need to debug it all. On top of this, Korolov needs the funding he originally wanted, double what he actually got to make the funding and resources for success materialise.

5) LOX/LH2 Development - With LOX/LH2 stages in the system, the N-1 should be able to take a sufficient payload to the Moon for a good mission to take place. Using it for the Block S and Block R - in place of the Block G and Block D - you can have substantially more spacecraft mass which translates into more safety margin, more redundancy, more consumables, and more chance of success. Best to use in-line with point 4.


If all the above is followed, you should be able to make a Soviet Manned Lunar Landing Mission possible. Otherwise, forget it!
 
Interesting scenario, but in order for the USSR to beat the US to the Moon - insofar as Manned Lunar Landing are concerned - even if only by 12-14 days, the following changes would need to be made IMHO:


1) No attempt to raise the N-1 maximum LEO payload via re-engineering - The N-1 was originally design to carry a payload of 75,000Kg to an LEO orbit of 300Km at 63 degrees inclination. When they decided to use an LOR Manned Lunar Mission, they had to increase the payload to 95,000Kg, in part by lowering the orbital altitude and inclination - this took it up to 84,000Kg IIRC - while the rest of the payload increase required substantial modifications to the LV which made reliability suffer tremendously.

2) No single-launch LOR mission - This required shaving the mass of the LOK/LK system down to the absolute minimum, with no safety margin whatsoever. As a dual-launch, dual LOR mission, the mass margin is there for a successful mission to occur.

3) Keep Mishin away from the bottle - This could well have done more to wreck the Soviet Moonshot than everything else put together. Still makes for a great Anti-Drinking Campaign though!:D

4) Start much earlier, and with sufficient funding - You really need to start N-1 development in 1960/1 to give them the time they need to debug it all. On top of this, Korolov needs the funding he originally wanted, double what he actually got to make the funding and resources for success materialise.

5) LOX/LH2 Development - With LOX/LH2 stages in the system, the N-1 should be able to take a sufficient payload to the Moon for a good mission to take place. Using it for the Block S and Block R - in place of the Block G and Block D - you can have substantially more spacecraft mass which translates into more safety margin, more redundancy, more consumables, and more chance of success. Best to use in-line with point 4.


If all the above is followed, you should be able to make a Soviet Manned Lunar Landing Mission possible. Otherwise, forget it!

That's more or less what I was thinking. After the Rice speech the goal is set very clearly as a lunar landing, with full backing of the N1 by the end of 1962. It's not quite as early as you might like, but I do acknowledge this thing is a stretch. LOR is kept around more for general parity than anything else, and the way it keeps the Soviet equipment pretty much all the same as OTL, I'd butterfly the problems with uprating the N1 the same way I got most of it's other problems, justifying it with extra development time, better budgets, a living Korolyov and a decent amount of luck.

A really realistic (plausible I'd say, I tend to think mine is less impossible than unlikely) scenario for landing Soviet is going to require changes very much along Bahamut's lines, but that also gets us a fundamentally different Soviet program which defeats my line of thinking.
 
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