Zond (and the Soviets) beat Apollo NEAR the Moon (not to the surface)

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Archibald

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As said in the title...

Zond primary reason to exist was to try and steal some of Apollo thunder with a clever trick.

basically: getting the first men NEAR the Moon (not on the surface) with a clear date in mind: November 6, 1967.
Why that date ? Because 1917 revolution + 50 years.

Now what's happening with Apollo ?

According to Kennedy mandate, NASA objective is the surface.
Before George Low stroke of genius in August 1968, this exactly meant
"Lunar Module not ready = no cislunar flights.
"No point in risking crew lives without a lander to test or... LAND."

As such, when on September 20, 1967 the Apollo "alphabet of missions" list was disclosed...
C-mission: Apollo in Earth orbit
D-mission: First piloted LM in Earth orbit (= Apollo 9)
E-mission: Second piloted LM... higher
(not clearly defined: high Earth orbit, lunar flyby, lunar orbit... ?)
F-class mission:Third piloted LM, stop 10 miles short. (= Apollo 10)
G-class mission: FIRST LANDING (= Apollo 11)

This meant that the earliest a crew could go to the Moon was the E-class mission, with the second piloted LM.

George Low strike of genius was to say "screw the LM and (temporarily) screw JFK mandate; let's go to the Moon early without a LM.

C-mission: Apollo in Earth orbit
C-prime-mission: (= Apollo 8)
D-mission: First piloted LM in Earth orbit (= Apollo 9)
------------
F-class mission: Third piloted LM, stop 10 miles short. (= Apollo 10)
G-class mission: FIRST LANDING (= Apollo 11)

Now it is possible to speculate to a timeline where Grumman doesn't screw up and by some miracle get the LM ready in time, that is - summer 1968 instead of spring 1969.

Soooo...
C-mission: Apollo 7, October 1968, doesn't move.
D-mission: Apollo 9, December 1968
E-mission: Second LM test - March 1969 (= in place of Apollo 9 as we knew it)
F-class mission: Apollo 10, doesn't move
G-class mission: Apollo 11, doesn't move.

So where does all this going in the end ?

First men NEAR the Moon
Zond 6, November 6, 1967
Apollo E, March 1969

Ouch. Now the Soviets can claim they send the first men "around the Moon" 18 months before NASA, and repeated that feat a couple or trio of times all over 1968.
While NASA answer is "this CHEAT, we went to the SURFACE" - you never know what public opinion thinks...
 
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Some more on this... https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/luna_e8-5.htm

Imagine these sample return probes were a little luckier. Just like Zond screwed Apollo (see above) that probe screws Apollo, too, second time: bringing back samples before Armstrong and Aldrin.

...and guess what TASS and propaganda says ?

"Oh, sure, we started testing a lunar orbit Soyuz not unlike Apollo - that was Zond."
...
"And then we realized, a) superbooster are expensive and b) boots on the ground is too dangerous. So we send a robot instead and look ! We got samples at lower risk and far lower cost. And before the Americans. Ding, dong, the Moon race is over !"

Yeah, sure, you bastards. Obviously N1-L3 never existed in the first place.

The propaganda, hold-up of the century ! :p:p:p

You can guess Nixon would blow a fuse over this... and rant like a nut "goddam Kennedy and goddam Soviets !"
 
Interesting but...

Zond (misleading name for the 7K-L1 Soyuz family) was a sort of a crash programme trying to beat americans on time at least around the Moon (because at that times, after the death of Korolev, Soviets knew that the work on N1/L3 was deeply behind the schedule).

The decision took by Politbjiuro was to merge the two already existing cis-lunar programmes merging in a workable one:

- the 7K-L1 spacecraft was a heavily modified Soyuz (with no orbital module replaced by an instrument package) coming from Korolev's OKB-1
- the Proton rocket come from the aborted LK-1 programme brainchild of Chelomej's OHB-52.

Oddly the strange combination at least worked even without carrying any crew at all (the original plan envisioned a couple of cosmonauts onboard).
The entire 1967 (started with the death of Komarov onboard the Soyuz 1 7K-OK) was wasted in failed launches, and the first successful mission was Zond 4 (7K-l1 s/n 6) in march 1968, so the 1967 Communist celebration was no way in any alternative scenario.

Soviets could attempt to beat Ameriacans around the Moon twice: with Zond 5 (7K-L1 s/n 5) in September 1968 and Zond 6 (7K-L1 s/n 12) in November 1968.
Said that both mission could potentially end in tragedy since:

Zond 5 expecienced a ballistic (rather than double-skip) re-entry from the Moon with a load of +20g to the crew
Zond 6 first depressurized and after suffered a parachute failure that would for sure killed everybody onboard (and in fact it killed all the animals transported).
 
Zond was mess

Korolev died during program and Mishin had other issue the N1 and Vodka allot Vodka
The Soyuz hardware had delay and issues
and Chelomei gave a shit about Zond, he wanted the UR-700 and LK-700 instead...
 
Archipeppe: bingo.
I used a late POD to stay close from OTL with the same vehicles.
Yet a variant of that story could have had Zond+N-11 right from 1963. No Proton and no LK-1.
Bonus: N-11 should be just more powerful enough to make Zond lunar orbit rather than flyby - unlike Proton.
Remarquably, a N-11 Zond makes N1-LOK mostly unuseful . For piloted lunar orbit flights.
Of course no LK lander there. Except it was shit, very much a lunar phone booth. 1 guy for 6 hours on the Moon... and they said Apollo was an unproductive money pit !
----
What is also interesting is to compare LK with Babakin Ye-8-5 sample return probe.
They... weighed the same 6 mt. Same size too !
In a sense: fly a Ye-8-5 instead of a LK (inside a N-1 or a N-11 fairing) and get samples at lower risk...
----
In a sense the Soviets should have build their lunar program around N-11 carrying Zonds and Ye-8-5 probes and eventually Lunokhods. No cosmonauts on the surface but plenty of spectaculars.
 
LK vers Ye-8-5 weight and dimensions... admittedly, the LK is taller. But as far as weight go - they are clones: exactly 5600 kg !

It's pretty amusing to think, they could have shoehorned a Ye-8-5 inside a N-1 fairing in place of the LK lander... and launch that along a crewed LOK (= lunar orbit Soyuz)

What's more, LOK and LK had no docking tunnel - only EVAs.

By this point, really, a robotic sample scooper (even more if combined with a Lunokhod to cache samples at varied places - SPARKA) looks like a far better bargain than a LK. Even if no cosmonaut on the surface, ok.

But to stay only six hours and bring next to zero samples ? really ?

Just think about it...

en.wikipedia.org

LK (spacecraft) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Design life48 hours
Launch mass5,560 to 6,525 kg
Crew capacity1 (2 on later variant)
Dimensions5.20 to 5.8 m high
4.50 m wide
overall, landing gear deployed
Click to expand...


Luna 16 was based on the Ye-8-5 spacecraft body, consisting of two attached stages, an ascent stage mounted on top of a descent stage. The lander stood 3.96 meters tall and had an unfueled landed mass of 1880 kg. With a full load of fuel its launch mass was between 5600 and 5750 kg.
Click to expand...
 
My dear Archibald, I agree with you that N11 (on the paper of couse) would be better suited than the original UR-500 Proton for lunar operations.

No flawed first stage that plagued all the 4 N1 launch attempts.
No nasty hypergolic fuels like the Proton.

But at that time Chelomey had a ace in his sleeve: the son of Kruschev in his OKB-52, that assured the unlikely LK-1/LK-700 projects a lot of money drained directly from the N1-L3 programme.

The reverse fortune of Kruschev twisted the situation again in favor of Korolev, but in that moment it was simply too late...
 
N11 hat issues:
it got no launch pad, next that it's engines never were flight tested
The First stage had to use the NK-15 junk from N1 Block A - firework glory ensured !

but it would help in N1 development and Testing als fly as N11
Soyuz not need to be adapted to Proton rocket
and this would realy piss off Chelomey ;)

for good POD
let get job for son of Kruschev in OKB-1
 
i think all you had to do was do a minimal of three stages and use regular fuel with oxidizer and just put a camera in to prove they went. but this would just make america go even harder and still beat them to the surface. (worse)
 
We need Chelomei's car brakes to fail 20 years earlier... in 1964 rather than 1984 ( although I don't like killing people even in alt timelines).
 
What is really interesting is that OKB-1 Zond manager Yuriy Semyonov (future NPO Energiya boss after Glushko death, 1989 2005) was stepson of Andrej Kirilenko... one of the few Politburo heavyweights Brezhnev tolerated in the 70's, with Kosyguin.
So this probably balanced Chelomei tactical advantage.
 
as far as we know the soviet space program never had any ideas on getting someone on the moon. they got probes. but not people they were still trying to work on earth orbit with the soyuz system. why?
 
One of biggest problem between 1961 and 1963 was Chelomei
because the son of Kruschev working for him, he had direct access to Nikia Kruschev
What Chelomei used merciless and his arrogant way make things worst
There is this joke from that time to illustrate that:

Have you heard, they're closing the Bolshoi Theatre?
How's that?
It'll became a whorehouse for OKB Chelomei.

But Chelomei fall already under Kruschev, as he fail to progress in his L1-Komplex, except Mock-up came nothing.
Only the UR-100 UR-200 and UR-500 project went in high gear for military under Kruschev orders.
Even here Chelomei pissed anybody important until the Putsch of Brezhnev in 1964
here Zond get go a head by Politburo but with end up on Proton rocket
From Here he fell deep and i mean really deep, the only reason they kept him working.
Was Proton rocket and Almaz Manned spy sat that became later Salut...
 
Bringing back this thread, related to Apollo "E-mission".

It starts on September 20, 1967 with Apollo "alphabet soup": a carefully crafted sequence D-E-F leading to the G first landing.

Before the LM issues cropped they were trying to move "E" from 5000 km high Earth orbit to one elliptical orbit reaching near the Moon "E-prime".

And then two major issues hit them. Related to the second Saturn V on April 4, 1968 (POGO solved by August). Plus LM-3 delivered to The Cape on June 13, 1968 and plagued with 100 major flaws.

This threw the D-E-F sequence into chaos, and C-prime was born.

On August 19, 1968 Sam Philips told the press exactly this

"E is dead. Instead, C-prime will be like the D / Apollo 9 (LM-3 in March 1969) except without a LM: instead will be a LTA ballast. This will go to LEO on December 6. "

Secretely however since August 8 George Low and a bunch of others were working on a "Plan B".

IF Apollo 7 was 100% succesfull, then Webb had allowed C-prime to move from "LEO, launch on December 6" to "lunar orbit, launch on December 20"

This however was only revealed and adopted on November 12, after Apollo 7 suceeded.

Now what is remarquable is that NASA managed to fool the soviets and their Zond program. Kamanin diary entries made clear they were not accelerating Zond related to C-prime.

Higher in the Soviet space program hierarchy, Dmitriy Ustinov seems to have been surprised by NASA November 12 official disclosure of C-prime moving to "high ground". If Ustinov wasn't aware, then nobody else was.
 
You gues this is part of my TL to make the Moon race a tad more heated in the late 60's.

Late 1967 after Zond 5L miserable failure on Novembre 22 (Proton, as usual) the Soviets re-purpose Zond. "October revolution +50" date (November 6, 1967) has vanished and gone. So they put a powerful Zenit spysat camera into the Zond and give it a brand new mission: get high-res pictures of the Marius Hills big hole in a lava tube the Americans have found through Lunar Orbiter 5 in August.

Now they have ten Zonds (6L to 15L) to get those pictures, and stretch the flight schedule all over 1968, 1969 and early 1970 (see below).

By flying cameras the Soviets relieve some pressure (no cosmonauts) but as a counterpart, Proton MUST become reliable so during three months (December 1967 to February 1968) test flights are done as they were in 1970 OTL, too late.
Proton gets a bit more reliable.

From March 1968 Zonds are launched with cameras and work far better than OTL.
At some point Kamanin thinks about putting cosmonauts onboard again - with two deadlines in his mind.
- Lenin's centenary: April 21, 1970 (this will make Apollo 13 all the more interesting)
- Apollo E-class mission (look at the post above)

And according to the above, at some point NASA will misled the Soviets into thinking that the first crew in cislunar space will be the F- class mission, that is: Apollo 10, same date as per OTL: May 1969.

Hence Kamanin in the spring 1968 realizes he has enough Zonds and enough time to beat the Americans NEAR the Moon even if not to the surface.

Now, the Zond manager as Tskbem / OKB-1 was Yuri Semyonov (the same that replaced Glushko as NPO Energiya boss, 1989-2005)

Semyonov was son-in-law to Andrei Kirilenko, one of the few heavyweights that survived Brezhnev gradually takeover of the Soviet state aparatus.

This way piloted flights of Zonds are allowed to happen on very strict conditions. "Camera flights" have absolute priority, but some Zonds can be tested between them - no camera and no self-destruct system since they are preparing for manned flights.

Unfortunately for the Soviets, Proton and Zond are still not reliable enough; and 1000 miles downrange of Baikonur, in Urumqi, Xinjiang, Mao's PRC will receive a gift from the sky: a Zond will get lost either during an ascent abort or when botching its skip reentry.

This will happen mid-1969, right in the middle of these clashes

en.wikipedia.org

Sino-Soviet border conflict - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Oh, and that place is also in that corner of the planet downrange of Baikonur, and will erupt in violence a day of August 1969.

en.wikipedia.org

Sino-Soviet border conflict - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

In fact between August 13 and October 20 the Soviets and Chinese were at each others throats, to the point the latter readied for a nuclear decapitation strike by the Soviets on Beijing.

Now imagine if I throw a lost Zond into that quagmire !
 

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