So the technology that the Soviets had was actually quite advanced even at the time. After the N1 program was cancelled they went into storage and later on they were discovered and the Americans actually bought them to use on their own rockets. But the interesting corollary to all of this is that those 30 engines were actually quite efficient and more efficient than what the Americans had. Leonov was to be alone going down to the moon's surface. The Apollo program sent three, but the Soviets were going to send two, Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and Alexei Leonov, the first space walker. It was an ambitious program that they had though because had the rocket worked, their plan was to send two people to the moon. The Saturn 5 had five big ones, the Russian approach was to have a whole bunch of little ones. Nobody even knew what they were up against.īob McDonald: That's unbelievable, 30 engines in one rocket, and all had to work exactly right. The Americans were very public about everything that they were doing all their launches were live on TV, but the Soviets were extremely secretive about everything. It was pointed at the top and really broad at the bottom. It looked a little different, it looked like a big cone. But the Soviets were still giving it a fighting chance.īob McDonald: That N1 in rocket was impressive and it was as large as the Saturn 5. But it wasn't nearly keeping pace with where it could or should have been if it was going to seriously compete. So in the late 1960's the Soviets were trying to keep pace with America through developing the N1 rocket which was almost their Hail Mary to try to match the American accomplishment and get to the moon. And that was where they really started dropping off in terms of scoring these firsts and keeping pace with the Americans. And when he died in 1966 it really did throw the Soviet program into disarray. His Soviet equivalent was Korolev, and he was spearheading a lot of the early technology that achieved a lot of those firsts for the Soviet Union. On the American side the name Werhner Von Braun is pretty familiar as the lead architect behind the Saturn 5 program. So where were the Soviets at that point?Īmy Shera Teitel: The Soviets weren't exactly keeping pace by the late 1960's and I attribute a lot of this to the death of Sergei Korolev. But by the late 60's the Americans has sort of done a catch up. The Soviets were first with Sputnik, the first satellite, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first robot past the moon, the first robot to Venus. But before that the Americans were behind at the beginning. This interview has been edited for length and clarityīob McDonald: So Amy, we've been talking about the missions that were happening in late 1968 and early 1969, the last few legs of the American side of the space race. In this segment Amy and Bob McDonald look back on the Soviets ultimately doomed attempt to get to the moon first. Amy's a Canadian space flight historian, author, and host of her own YouTube channel 'Vintage Space'. Our guest for our retrospective on the run up to the Apollo 11 anniversary has been space enthusiast Amy Shira Teitel. The moon landings were, of course, the culmination of an intense competition that had been going on since the early fifties - The space race.Īnd that race wasn't just about beating John F Kennedy's 1961 promise to land a man on the moon "before this decade is out." So far in our series we've heard about the earlier Apollo missions and how they paved the way to the moon.īut little was known then about what was happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain. This season we've been looking back to what was going on in early 1969 in the run up to the 50th anniversary of the moon landing on July 20th.
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