What If Russia Was First To The Moon - Soviet LK Lander!
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- In 1967. Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin exit the LK lander and become the first people to walk on the surface of the Moon.
People across the vast USSR, and their allies abroad, watch in awe and cheer in celebration at this achievement - while Washington fumes and NASA… is called to congress.
This never happened of course, but mankind was closer to this scenario than you could imagine and the red moon almost happened.
Join me today on a journey through the stars and how the Soviet ambitions to be the first on the Moon almost destroyed the entire Soviet space program.
In the 1960s there was an initiative for a joint US and Soviet program to put the man on the Moon. But with the death of JFK and change in the Soviet leadership this idea was abandoned.
Instead, a competition began. The Soviets made their priority to put the man on the Moon first, afraid of the awakening of the NASA and their potential.
So,the legendary engineer Sergey Korolyev was put in charge of this project and made a proclamation. the year 1967 was to be remembered as a new milestone in Soviet history - the first man on the moon!
But, fate had other plans.
Our focus today will be the LK lander, or translated from Russian the Lunar-craft.
The entire rocket which was to put the Soviets on the Moon consisted of following:
Three stage N1 superheavy booster rocket
Soyuz L1-LOK - a modified Soyuz spacecraft (not to be confused with the Soyuz carrier rocket)
And the LK lander
The story behind the N1 is a topic for another video, but the important thing here is that payload capacity for LEO (low earth orbit), was around 50t less than the Saturn V, standing at around 95tons.
Because of the siginicatly less carry weight, it required for some serious management of everything onboard for every aspect of the mission.
Coincidentally, Korolyev chose the same principle as the Apollo mission to get to the Moon, called the Lunar orbit rendevouz - the main spacecraft and lander would enter the Moons orbit, separate with the lander going down to the surface, while the spacecraft remained in orbit till the mission was completed. The crew onboard the lander would then launch back to space, dock on the spacecraft and come back home. All in one piece - hopefully!
This actual mission path was first proposed by a very interesting figure - Yuri Kondratyuk, all the way back in 1919! So perhaps it was less the russian’s and rather NASA who was on the back foot at this stage of the race
The spacecraft to carry the cosmonaughts to the moon would be called the LOK - the modified Soyuz which would carry the lander would have an additional stage, or Blok G as Soviets call it, which would take the craft into the Moon orbit and later back home, and Blok D which would take the LK to the surface and back.
Now that we have everything sorted out, let’s look into the landing process and how it differs from the Apollo’s Lunar module.