DBWI- Do you belive in the Soviet moon landing
- Thread starter birdy
- Start date
Yes, of course they did! That whole "The LOK program was faked in a Siberian warehouse" conspiracy has been completely debunked by numerous sources (check out badastronomy.com). And incidentally, the Apollo landings were real as well. Anyone who says otherwise is an ill-informed conspiracy nut.
Well, who can blame the ones who claim that it didn't happen. The Soviets where quite secretive about the whole thing. We don't know who was in charge of program and we are not sure what the real name of that second astronaut was. But the Soviet program was more military in nature, they blew up an atomic bomb on the back side of the moon for example.
Not to mention their policy of covering up failures and other such incidents. The N-1 disaster (or an equivalent) would've been enough to end NASA's program if it had happened in the United States. Who's to say that the Soviets didn't just give up and fake something in order to keep up with the United States? Sure, by all appearances they pressed ahead with the N-1, and it did serve as a suitable Earth-orbit launch vehicle (Mir, et al), but to the moon? No way.
True, the process was quite secretive, but everyone did see the television broadcasts of their landings. It was quite clear they were on the Moon, and as I said before any objections people have about the footage's authenticity (no stars, etc.) have been debunked.
The Sandman
Banned
More to the point, our first expedition located the corpses of their first expedition, and returned them home for a state funeral.
If their planned landing site had been usable, or if they'd had a bit more fuel, then maybe they'd have made it home...
If their planned landing site had been usable, or if they'd had a bit more fuel, then maybe they'd have made it home...
More to the point, our first expedition located the corpses of their first expedition, and returned them home for a state funeral.
If their planned landing site had been usable, or if they'd had a bit more fuel, then maybe they'd have made it home...
Eh, everyone always brings this up. But it just doesn't make sense. I mean, if the Soviets were really so certain about getting to the moon, wouldn't their program have worked? I mean, look at it this way -- they're running out of time, Apollo is almost launched, and so they send up an empty can with a few bodies in it, and have the thing crash on the surface. It looks like a real landing, but the secret is that they've only spent a few million rubles on the N-1 and the empty cans. Far cheaper than actually spending the money to develop a workable landing system and moon orbiter like the United States.
After that first shot (and it was damn lucky the N-1 even made it to the moon carrying the empty can), you film everything in the Siberian soundstages. The empty can also buys you a bit more time to perfect your filming of the "moon." Remember, the first images weren't released to the public until well after the "accident," and we didn't get the vast majority of the images until Apollo 14 made that first landing and recovered the bodies and tapes. The intervening time was more than enough for the Soviets to polish up their initial techniques (that grainy first film shows absolutely nothing distinguishable) and perfect the hoax.
And another thing no one's mentioned -- the fact that the vast majority of the Soviet "moon program"'s administrators were killed in the final launch of the N-1. Everyone knows the official line -- that they were there to see off the final moon mission and were tragically killed when the rocket exploded. Baloney. It's the perfect way to cover up the coverup. Not only do you kill off three astronauts who were "involved with the project from the beginning" according to official Soviet documents, but you've got the deaths of virtually every major administrator involved with the project as well. It also provides a convenient answer as to why they haven't been "back" to the moon since.
And of course, let's not forget the Warren Commission's report on the Recovery of the Soviet Astronauts, which states: "...the damage sustained by the Soviet craft cannot be determined to have come from a slow, gradual descent. Only an abrupt, high-speed collision with the moon's surface could have spread the wreckage over such a wide area..." I won't bother with recent studies by Soviet aerospace engineers about "engine malfunctions" and "misfires" -- those are clearly after-the-fact efforts to fight the truth -- that the Soviet Union never landed a live human being on the moon and indeed lost the moon race to the United States.
And of course, let's not forget the Warren Commission's report on the Recovery of the Soviet Astronauts, which states: "...the damage sustained by the Soviet craft cannot be determined to have come from a slow, gradual descent. Only an abrupt, high-speed collision with the moon's surface could have spread the wreckage over such a wide area..." I won't bother with recent studies by Soviet aerospace engineers about "engine malfunctions" and "misfires" -- those are clearly after-the-fact efforts to fight the truth -- that the Soviet Union never landed a live human being on the moon and indeed lost the moon race to the United States.
The thing about conspiracy theorys is they look shocking and believable, but if you look at the facts then they fall apart. The facts are simple. By the end of the decade, the soviets realized the Americans were serious about reaching the moon. So they basically came up with a one shot program to get there. It worked, but the astronauts died. Fertile ground for conspiracys. But answer me this. We all know what soviet propoganda was like, so why have the astronauts die on the moon? When the Americans returned there mn safely, it left the Soviets looking rather foolish.
[OOC.]: Jeez Amerigo, no way in hell could something like that happen in 1970. Cosmonauts and constructors/engineers were pride of nation and extremely valuable assets.
[No longer OOC]:
The sad state of Soviet space program after Korolev's death makes me believe it was a stunt/fraud hybrid. N1 wasn't ready, and wasn't getting ready. Program was mismanaged, started too late, and too diluted across various bureaus.
Do you remember that after Kremlin revealed names of cosmonauts killed in crash of initial craft, CIA was astound to have exactly zero information on them. As if they have never existed before. It wasn't after the launch of the spacecraft that it was cleared to public that it's manned launch instead of a unmanned Zond probe. And cosmonaut names weren't released until weeks after its "tragic" conclusion.
Now, it was confirmed much later that they were within USSR army and air force, but still, not a single trace of evidence connecting them to space program exists that can be dated before the official press release.
Imagine the following, they know they are loosing a space race, Glushko gives them slight probability that he might get a N1 off the pad in following months.
Now, in a armed service as large as Soviet one was, in three of four months enough screw ups and real fatal accidents will happen to provide bodies for the would be cosmonauts.
Remember, due to high speed crash, decompression and cycles of freezing unfreezing due to Lunar night and day cycle, by the time secret autopsies were performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital (and if that event was declassified earlier, we might not have ended with conspiracy theories as crazy as some running around in past decades), there was no way of determining exact cause nor time of death.
Regarding that fatal 1972 launch, whose casualties crippled Soviet space program for years, there is a little known incident (in West), released by Gorbachev's glasnost policy.
The Nedelin Disaster. A artillery marshal was killed in a early ICBM test with almost 300 other personal. Till 1990. it was believed that he died in a plane crash.
Safety with N1 tests was always low. Almost every on pad explosion or a in flight one during previous tests ended with people injured, occasionally killed. People were on long ends of their nerves, and safety precautions were lacking.
Now, what if that final LOK 6 mission was supposed to finally be a real flight. They had two flawless N1 launches before it, and a partially successful one before those. And they were urging to go, primary to redeem themselves in their own eyes.
Mostly everyone in project would be there for the launch, and now we know of most unfortunate positioning of those secondary fuel reservoirs that were to shallow underground, and whose connections to primary pumps had too little failsafes. N1 blows up on lift off, taking two cosmonauts on board and small number of engineers that were observing from far to close, shock wave screws up the valves on above mentioned fuel dumps, and they blow up, and wind takes fireball straight into observation row.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained with stupidity.
[No longer OOC]:
The sad state of Soviet space program after Korolev's death makes me believe it was a stunt/fraud hybrid. N1 wasn't ready, and wasn't getting ready. Program was mismanaged, started too late, and too diluted across various bureaus.
Do you remember that after Kremlin revealed names of cosmonauts killed in crash of initial craft, CIA was astound to have exactly zero information on them. As if they have never existed before. It wasn't after the launch of the spacecraft that it was cleared to public that it's manned launch instead of a unmanned Zond probe. And cosmonaut names weren't released until weeks after its "tragic" conclusion.
Now, it was confirmed much later that they were within USSR army and air force, but still, not a single trace of evidence connecting them to space program exists that can be dated before the official press release.
Imagine the following, they know they are loosing a space race, Glushko gives them slight probability that he might get a N1 off the pad in following months.
Now, in a armed service as large as Soviet one was, in three of four months enough screw ups and real fatal accidents will happen to provide bodies for the would be cosmonauts.
Remember, due to high speed crash, decompression and cycles of freezing unfreezing due to Lunar night and day cycle, by the time secret autopsies were performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital (and if that event was declassified earlier, we might not have ended with conspiracy theories as crazy as some running around in past decades), there was no way of determining exact cause nor time of death.
Regarding that fatal 1972 launch, whose casualties crippled Soviet space program for years, there is a little known incident (in West), released by Gorbachev's glasnost policy.
The Nedelin Disaster. A artillery marshal was killed in a early ICBM test with almost 300 other personal. Till 1990. it was believed that he died in a plane crash.
Safety with N1 tests was always low. Almost every on pad explosion or a in flight one during previous tests ended with people injured, occasionally killed. People were on long ends of their nerves, and safety precautions were lacking.
Now, what if that final LOK 6 mission was supposed to finally be a real flight. They had two flawless N1 launches before it, and a partially successful one before those. And they were urging to go, primary to redeem themselves in their own eyes.
Mostly everyone in project would be there for the launch, and now we know of most unfortunate positioning of those secondary fuel reservoirs that were to shallow underground, and whose connections to primary pumps had too little failsafes. N1 blows up on lift off, taking two cosmonauts on board and small number of engineers that were observing from far to close, shock wave screws up the valves on above mentioned fuel dumps, and they blow up, and wind takes fireball straight into observation row.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained with stupidity.
But it is harder then usual in this case. Most of the facts are secret and CIA did spread a lot of desinformation. They where behind the rumour that the US astronauts rescued stranded Russian astronauts and took them back to the US. Did you know that america (including Canada and Mexico) has more then 1000 restoraunts claiming to be founded by the cosmonauts?
And then there is the claim the the Soviets detonated a nuklear bomb on the moon (with a wirder claim that the purpose was sending back the cheese that the moon is made up of).
And the more magical claims about Soviet ships and submarines who ended up on the moon.
Has anyone seen the movie Capricorn One (1978) starring O.J. Simpson? In the movie, the U.S. military helped the Soviets fake the lunar landing to help boost the national budget for NASA and the USAF for missile defense, orbital and space-based defense systems. From what I have read, NASA had lunar missions planned and approved by Congress until 1972. After the Soviets landed, just remember that most Congress members couldn't throw enough money at the program. Before anyone starts laughing at the incredible nature of the plan, please consider the 1983 Project DAMOCLES SWORD, which allowed the Reagan administration to place nuclear weapons at Mare Crisium. Just check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One