The USSR was the first to launch an artificial Earth satellite and carry out a human flight into space, but subsequently lost the space race. American astronauts became the first and only people to walk on the surface of the Moon. However, few people know that the Soviet Union was one step away from a much more ambitious project than the Apollo mission. NASA. In the mid-60s, Soviet engineers and scientists planned not only to land people, but also planned to create a base on the surface of the satellite. By the mid-70s, the world's first project of a lunar base, called “Zvezda,” was created and carefully worked out. It is quite possible that if the situation at that time had turned out a little differently, now people would constantly live on the Moon, like on the ISS.
The Soviet Union was going to create a base on the Moon back in the 70s. Photo source: rossaprimavera.ru
Contents
- 1 The world's first lunar base project
- 2 The USSR lunar program
- 3 Where the base was supposed to be on the Moon
- 4 Why the Soviet lunar program failed
The world's first lunar base project< /h2>
Despite the fact that the Americans were the first to land on the Moon as part of the Apollo mission, the Soviet Union was in many ways ahead of the United States. In particular, it was the Soviet module that was the first to make a soft landing on the Moon. By the way, to this day not many countries have managed to do this. Even the Russian Luna-25 spacecraft crashed.
The USSR developed a thorough plan for the construction of a lunar base. Image source: dzen.ru
Also in the USSR, a spacecraft was created, which was the first in the history of mankind to orbit the Moon. Therefore, the Soviet Union had every chance to get ahead of the United States in terms of conquering the Moon. As mentioned above, it was not just about visiting the satellite, but about building a lunar base.
The lunar base consisted of separate modules that were manufactured on Earth. Image source: dzen.ru
In 1962, S. P. Korolev assigned the development of the project to the main design bureau “Spetsmash”. The work took more than ten years, but in the end a thorough, detailed project for the creation of a lunar base with the unofficial name “Barmingrad” was created. It was also known under the names “Star” and “Columbus”.
The USSR Lunar Program
The main module of the station was initially supposed to fly to the Moon in unmanned mode, on board which several automatic devices were provided. One of them was supposed to deliver to Earth lunar soil collected at the landing site of the main module. The second automatic device was a lunar rover.
In the future, there was the launch of 8 more habitable modules. That is, in total, the lunar base should have included 9 modules. They were planned to be placed under a protective layer of lunar regolith. In addition, the project included mobile modules on a wheeled base. They could be connected to each other like carriages. Run this «train» should have been powered by electricity generated by its own nuclear reactor.
A lunar module that could become a home for astronauts on the Moon. Photo source: iz.ru
Each module-car had a length of 4.5 meters. The “train” was supposed to include a laboratory module, a warehouse module, residential «cars», a drilling rig and some other modules. The “train” was designed for a crew of 9 people.
The chassis of all modules was like that of lunar rovers, that is, each wheel had to have its own separate electric motor. Thanks to this, failure of the drive of a wheel or even several wheels would not paralyze the entire train. Of course, provisions were made to protect habitable areas from meteors, extreme temperatures and radioactive radiation. For this, the modules had to have a three-layer casing.
Where the base was supposed to be located on the Moon
Soviet scientists were going to determine the location for creating a lunar base using an orbital satellite of the Moon. He was supposed to help carry out mapping and find the optimal site. Then the unmanned vehicle was supposed to deliver soil samples from the selected area to Earth for analysis. In addition, the area of the future lunar base was to be studied by the above-mentioned lunar rover.
This is what the lunar modules looked like from the inside. Photo source: dzen.ru
After remotely studying the surface of the natural satellite, an expedition of four people was to go to the Moon. By this time, the “moon train” should have been waiting for them. On it, astronauts could move along the surface of the Moon and study the surrounding area of the base.
Why the Soviet lunar program failed
The main reason for the failure of the Soviet lunar program was the N-1 launch vehicle, which until recently remained the most powerful and largest rocket in the world. Its diameter at the base was 17 meters. Only the Super Heavy rocket, which is the first stage of the SpaceX Starship super-heavy rocket, is more powerful and larger than it.
The N-1 rocket had 30 rocket engines arranged in the form of two rings. However, the engines turned out to be extremely unreliable. Among the reasons for this are the strained relations and rivalry between Sergei Korolev and design engineer Valentin Glushko.
All 4 tests of the N-1 rocket ended in its crash. Photo source: dzen.ru
Sergei Korolev chose a promising design for the future of oxygen-kerosene engines, which were an innovation at the time. V. Glushko proposed using more debugged engines on a mixture of nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine. In the end, Korolev insisted on a new type of engine, but he was not destined to complete the project, as he died in 1966.
As a result, as we have already reported earlier, all four launches of the N-1 rocket ended in the crash of the rocket. Moreover, the second test led to one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions on Earth. The shock wave from the exploding rocket broke the windows of buildings within a radius of 40 km.
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The last test of the N-1 took place in 1971. By that time, NASA astronauts had already landed on the Moon several times. This time, the rocket flew for 90 seconds, but eventually exploded. Theoretically, the flight could have been successful despite the first stage crash, but for some reason the operators did not turn on the second stage engines. As a result, the USSR's dream of conquering the Moon was destroyed along with the rocket.