The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

For more than a decade, beginning in 1959, the Soviet
Union made a concerted effort to be the first to send
humans around the Moon and the first to achieve a
manned landing. But whereas the Apollo program
unfolded in a blaze of publicity, details of the Eastern
aspect of the Moon race only began to emerge with
the advent of Perestroika and the subsequent breakup
of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Essentially, the
Soviet Moon effort was three-pronged. The L-1 program
was aimed at a manned circumlunar loop without
a landing and involved the use of unmanned
Zond craft to flight-validate the hardware. The L-3
program was designed to put a cosmonaut on the
Moon’s surface. Finally, the Luna series consisted of a
variety of automated flyby, orbiter, hard- and softlander,
sample-return, and rover vehicles. Only 20 of
about 60 Soviet launches of all types of lunar craft
from 1959 to 1976 were successful.
L-1
Sergei Korolev’s design bureau began work in 1965
on a manned spacecraft called L-1, which was
intended to carry two cosmonauts on a single loop
around the Moon. From the outside, the L-1 looked
like the three-part Soyuz spacecraft, but it lacked its
spherical orbital module. Other major differences
were less obvious, including a modified propulsion
system, a beefed-up heat-shield, and long-range communication
systems. Because of repeated equipment
failures, the L-1 never flew with a crew. However,
unmanned L-1 spacecraft traveled to the Moon five
times from 1968 through 1970 as Zonds 4 to 8. These
missions tested the spacecraft and the maneuvers necessary
for a manned mission.
L-3
Russian manned lunar programs
Korolev also began designing spacecraft for a manned
lunar landing mission, and some hardware was built
under Vasily Mishin’s direction. This program, known
as L-3, included an orbiter and a lander. The prototype
lunar lander was successfully tested in Earth
orbit, without a crew, three times in 1970–1971 under
the name “Cosmos.” The Soviet lunar lander, known
as the Lunar Cabin (LK), was half the size and onethird
the mass of the Apollo Lunar Module and was
intended to carry one cosmonaut to the Moon’s surface
while the Lunar Orbiter Cabin (LOK) remained
in lunar orbit with the second crew member. The program
depended on the development of a super-rocket
known as the N-1. When the N-1 was ready to test
launch, the LK and LOK were still being built, so a
modified L-1 spacecraft known as the L-1S was used
as the primary payload. The N-1 was supposed to
place the L-1S and a dummy LK on a trajectory
toward the Moon. Once there, the L-1S alone would
enter lunar orbit to take high-resolution photos of
proposed landing sites and then return to Earth with
the exposed film. For the mission, an Orientation
Engine Module (DOK) would be attached to the
front of the L-1S to slow it enough to place it into
lunar orbit, after which the DOK would be jettisoned.
The L-1S would then use its own propulsion
system, located in the Instrument Module, to accelerate
out of lunar orbit for the return to Earth. The
spacecraft would perform a double-skip reentry as in
previous L-1/Zond flights as a test of the nearly identical
LOK Descent Module. However, four successive
failures of the N-1’s huge 30-engine first stage left the
L-3 program in tatters.
Realizing that the Moon race was lost, the Soviets
attempted to beat Apollo 11 at the last moment with
an automated sample return, but Luna 15 crashlanded
just as Armstrong and Aldrin were on their
way back from the surface. Subsequently, the Soviets
switched their main goal in manned spaceflight to
establishing a permanent presence in Earth orbit,
adapting their Moon-era hardware to launch a number
of Salyut space stations, and using Soyuz spacecraft
to ferry crews and supplies for missions of
increasing duration. Their lunar ambitions were confined
to large robotic sample-return, rover, and orbiter
missions in the form of Lunas 16 through 24.
185, 186
(See table, “Soviet Launches Related to Manned
Lunar Programs.”)
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