Russia still blue over moon landing 40 years later

[BlueJessamine]

Source: Associated Press

MOSCOW — When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, it was a first for the Soviet Union — the first time the U.S. had beaten the U.S.S.R in the space race. Forty years later, the memory of that loss of primacy still seems to sting the Russian soul. When state TV channel Rossiya reported last week on the restoration of video footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the account gave a lot of attention to dubious conspiracy theories that the landing was faked.

"In the United States, more than anywhere else, they are sure of the believability of the steps on the moon," the report said, adding that Armstrong keeps a very low profile. "This also seems strange to many people."

For a dozen years before the July 20, 1969, moon landing, Moscow racked up an extraordinary array of superlatives. It was the first to send a craft into orbit, with the Sputnik satellite in 1957. The first human to go into outer space was Russian Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Moscow sent the woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; and Alexei Leonov was the first person to venture outside a spacecraft into the endless cosmos, in 1965.

Russia even got to the moon first when the unmanned Luna 2 crashed in 1959. But the drama of the first human footprint on an extraterrestrial body eclipsed everything the Soviets had worked so hard to achieve.


Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iPisDTByWooBdNMk1gFIH7PVNP4AD99HGMOO0

---

Russia's manned mission to Mars:

snip

"They keep talk in tantalizing terms about mounting a manned mission to Mars, although they say that would take at least another 20 years to get off the ground."

[ohio2007]

1. New Photos Reveal Apollo 11 at First Moon Landing Site

In this image, the Apollo 11 lunar lander and it shadow can be seen in a view from NASA's new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is scouting the moon for new landing sites for future astronauts. Credit: NASA/GSFC/ASU





Many details of the NASA's Apollo 14 moon landing site are seen in this view from the new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, including the Antares lander, astronaut footprints and science experiments. Credit: NASA/GSFC/ASU

http://www.space.com/news/090717-lro-apollo11-images.html


other nice pics released by NASA from the current

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html

photo shop ? ;)

[BlueJessamine]

2. Awesome pics and info...

thanks for posting!:fistbump:

photo shop? I don't think so.

:)

[ohio2007]

6. Thought I better post them before the thread got locked

"the truth" about the lunar landings is under question by followers of a certain tin foil crowd.



http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=596_1234562802




The Moon Landing. The Lost Tapes


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=001_1226168579

[zonkers]

3. Moon would have been more fun if we would have found a few wrecked chevies or something.

LETS GO TO MARS!!!!!!!!!!

[BlueJessamine]

7. LOL!

:rofl:

:applause:

[Dogmudgeon]

36. Like this one?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc3_1178609455">Secret Apollo 20 mission finds enormous spacecraft of unknown origin.

It's one cool-ass fake ... or IS it?

--d!

[jimlup]

23. Thanks for the link

These are really helpful in disproving the ridiculous moon hoax stuff.

[ohio2007]

28. Interesting short video of who should be taking the next small step for mankind

NASA space shuttle "Space truck" was a white elephant mistake. jmo but they are finally going back to what worked.
But in the meantime, private enterprise is what "makes jobs" so sprinkle a little stimulus dust in that direction and let them work on incentive;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIBPcPDEWyg&NR=1

Private Moon Rover Aims for Apollo 11 Landing Site

Nearly 40 years after Americans first set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969 with NASA's historic Apollo 11 flight, a host of private rocketeers are hoping to follow to win a $30 million prize. Here, SPACE.com looks at Astrobotic, one of 17 teams competing in the Google Lunar X Prize:

If there's one name that's on the lips of many Google Lunar X Prize competitors, it's Astrobotic. The team boast More..s a name that readily conveys its ambitious aspirations for reaching the moon and beyond.

"Astrobotic Technology is going to do a series of missions for scouting, prospecting, mining, and all sorts of things that robots can do to get ready for the human return to the moon," said David Gump, President of Astrobotic.

Winning the Google Lunar X Prize requires teams to land a robot on the moon, move at least 1,640 feet (500 meters) and beam high definition views back to Earth.

The team plans for a pinpoint landing just over a mile from the Apollo 11 site, where Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Astrobotic's "Red Rover" would then beam back high-definition images of the dusty footprints left by Armstrong and fellow Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, all while taking care not to disturb the historical site.

That rover takes its name from team expert Red Whittaker, a famed Carnegie Mellon University roboticist who led his team to victory in the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge.

Astrobotic also gained serious financial muscle by partnering with Raytheon Company — a leading aerospace and defense corporation — to help establish itself as a long-term player in the race back to the moon and beyond. Carnegie Mellon University and Arizona State's Lunar and Planetary Institute have similarly signed on.

snip


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e8e_1248024942

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxinxVnTiLo&feature=player_embedded

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

24. Apollo landing site photos

There was also a good photo of the Apollo 14 landing site.

[crickets]

26. I see what you did there.

Starbucks on the footpath, bwahaha! :rofl: Good one.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DavidDvorkin]

8. Foolish reaction

We would not have had the Apollo program if not for fear of the Soviet space program.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a good thing over all, but the loss of the Soviet space program was a technological tragedy for the world.

[AlphaCentauri]

9. Also we don't know how much Russian and German technology

was used in the Apollo space program, some of the first rockets were based on the Nazi V-2. Not everything was made in the US.

[DavidDvorkin]

13. Whereas the Soviets really did have to invent most of what they used

[Igel]

27. Actually, post-WWII

there was a wholesale transfer of technology and personnel from the Nazi's rocket program to the USSR. It gave them a huge jumpstart. We pretty much got personnel, but the Russians dismantled entire factories and moved them to the USSR.

Add to the mix a couple of other factors--the first being that safety was a bit less important there than here, both in manufacturer and in flight. After all, it was a shock to the Russian psyche in the late '80s when the first plane crash was reported, and again when Literaturka reported on the suicide rate. Until then there were no plane crashes or suicides, it would seem. Now, people knew that the government was lying, but that's small comfort.

The second was that the crew on Russian spacecraft were neutered. They weren't trained well, because they made no decisions. They also didn't much have to follow orders, since ground flew the craft. It makes it a lot easier to get the bird in flight and pilot it, if you don't trust your crew.

A third factor was the nature of the boosters that they used. For early flights they merely bundled together older boosters. It wasn't until the '70s and beyond that they had some innovative engine designing, and some bits of the RD-180 (mostly pirated from earlier versions of the RD series) are still pretty neat. Some manufacturing processes, however, are still very, um, quaint, and caused us some head-scratching as we translated the production documentation and even the design specs ("Could they *really* mean what it sounds like they mean? Damn, they do!"). The US assembly line for the engine, if needed, would merge some still innovative Soviet techniques with faster and superior American manufacturing technology (however, it's still cheaper to buy them from the Russians than to build them here).

Note that the lack of openness also accounted for some of the shock when we walked on the moon. It was too important an event to overlook, but until that the USSR media had basically said that the USSR was the most advanced, most prosperous, most free country on earth, with all others--esp. the USA, forever close to societal and economic collapse--trailing. It was what made some of the cultural trades in the '70s so difficult, and what made the acknowledgement under glasnost' that the USSR was a pretty backwards place compared to E. Europe, and even more backwards compared to W. Europe and the US, a very bitter pill to swallow. To some extent, it's the bitterness of a woman towards her husband's mistress, who tries to blame the other woman for corrupting her sweet, innocent husband and yet deep down knows that the "other woman" is simply the flavor of the month for her husband.

[DavidDvorkin]

30. We got the German brains

The Soviets had to supply their own.

[No Elephants]

37. Did we kidnap the German rocket scientists?

[DavidDvorkin]

40. They came willingly, but they still ended up in the US

contributing their knowledge and skills to the US program.

We also used captured V2 rockets as a starting point for ours.

[Posteritatis]

15. I consider the moonshot a human achievement first and foremost, personally. (nt)

[Blue_Tires]

18. +1

[AlphaCentauri]

45. It all depends on how much humanity as a whole has benefited from this achievement n/t

[jimlup]

22. Actually I believe we know quite a bit about this

The moon rocket was based directly on the V2. The program was lead by Warner Von Bran who was the German rocket scientist behind the V2. Much of America's post WWII rocket technology follows in this heritage. The Saturn V was the ultimate great-grand-child of the V2. This is not secret though other pieces of the post WWII Nazi brain trust which fell into US hands probably are.

[Captain Hilts]

14. How many Soviet/Russian space scientists have you dined with in Moscow? I know some.

Great folks. Smart guys. I have a world of respect for what they did.

But we beat them to the moon. They beat us into space.

There you go.

[Posteritatis]

16. But you'll still sneer at them and throw slurs? Nice. (nt)

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Vidar]

5. I had great hope for the International Space Station as a jumping off

point for internationally cooperative space exploration, but the spirit behind that effort seems to have died.

[AlphaCentauri]

10. I would be disappointed if the moon start serving as a shooting range

as was Vieques. Just turning the moon in a military training camp.

[Vidar]

11. Good point.

[Ezana]

12. I do tbelieve that the US has landed on the moon in 1969 but something does ...

always wonders me. What is the reason for the US not to continue landing on the moon and exploring it further ?

Why does it take another 40 years for the US to start thinking about landing on the moon again ?

[Lagomorph]

20. No bucks, no Buck Rogers...

The whole moon program was a huge risk, designed to get there first, but we were decades ahead of the technology we would need to stay there or exploit it's resources.

We decided to put a space station in orbit and invest research dollars in reusable spacecraft, and all the multitude of disciplines we needed to develop.

We made it to the moon and back, which required a big rocket and some small space craft, but we waited for things like computers and information technology, metal alloys, plastics and bio-engineering technology to catch up.

ETA: I remember NASA people saying all this at the end of the Apollo program. They said we had a lot of R&D to do before we could hope to establish a long term presence in space.

[MicaelS]

21. Because there was a lack of support across the board

Nixon hated the space program because it was a Democratic achievement. He didn't want to continue to support it. He severely cut the budget after the moon landings. NASA wanted to send men to Mars, build a space station, the Space Shuttle and continue to send probes to the outer planets. All he let them have was the shuttle. Democrats in Congress started to turn against the space program because they felt it was a "waste of money that could be better spent on the poor and the downtrodden." Republicans claimed it was a "waste of their tax money on a bunch of rocks." Seniors cried "what about my Social Security?" The military was obsessed with Vietnam and the USSR.

As a historical footnote, Nixon's undelivered speech if there had been a disaster during the first landing. http://watergate.info/nixon/moon-disaster-speech-1969.shtml

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The following speech, revealed in 1999, was prepared by Nixon's then speechwriter, William Safire, to be used in the event of a disaster that would maroon the astronauts on the moon:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

[ngant17]

32. Nixon promoted Apollo-Soyuz, a cooperative effort

which was exactly what Pres. Kennedy had envisioned for NASA in 1963, a joint mission with the Soviets in space. Apollo was never designed to be a space race, but NASA upper level management was fighting against Kennedy to the very end. Very likely Pres. Kennedy would not have signed off on NASA's appropriations in Dec. 1963, had he not been gunned down in Dallas the month before.

OTOH, the "Nixon Doctrine" was delivered live on TV at almost the same moment the first moon landing was taking place. It was a bellicose policy that escalated the war all over SE Asia, by extending it into Cambodian territory with extensive carpet bombings and direct invasions, none of which did much to stiffle NVA activities. The Nixon Doctrine was responsible for ushering in the Cambodian civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime. This was a true "Mad Man Theory" which Nixon was entirely to be blamed.

When Nixon authorized another invasion of Cambodia the following year, in late April 1970 (15,000 US troops supported by over 4,000 ARVN troops), it ultimately led to American protests everywhere, of which the most well-known one was the protest and massacre at Kent State University were 15 students were shot by the Ohio National Guard, four of them killed. Soon 100,000 protesters would converge upon the White House.

[No Elephants]

38. Thank heaven they came back. Among many other things, the world was spared that mawkish speech.

:puke:

[theboss]

25. Expense + danger

In all honesty, there is very little that manned spaceflight can currently achieve that unmanned space flight cannot do better, safer, and cheaper. The whole purpose of the Apollo Program was to prove that we could do it.

The same is true for a trip to Mars. The cost and danger of going to Mars is extraordinary. And the only real benefit is a sense of accomplishment.

[No Elephants]

39. Actually, the whole point was to give people the ability to say, "They can

put a man on the moon, but they can't {fill in technology gap of your choice.}" (j/k)

And then there was the bit about vindicating JFK's statement, one of history's best examples of the power of goal-setting.

[ohio2007]

29. It was a case of "Been there, done that" over and over and over.....

there was talk of a space ring, assembling and building space ships from that point but...

Seems we were satisified with "space food sticks" washed down with









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf1kw5Yp9Ck

[ngant17]

33. The first Apollo landing was definitely faked

ever watch the James Bond movie, "Diamonds are Forever" with the fake moon set? Also the movie "Capricorn One"?

[Lagomorph]

34. I don't mix movies with reality.

:eyes:

[ngant17]

35. Over 5000 moon photos taken in over 4800 minutes

of time spent on the moon? It could not be done.

I don't think the Hasselbad cameras could have handled the radiation exposures anyway.

[TrogL]

42. That's one of the most ridiculous arguments yet.

That's just over a picture a minute. Anybody halfways familiar with an SLR camera can take a picture every few seconds.

Radiation would not affect a manual camera's workings. The film was stored in shielded containers.

[ohio2007]

44. It's what "they" tell them to think

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NyyC-UjBM&feature=related


time to lock the thread

[TrogL]

41. If you've ever actually watched Capricorn One, you'll see why it couldn't be faked

Ham Radio enthusiasts were monitoring the unencrypted audio and telemetry.

Kids like me were watching the spacecraft go overhead with binoculars.

[ohio2007]

43. Whoopie Goldberg is in da house

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZD9H4YgCs&feature=related

[jimlup]

31. Problem is that the station is in the wrong orbit

for serving as a platform. It is in too high an orbit in order that it pass over the Russian launch site.

(At least physically, it isn't a good site for a space platform.)

[jimlup]

17. Back to the moon

but not on to Mars. We should attempt a real colony on the poles of the moon, especially if H20 is confirmed on the moon. But going on to Mars is premature. We should spend more exploring Mars robotic-ally.

[jakeXT]

46. Recording tracks Russia's Moon gatecrash attempt

By Jonathan Brown

Friday, 3 July 2009

A never-before-heard recording of the dramatic moment in which British boffins observed a Soviet attempt to scupper American victory in the race to the Moon has been made available to the public for the first time.


With characteristic understatement, scientists at Jodrell Bank, led by its founder Sir Bernard Lovell can be heard as they track the Russian’s Luna 15 probe as it crashes into the surface of the moon just hours after the American Eagle Lander was due to begin its return journey in July 1969.

In stark contrast to the whoops of jubilation from Nasa’s highly-charged mission control at Cape Canaveral in Florida, a cool calm Sir Bernard can be heard describing the unfolding events in measured tones.

...

It is calculated now however that even if it had landed safely rather than careering out of control into the lunar surface and completed its objectives of recovering soil and rock samples from the Moon, its trajectory meant it would still have been too slow to beat Neil Armstrong and his crew back to Earth and whatever limited propaganda value Moscow may have squeezed out of the situation would have been lost. During an earlier Soviet moon probe, Luna 9, the Jodrell team captured images from the craft and used a primitive fax from the offices of the Daily Express in Manchester to print the pictures being sent down from space.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/recording-tracks-russias-moon-gatecrash-attempt-1730851.html