Soviet Union

With the help of German rocket scientists who had not surrendered to Operation Paperclip, the Soviet booster program also advanced rapidly following the end of World War II. The Soviets reorganized V-2 production, under ex-Peenemünde engineer Helmut Gröttrup. V-2s were static tested in Lehesten under Soviet rocket engineer V. P. Glushko. On October 28, 1946, German rocket engineers were shipped without prior notice to Moscow. Here they were divided into two groups: one in a Moscow suburb near Datschen (Nii-88), the other on the island of Gorodomlya in Lake Seliger, 150 miles northwest of Moscow. The two groups merged in the Winter of 1948, and the Soviet continued to consult German engineers (Gatland 1989, pp. 12-13).

On October 30, 1947, the Soviets began launch tests of V-2 derivative missiles near Kaputsin Yar. The first missile flew nearly due east for 281 km landing not too far from the target. A V-2 launched the subsequent day of October 31, 1947, went out of control and crashed after reaching a height of 152 meters (Gatland 1989, p. 13). After German known-how had been absorbed by the Soviets, the Germans were repatriated.

The SS-6 Sapwood performed the first ICBM flight at intercontinental distances on August 27, 1957. Liquid oxygen and hydrocarbon fueled the engines. On May 26, 1955, the Soviet Union launched two dogs on a geophysical rocket from Kaputsin Yar. Seven more similar suborbital flights were flown over the next two years (Gatland 1989 p. 14). On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth in Vostok 1, propelled aloft by a Vostok or A-1 (NATO designation R-7) booster launched from the Baikonur Space Center. The A-1 weighed approximately 4725 kilograms. The A-1 was later augmented to allow 7500 kilograms to be placed in low earth orbit. This booster was called the A-2, and its maiden voyage carried Cosmos 22. Modifications of the A-2 booster, with additional strap-ons, were used to launch the Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz series of missions. An upper escape stage, the A-2-e, was added to the A-1 as early as October, 1960, to launch unmanned planetary probes. The Salyut space stations, which weighed 19,000 kilograms, required a larger booster. This need was met with the Proton launcher.

These missions consisted of about four unmanned flights of a modified Soyuz spacecraft, under the name Zond. These Zonds were basically Soyuzes without the orbital module, and were launched by 4 stage Proton boosters. Supposedly, they were ready to fly the first manned mission of one of these just weeks before Apollo 8 flew in December 1968, but unspecified problems forced a delay, and they decided not to go through with a less impressive mission than Apollo 8 after the US success. Whether they stood any real chance of making the first manned landing is much less clear. Michael Collins (1974) mentions the fact that cosmonauts were training on helicopters as the thing that convinced most of the US astronaut corps that the Soviets were serious about a lunar landing. A US team apparently verified that the Russians had a lunar landing craft ready to fly in 1968. That is one year before the Apollo 11 moon landing. They were to use two separate launches. One to launch the return vehicle using a Proton rocket, the other to launch the lander using a larger N1 rocket.

The N1 was plagued with failures and was scrapped in favor of the Energiya booster. As far as I know, there were three launches of the N-1 booster, all unsuccessful. The first may not have cleared the pad, and the second two failed at altitudes around 40 km due to ``pogo'' oscillations. There may have been 4 N-1 flights instead of 3. The N-1 was planned to launch the Soviet Lunar Module (which had had a series of successful unmanned earth orbit tests) and to contain enough fuel and rocketry to handle TLI, LOI, and TEI. A standard Soyuz would have been launched separately, and after rendezvousing with the other payload, would function as the command module. The failure of the N1 led to the postponing of the landing attempt and subsequent cancellation following the Apollo success.

It is interesting to note that the Soviets have never launched cosmonauts on any boosters other than the SL3 and SL4 (which share the first two stages, and are distinguished by their third stage). The lunar landing program as described above would not have required them to man-rate any new boosters either. The lunar flyby program would have required them to launch cosmonauts on top of a Proton booster. Presumably, Energiya is intended to be man-rated, but it looks like the first manned shuttle flight may be manned only during the descent portion after docking with Mir.

A Soviet lunar landing before the American would have been nearly impossible. The US landing was preceded by 5 unmanned soft landings, 5 lunar orbiting mapping missions, and manned checkout of all of the hardware in both earth and lunar orbits, and was even so pretty fast track. The Soviets had, prior to Apollo 11, done two unmanned rough lunar landings, maybe two non-mapping lunar orbital missions, and no manned flights of any of the hardware, other than Soyuz. They had not even done a manned flight longer than 5 days at that point, and round trip to the moon is 6, so it's not ultimately surprising that their effort came up short. It is most unlikely that they could have made it to the Moon first with a systematic program of gradually more ambitious tests, like the US one. Just possibly, if things had gone a little bit better, they could have mounted an all-up attempt at doing the whole mission cold.

One of the factors that prompted NASA to send Apollo 8 into lunar orbit in December, 1968, was an intelligence report that the Soviets were ready to launch a piloted moon mission of their own. In 198 Leonov told Andrew Chaiken that he was to command the first Soviet circumlunar mission. The flight would have taken place in a two-seat Zond spacecraft, which Leonov said was sort of similar to the Earth-orbital Soyuz. Leonov's flight engineer was to be Oleg Makarov. Asked whether the mission was targeted for December, 1968, Leonov could not remember. Intense preparations were under way for the Moon flight when the Apollo 8 success robbed the Soviet effort of its momentum. We considered the flight had been done, Leonov said. We would have gained nothing new. We turned our attention to unmanned missions and manned flights in Earth orbit. Clearly the Soviets were serious about the race to the Moon, though, for Leonov also confirmed that he and other cosmonauts trained for a lunar landing mission (Chaiken 1990).

Further details about the Soviet lunar program came to light in December 1989 when American professors visiting Moscow were allowed to photograph what they were told were piloted lunar spacecraft. Professors from MIT and Caltech were allowed to view what were described as Soviet lunar spacecraft during a visit to Moscow. They saw a version of the lunar lander designed to carry one cosmonaut to the surface. Its descent stage housed three engines and had four legs. It would have remained on the Moon after the cosmonauts ascended to rendezvous with his companion in lunar orbit. The Earth-return vehicle had an upper orbital module and a lower reentry module (Chaiken 1990).

A new rocket, the Photon booster, was used to launch payloads from 1985 through the present. The SL-16 Cyclone next generation medium launch vehicle was given its first suborbital test of in April, 1985. It is believed that the first orbital attempt was made on June 21, 1985. Photon missions included Cosmos 1645, Cosmos 1744, Cosmos 1841, as well as three undesignated launches on April 14, 1988; April 26, 1989, and April 11, 1990.

Photon Launches

Launch Date	Reentry Date	Vehicle	Spacecraft
		Phot-A1	Cosmos 1645
		Phot-A2	Cosmos 1744
		Phot-A3	Cosmos 1841
04-14-1989	04-28-1988	Phot-A4
04-26-1989	05-12-1989	Phot-A6
04-11-1990		Phot-A7

Energiya, NATO designation SL-W/SL-X-17, the worlds most powerful heavy lift rocket, underwent its maiden flight on May 15, 1987. During its first flight, the first stage kerosene/oxygen strap-on boosters performed nominally, as did the second stage cryogenic propulsion system. The payload pod, however, failed to achieve orbit when the integral propulsion system failed. It was subsequently used to launch the unmanned Soviet Space Shuttle Buran on November 15, 1988.

In July, 1990, NPO Energomash, the Soviet big-rocket-engine company, offered the RD-170 engine for sale to Western civilian users. This is the engine used by the Zenit first stage and the Energiya strap-ons. It comes with engineering services to customize it to the customer's launcher. The engine is noteworthy for being designed for re-use, and for having relatively gradual thrust buildup and die-down to reduce stresses on the launcher (AW&ST, July 23, 1990).

References

Soviet Space Program