- 5 hours ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Tonight on NOVA, the Russian right stuff.
00:06The deepest secrets of the Soviet space program can finally be told.
00:10How the cosmonauts tried and failed to land on the moon.
00:15Once clear leaders in the space race, a string of disasters set them back years.
00:21After the moon program collapsed, they tried to hide all the evidence.
00:24The story of this Soviet defeat is the dark side of the moon.
00:45Funding for NOVA is provided by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies.
00:51Supplying health care products worldwide.
00:54And Lockheed, a bold new force in systems engineering.
01:00Management and technology services for defense, space and industry.
01:06Major funding for NOVA is provided by the financial support of viewers like you.
01:14I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a
01:23man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
01:25No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long-range
01:34exploration of space.
01:35And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
01:43When President Kennedy laid down this challenge, the Soviet Union already had secret plans to land a man on the
01:51moon.
01:52They spent billions of rubles on this race.
01:55Yet for over two decades, they pretended their program did not exist.
02:00It is the biggest cover-up in the history of space travel.
02:10If the Soviet lunar program had been successful, this man might have taken the first step on the moon.
02:21Alexei Leonov was one of three cosmonauts selected to pilot the Soviet lunar landing craft.
02:29There was a total of nine cosmonauts in the program.
02:33Some, like Leonov, were training to land on the moon.
02:36Others were preparing to fly around it.
02:39They were not allowed to discuss these plans outside their closed group.
02:43Until recently, it has remained a forbidden subject.
02:48Today, for the first time, General Leonov agreed to describe his secret mission.
02:58This is the main antenna.
03:00In Russian versions, we have only one man, which is landing to the moon.
03:08And the step...
03:12This is the position...
03:18Cosmonaut.
03:20Cosmonaut.
03:21He can see through this window.
03:24And select place for landing on the moon.
03:29He had about 25 seconds for selecting.
03:39In 1959, the Soviet Union established an early lead in the race by launching several unmanned rockets towards the moon.
03:48They successfully crash-landed an object on its surface.
03:52And then flew another probe behind the moon.
03:55It sent back pictures of the far side, which had never been seen before.
04:01In 1963, Premier Khrushchev was basking in the reflected glory of the cosmonauts.
04:09Their space flights had been a great political trial.
04:13The Soviet Union had just scored a double first with the first woman, as well as the first man in
04:20space.
04:21And Khrushchev wanted more.
04:25The American astronauts put on a brave face, but they had taken second place every time.
04:31They never knew what to expect next.
04:34Whenever NASA thought it was narrowing the gap, the Soviets would strike again.
04:42The early single-seat spaceships had served their purpose.
04:46Both sides had orbited the Earth, and both were now gearing up for the next round with bigger capsules and
04:53rockets on the drawing board.
04:54Khrushchev, the chief designer behind the Soviet space program, was now developing his strategy to put a man on the
05:09moon.
05:11A new giant rocket would have to be built, big enough to carry a lander and command module to the
05:18moon.
05:19Khrushchev would have to fight great battles over the design of this rocket, and what fuel it should use.
05:31Once in lunar orbit, it was planned that a cosmonaut would make a spacewalk from the command module to the
05:37lander,
05:38which was folded up inside the lower stage.
05:44Blasting the lander free, this cosmonaut would begin his descent to the moon, while his partner remained in orbit.
05:57The Soviets knew it would be safer to land two men, as the Americans were planning to do.
06:03But the Soviet rocket would not be able to carry the extra weight.
06:10After a few hours on the surface, the cosmonaut would return to the command module for the journey back to
06:16Earth.
06:19But the moon landing was years away, and the chief designer faced a more immediate challenge.
06:26He knew that NASA had plans to launch a two-seat spacecraft called Gemini,
06:31which would allow astronauts to rendezvous in orbit and perform spacewalks.
06:38Korolyov had a three-man spaceship on the drawing board.
06:41This craft, called Soyuz, was a brilliantly adaptable design,
06:46which could be used for the moon missions and link-ups in space.
06:50But it would not be ready in time to beat Gemini.
06:56To satisfy Korolyov's demands, Korolyov hatched a desperate plan.
07:02To convert the old, single-seat Vostok,
07:05which had taken Gagarin and the other cosmonauts to space, into a three-seater.
07:11Many of the engineers rebelled,
07:14because safety would have to be sacrificed in order to stay ahead of the Americans.
07:27Konstantin Vyoktistov, one of Korolyov's most talented designers,
07:32was at the center of this protest.
07:35He was also an outspoken critic of the moon program.
07:41Korolyov's devious plan to rid himself of a troublemaker was a masterstroke.
07:45He knew that Vyoktistov wanted to travel to space himself.
07:51The question of sending three men on the Vostok came up many times.
08:02Each time we argued that it would be unsafe,
08:05that it would be better to be patient and wait for the Soyuz spaceship to be built.
08:10This craft would take two or three people
08:13and would have sophisticated safety systems.
08:20In the end, of course, he got his way.
08:24In February 1964, he outmitted us.
08:29He said that if we could build a ship based on the Vostok design,
08:33which would carry three people,
08:36then one of those places would be offered to an engineer.
08:42Well, this was a very seductive offer.
08:46And a few days later, we produced some rough sketches.
08:54Our first ideas were accepted.
09:00We unveiled our plans for this new ship in March or April.
09:06It became known as the Voshod.
09:11To adapt the old Vostok,
09:14the ejection seat and control systems had to be removed.
09:19Three seats were then installed.
09:21It would be too cramped for spacesuits.
09:24Track suits would have to do.
09:27In an emergency, escape would be impossible.
09:34As for safety, I would say it was totally ignored.
09:41Well, why was that?
09:44I wish I knew.
09:47Are you saying the flight wasn't safe?
09:50It was far from safe.
09:53Even though he knew the risks better than anyone else,
09:55Fiukhtistov donned his flying helmet
09:58to become the first engineer to venture into space.
10:02On October 12, 1964,
10:05the intrepid three-man crews squeezed into the pod
10:08and were ready for blast-off.
10:17Our rocket engines developed about 10 million horsepower.
10:23If you think of one person riding a horse,
10:27in our case, it was as if we were riding 10 million horses.
10:31It was a tremendous feeling,
10:33particularly the physical effects on the body,
10:37the noise, the atmosphere.
10:40The experience of liftoff is one of the most powerful feelings
10:44of a space flight.
10:45In 24 hours, they flew 16 orbits round the Earth.
10:50The gamble had paid off.
10:54It was another blow to American morale.
11:00James Oberg,
11:02a NASA mission controller and Soviet space analyst,
11:05recalls how easy it was to jump to the wrong conclusions.
11:09Well, the three men in the capsule was another major Soviet success,
11:13a major space spectacular.
11:14At the time, Western observers didn't appreciate
11:17how much of a shame it really was.
11:18To them, it was an Apollo-type mission
11:20flown before even our first Gemini flight.
11:22It was very depressing and very successful
11:25from the Soviet propaganda point of view.
11:30Only those inside the Soviet design bureau knew the truth.
11:34The program made no contribution whatsoever to the further development of space research.
11:41It was simply a waste of time.
11:47Sending three people into space together was done purely for prestige.
11:54On the day the three cosmonauts returned from space,
11:58Brezhnev ousted Khrushchev.
12:01This political change would have a profound effect on the future of the space program.
12:11Different design chiefs lobbied for power,
12:14and destructive arguments about the design of the moon rocket intensified.
12:23The designers who lived through those bitter years are only now willing to discuss the moon battles.
12:32Kurolyov's deputy, Vasily mission, would be destroyed by these rivalries.
12:38He has pictures of the secret N1 moon rocket, which are still classified.
12:44But he did agree to draw it instead.
12:49It was a heavy three-stage rocket.
12:53It had 30 engines, each developing 150 tons of thrust.
13:00It would carry payloads of up to 92 to 95 tons.
13:06So it was clear that we wouldn't be able to send three people up.
13:15The Americans had their launch pad at Cape Canaveral,
13:22which was geographically far more favorable than we had at Baikonur.
13:29Because of the rotation of the Earth, when they launched towards the east,
13:34their rockets developed greater speed than ours.
13:38Also, from the very beginning, theirs was a fully integrated national program.
13:47But the main thing they did was to create a very good nerve center, NASA.
13:54NASA was beginning to take the lead.
13:57While it was successfully enlisting dozens of corporations to build the Saturn moon rocket,
14:03the rival Soviet design bureau were fighting over who should build what.
14:09They argued about the size of the engines and what kind of fuels to use.
14:16Karolyov's original rocket was fueled with liquid oxygen and kerosene.
14:20For the N1 moon rocket, his engine designer wanted to use some new dangerously corrosive fuels.
14:27After an angry showdown, he left Karolyov to work on a smaller rocket called Proton.
14:33This disastrous split meant that an aircraft designer with no knowledge of rockets
14:38had to take over the giant N1.
14:41It was a plumber's nightmare with miles of piping feeding its 30 engines.
14:52While the engineers set to work, the chief designer had another surprise up his sleeve.
14:57To get to the moon, they would need to develop a new technique.
15:02Space walking.
15:04Karolyov chose Alexei Leonov for the job.
15:08He told me, put on a space suit and see whether it's possible for a human being to walk in
15:15space.
15:18Earlier, he said the famous words,
15:21just as a sailor on board an ocean liner must know how to swim,
15:26so a cosmonaut on a spaceship must know how to swim in open space.
15:32For the cosmonaut to leave the ship, they designed a flexible airlock,
15:37which looked rather like a shower curtain.
15:40Voskot 2 was similar to Voskot 1,
15:43except it only had two seats in order to accommodate space suits
15:46and to give the space walker enough room to maneuver into the airlock.
15:51Once inside, he would shut the inner hatch and open the outer.
15:55It was ingenious, but not easy to use, as Leonov would discover.
16:03Climbing in and out was a struggle.
16:05The success of the moon missions depended on being able to perform a space walk
16:10with a self-contained air supply.
16:14The first time I put on a space suit,
16:17I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move.
16:23There were many problems that had to be resolved.
16:28Problems with the airlock, which had to be compact, but also easy to use.
16:33Then the problems with the space suit and the life support system.
16:38This backpack weighed 36 kilos.
16:43The air pressure inside was 300 atmospheres.
16:47300 atmospheres.
16:51Yet, you had to be able to carry it like a normal backpack.
16:57It was much the 18th.
17:00It was snowing that morning at the Cosmodrome,
17:04which was unusual for Kazakhstan.
17:07We put on our space suits and went out to the rocket.
17:16Sergei Pavlovich came up to me, shook my hand,
17:21and said he hoped everything would go according to plan,
17:26and wished me a sunny wind.
17:33Thank you very much for your attention.
17:36I should have known for my life.
17:37The sun is near the sky.
17:38The sun is near the sky.
17:40The sun is near the sky.
17:57The sun is near the sky.
18:19I opened the door, the space door, and I saw, I saw
18:27sky, very black sky, many, many stars, blue stars, big stars, very brightly sun, very quiet,
18:43very quiet, very quiet, I heard my heart and breathing, breathing and breathing and breathing.
19:02It was an extraordinary sensation, I had never felt quite like it before, I was free above
19:13the planet Earth, and I saw it, so it was rotating majestically below me.
19:25Suddenly, in the silence, I heard the words, attention, attention, man has entered open space.
19:35He floated in space for 10 minutes, and would spend the next 12 trying to get back in.
19:43I couldn't get back in straight away.
19:46My space suit had ballooned out, and the pressure was quite considerable.
19:52I was tired, and couldn't go in feet first, as I had been taught to do.
19:59But using a valve down here, I decreased, where is the valve here?
20:07I decreased the pressure to just under 0.27 atmospheres.
20:11Then I felt freer, and I could move about more easily.
20:19Then I pushed myself into the airlock, head first, with my arms, arms holding the rails,
20:29holding the rails.
20:30I had to turn myself upside down in the airlock, in order to enter the ship feet first.
20:38And this was very difficult.
20:46Leonov was lucky to escape with his life.
20:48He very nearly ran out of air in his struggle to re-enter the airlock.
20:53And by releasing the pressure in his bloated space suit, he also risked an attack of the bends.
21:00The return to Earth was just as traumatic.
21:03The automatic navigation system failed.
21:06So, with Yuri Gagarin talking them down, they had to land the craft manually.
21:14During re-entry, the aerials burned off.
21:17The crew had no way of communicating with mission control.
21:25In fact, they were a thousand miles off course, and had to be rescued from a forest.
21:44They returned triumphant in the knowledge that a successful spacewalk had been achieved months before the Americans.
21:53Kurolyov welcomed back another hero of the Soviet Union, knowing how crucial this latest triumph was to the moon program.
22:03By the mid-60s, the Soviet manned lunar program was well underway.
22:08Yet, in this Moscow museum, there's nothing to suggest the existence of their most ambitious space endeavor.
22:15Only the hardware from their successful unmanned lunar probes is on display.
22:21Before 1966, nobody knew what the lunar surface is like.
22:31Some scientists said that it is like stone.
22:35Some scientists said that it is very deep dust there, maybe three meters.
22:44And we must design our aperture very good to all these surfaces.
22:56Georgi Gretzko helped to design a bouncing probe capable of settling on any kind of lunar terrain.
23:03This big ball disappeared, and this small fall on the moon surface.
23:11Then, these devices slowly go in this position to send the signal to the Earth.
23:29And could you tell us what happened to the pictures from the moon?
23:36Maybe it was not so good for us, but the truth is truth.
23:48We had, in that time, a very big bureaucratic system.
23:54And when we have the snaps from the moon surface in our bureau, we give it for some small balls.
24:07The small balls give it for not so big balls, and then too big balls, the biggest.
24:15And this way was very long.
24:21At the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope in England, Sir Bernard Lovell started picking up some strange signals.
24:30Using a newspaper facsimile machine, he was able to decode the picture.
24:37So the first pictures from the moon's surface were published not in Pravda, but in the Daily Express.
24:45Korolev never saw them.
24:48He died on the operating table at the age of 59.
24:57During his lifetime, he had been considered so important to the Soviet Union that officially, he had never existed.
25:04Now that he was dead, he could receive the highest accolade, burial in the Kremlin wall.
25:18For me, Korolev was the best, the best scientist, the best designer, the best chief, the best man.
25:30When he was a chef of this designer bureau, we always were ahead of our American colleagues.
25:42Of course, one genius is much better than 1,000 maybe like me.
25:54His successor would have to face some intractable problems.
25:59The battle lines between the rival design groups were more entrenched than ever.
26:05The man who took over was Korolev's deputy, Vasily Mission.
26:12He inherited a moon program that had lost years of development because of political infighting over the N1 moon rocket.
26:20But at last, the long-awaited Soyuz spacecraft, another vital part of the moon project, was ready to fly.
26:29This spaceship would be used for all future manned missions.
26:34The man selected for the maiden flight was Vladimir Komorov, who had commanded the dangerous three-man-in-a-pod
26:42mission.
26:45Komorov was a really good friend of mine, and the man I trusted totally.
26:54He had both a pilot's training and a degree in engineering.
26:59So it was only natural that he should be chosen to test the Soyuz.
27:18After Soyuz 1 was launched, it ran into problems as soon as it reached orbit.
27:24One of the solar panels did not unfold, so the ship's power supplies were too low.
27:30The planned rendezvous with the second Soyuz was canceled, and Komorov was ordered home.
27:37The landing capsule separated, and he began his re-entry.
27:41He was slightly off course and spinning as he entered the atmosphere.
27:45To break the capsule on its descent to Earth, a drogue parachute was released, but the main chute became jammed.
27:53A backup was deployed, and because the capsule was spinning, the two chutes became tangled.
28:07He didn't hear the main parachute burst open. He didn't feel it.
28:12He wasn't aware of the tangle. Of course, he should have stabilized the craft with a backup chute, because he
28:21knew that it was spinning.
28:22But it wasn't spinning that fast. The capsule hit the ground at tremendous speed, and Komorov died.
28:32Komorov's fatal mission was the first under the new chief designer.
28:36This tragedy would set back the Soyuz program over a year.
28:41Gagarin, who was Komorov's backup on the mission, paid tribute.
28:59A year later, Gagarin himself was killed on a routine training exercise, when his plane crashed in some woods.
29:15Leonov, who was an old friend of Gagarin, was asked to try to identify the shattered remains.
29:22In Moscow, there is a hotel called the Unest, where for many years, Yuri Gagarin and I used to have
29:32our hair cut.
29:34There was no barber in Star City, so on Saturday, we used to go there together.
29:41Yuri was in the chair, having his hair cut, and I was watching very carefully.
29:50He had very beautifully shaped head, and there was a mole on the back of his neck.
30:00When the barber got out the razor to tidy up the back, I could see the mole, so I said,
30:05Hey, don't cut the mole. I can see this mole.
30:13When they began to examine his remains, they showed me a part of Yuri Gagarin, the part of his head
30:29and neck, where was the mole.
30:33Up till then, I didn't want to believe that Yuri had died.
30:39But this mole that I had seen on the day before, this spot on the beautiful, strong, young body,
30:52I saw it amongst the remains.
30:57Yes, this is the mole of Yuri Gagarin.
31:02The Soviet space program was now reeling from the death of its patron saint Gagarin,
31:08its founding father, Korolev, and one of its best cosmonauts, Komorov.
31:16The moon seemed further away than ever.
31:26The Soviets knew the Americans were pulling ahead with their Apollo moon program.
31:33But NASA had little idea of what the cosmonauts were up to.
31:37Nikolai Rukovishnikov was training for a secret program which could steal back the lead.
31:42Since their medium-sized rocket Proton was ready, they could now reach lunar orbit.
31:47The mission was codenamed Zond.
31:52The Zond spacecraft were designed to orbit the moon, not to land on it.
31:57It was designed to make a flight circling the moon.
32:01They were to be manned by two people, and as we always do in the Soviet Union,
32:05before sending a man into space, we launched several unmanned flights first.
32:11The first unmanned Zond, having looped around the moon, made an unintentional splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
32:18Its navigation system had failed.
32:20But the cosmonauts were still hoping for a manned flight.
32:26Before the launchers, mistakes were made.
32:29Engineers put plus instead of minus.
32:33Engine systems were wrongly aligned.
32:37This was infuriating and actually caused the loss of a spaceship.
32:44But this would have never happened with a manned mission.
32:48And such missions could have gone ahead.
32:51But after the death of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the program suffered.
32:57There was no strong leader to carry it forward and stay a few steps ahead.
33:05I'm sure that if Korolev hadn't died, a Soviet cosmonaut would definitely have orbited the moon in 1968.
33:17The grounded cosmonauts could only watch as Apollo 8 was launched.
33:22Two weeks earlier, their own flight to circle the moon had been canceled.
33:26I know my own impression is that it's a bad, lonely, forbidding time.
33:35But the Soviets were still in the race.
33:38The giant N1 rocket was just two months away from its first launch.
33:42And Leonov was training hard for a landing on the moon.
33:47He had to learn to fly a helicopter as if it was a lunar lander.
33:55I made nine very difficult landings in that helicopter with the engines cut.
34:03Normally pilots don't do such landings because they usually end in a catastrophe.
34:10But we did it.
34:13We, cosmonauts and pilots, perfected the art.
34:18In the U.S., on a proving ground in Houston,
34:21Neil Armstrong was practicing for the same maneuver.
34:24And his experiences were no less traumatic.
34:43In February 1969, the N1 moon rocket had its maiden flight from this pad.
34:49Seventy seconds after liftoff, it caught fire and blew up.
34:55Six months later, on its second launch, it exploded again.
34:59This time, totally destroying the launch pad.
35:04The Soviet engineers now realized they were unlikely to land a man on the moon before the Americans.
35:10So they accelerated their unmanned program.
35:13This probe, called Luna 15, was designed to bring back rock samples from the moon's surface.
35:22Apollo 11 was launched three days after Luna 15.
35:26The astronauts were racing a robot to the moon.
35:30All sources show the second stage is burning perfectly.
35:33Two minutes, 51 seconds into the mission.
35:36The Soviets had one more chance to get something to the moon first ahead of Apollo.
35:41And that was the lander here, which was supposed to bring back the samples,
35:44before the astronauts could do so.
35:45They launched one of those just shortly before Apollo 11.
35:49And as it reached the moon, as Apollo was circling the moon in July of 1969,
35:55looking, waiting for the landing spot, this was also in orbit, the Luna 15.
35:59And it descended toward the moon and crashed.
36:02Right here, Morya Kryzizov, the Sea of Crisis.
36:06It's just as we were landing on the Morya Kryzizov, right here, successful in the Sea of Tranquility.
36:13Right there.
36:14Luna 15, marker, it's gone.
36:17They haven't even put it back.
36:17Okay, off-flight controllers.
36:19We've been landing.
36:20Retro.
36:21Go.
36:21Quieto.
36:22Go.
36:22Going forward, just into the right a little.
36:26Thirty.
36:26Thirty seconds.
36:27Thirty seconds.
36:29Forty feet down, 2 and a half.
36:31Picking up some dust.
36:33Great shadow.
36:35Contact light.
36:36Okay, engine stopped.
36:37We've had checked out.
36:38We copy you down, Eagle.
36:42That's one small step for man.
36:46One.
36:47giant leap for mankind it was greatest even event event in the world I believe
36:55and really Cheshia so we do me it was extremely interesting when we saw how
37:00Armstrong touch the surface of the moon with his food it was extremely interesting
37:05especially when the television camera which was installed on the Apollo Luna
37:09module showed a bit of the moon surface the ladder and Neil Armstrong's food when
37:15he touched the moon so were you jealous you go comes cousin well what can I say
37:21they were our colleagues and they got there first someone had to get there
37:26first Americans may have been jealous of Gagarin's flight jealousy doesn't enter
37:31into it it made me happy because it was a great achievement for mankind no
37:37specialist our specialists in the Soviet Union were watching the outstanding
37:44American mission with great interest however the Russian people were only
37:53told about it much later several years later many years later what they did
38:05publicize was the success of their next unmanned lunar lander but by the time
38:11Luna 16 robotic arm drilled into the moon's surface four Apollo astronauts had
38:17brought back samples to America
38:21to retrieve the Soviet moon dust it was flicked into a canister and blasted back to
38:27work
38:30it was a clever mission which enabled the Soviet Union to collect moon rock even if it
38:35was only a few ounces the Apollo astronauts would collect several hundred pounds
38:52so although their precious moon dust was important scientifically it had no propaganda value outside the Soviet Union
39:04they were eager to prove they could explore the moon without man who needed cosmonauts anyway
39:11work began on a remote controlled vehicle that could cope with any terrain
39:21looking rather like a Victorian perambulator
39:25Lunacod would actually beat the American buggy to the moon
39:30but the images from the later Apollo flights are the ones which stick
39:33who can forget the joyride of the century
39:36as the lunar buggy bounced over moon dunes
39:39oh this is going to be some kind of different ride
39:46driving Lunacod was much less fun
39:49it was controlled remotely from a lab in Moscow
39:59nevertheless it left the first wheel marks on the moon and trundled around for weeks sending back thousands of pic
40:07it was proclaimed as a victory for unmanned space exploration
40:16I am a representative of the manned space program
40:22so obviously I think it would have been much better to put the money spent on unmanned flight
40:28by the end of the sixties the only way forward for the manned program was to build space stations
40:38which could be used as a base for long duration missions
40:43this was the beginning of a new era in the grand plan
40:48in the early days they investigated the possibility of creating artificial gravity
40:53they hope to counteract the potentially damaging effects of living in the weightless conditions of space
41:03the wind
41:04It is not right, but right on the other side.
41:13The scientists and scientists regularly invite doctors.
41:39artificial gravity stations remained a dream of the future a zero gravity station would be much
41:46easier to construct Konstantin Fyoktistov was one of the engineers who pioneered orbital space
41:53stations he led a powerful lobby which was opposed to spending any more on the ill-fated moon project
42:01in the 1960s it was clear to us engineers that the most important development for manned flights
42:09would be the creation of orbital space stations but the administration was against it mission
42:15the design bureau chief was totally opposed to this he thought that it was important to carry
42:22on with the moon program everything else was nonsense and not worth doing we didn't know how to get the
42:29bosses to change their minds but some well-wishers in the party central committee cunningly inserted a
42:39passage into brezhnev's speech saying that orbital space stations promised the right way forward
42:47so by going behind his boss's back fiyoktistov achieved his goal
42:57the first space station was named salut it was designed to dock with the soyuz spacecraft
43:07it was ready for launch in 1971
43:17dobrovolski volkov and port sayev would be the first crew to try living in space aboard the new station
43:49and they quickly adapted to life on board the station and carried out many experiments
44:06every night for three weeks they entertained a hundred million soviet television viewers
44:11with their reports from the strange weightless world of salut families throughout the land got to know these
44:20three men it made the tragic end of this mission even more shocking as they came back to earth all
44:27the air
44:28in their capsule drained out through a faulty valve there were no spacesuits on board the cosmonauts were dead
44:40in such complicated areas of research as rocket systems and spaceflight technology no one is immune from danger
44:56in the case of poltzaev volkov and dobrovolski
45:00they didn't know how to use the manual control system so this is why the flight ended this way
45:09they could hear they could hear the hiss of escaping air
45:16they could have put a finger over the hole and that would have done it
45:31the nation was stricken with grief but the space station program went on
45:38scores of cosmonauts lived aboard their stations for months at a time without further mishap
45:44they gathered a mass of data on how weightless conditions affect the human body
45:49at the end of 1972 the american astronauts left the moon for the last time
45:57right that way houston that you're good
46:01what has never been revealed is that even after this the soviets planned to win back the lead by
46:07landing three men on the moon chief designer mission's secret plans would require two of the giant
46:14n1 rockets one for the crew and the other to carry a huge lunar lander
46:25once they were orbiting the moon the final stages of the two rockets would dock
46:29and the entire complex would make its descent to the moon's surface
46:44the three cosmonauts would live for up to a month on the moon
46:48if this went well there were even plans to establish a lunar base
46:54the top stage of the rocket was powerful enough to take them directly back to earth
47:03but first they had to tame their unpredictable n1 rocket
47:08with its explosive history eight perfect launches would be needed before they could dare risk a crew
47:15but the next in one blew up seven seconds after launch
47:20the one after that lasted 107 seconds the best so far but not good enough
47:29it was the end of the moon program
47:35james oberg traveled down to the baikonur cosmodrome where the moon rocket was launched
47:40he hoped to find clues which would tell him more about the doomed giant
47:47as soon as he set foot in the main town of lininsk
47:50oberg started his search he was looking for a section of the main fuel tank which he had heard
47:57was being used as a roof over a bandstand but no one seemed to know where it was
48:03this drawing shows the huge hangar where the moon rocket was assembled before being wheeled down to the pad
48:11today the same building houses the massive energya rocket that's used to carry the new soviet shuttle
48:19but until the mid-seventies this was where the n1 rockets were prepared
48:29after the last one blew up they had six more of them in all these halls ready for flight at
48:35least
48:35two were flight ready four were being assembled and other pieces were all over this place it was
48:40canceled now all the spacecraft and rockets in this building were scrapped torn apart a couple pieces
48:46are supposed outside somewhere they won't show them to us but the rest of them were all scrapped and gone
48:51but there are ghosts here somewhere the n1 moon rocket someone remembers it
48:58we felt a deep sense of sadness it was a colossal project to which we dedicated our best years
49:12and i was young at the time and it was the work of a great many people and it vanished
49:23overnight
49:28the americans had won i was made the scapegoat
49:36mission was fired as chief designer since 1974 he has been a lecturer at the moscow aviation institute
49:45for over a year we tried to persuade the soviet authorities to show us the relics of their moon program
49:52they finally agreed and we were taken to an old hangar a kind of space junkyard
50:00mission gave us a guided tour of his original lunar hardware this was the command module which might
50:09have flown around the moon it's modeled on the soyuz craft and has a hatch from which a cosmonaut would
50:16walk across open space to walk across open space to the lunar lander
50:25if the n1 rocket had worked the legs of this lander might be resting where they belong
50:31in moon dust the craft would land on four pads like this these would
50:45sink into the surface of the moon
50:51these shock absorbers would cushion any shock there might be on impact
50:58there yes it's a point bullet free pass up
51:04darling as my the cosmonaut would get out through this special hatch onto this platform and use this
51:15ladder to get down onto the surface of the moon
51:21after spending a little time on the surface the cosmonaut would return to his craft
51:35no one in the west has ever seen inside the soviet lunar lander what secrets would it reveal
51:44this was where the intrepid cosmonaut would stand clutching two levers
51:54it looked more like the inside of a steam train than a spaceship
51:58even allowing for the spartan appearance of soviet hardware these systems looked surprisingly primitive
52:09if korolov had lived might the soviet union have put a man on the moon before the united states
52:19no
52:20not a chance
52:24of course would have got further
52:27but we wouldn't have got there but we wouldn't have got there before the americans you see
52:33by the end of our moon program we had spent four billion rubles altogether
52:45but the americans had spent over 25 billions that speaks for itself
52:55so
52:55i read you loud and clear
53:02we have a goal for docking
53:04in 1975 the cosmonauts and astronauts who had been racing to the moon
53:09finally came together to train for a joint mission
53:12a link up in space around x axis and x y
53:17why the apollo moon program was over and all soviet hopes of landing a man on the moon had been
53:23abandoned so the apollo soyuz mission was a great propaganda exercise for both sides
53:30for the soviet union it was a chance to regain some prestige
53:36for the americans it used up their last saturn rocket
53:55a long-awaited handshake offered the hope that in space
54:00people could transcend their earthly differences
54:08alexei leonov and tom stafford were the mission commanders
54:13as old philosopher says the best part of a good dinner is not what you eat but with whom you
54:22eat
54:24from the late 70s onwards the soviet union has concentrated its efforts in an area where they
54:29established an early lead their long-term space station program
54:36some cosmonauts have logged over a year in space
54:38so in theory they are ready for a two-year round trip to mars
54:46perhaps instead of racing to mars the soviets and americans could pool their knowledge and resources
54:53it might be the only way to finance such an expensive journey
54:57this would be popular with the astronauts and cosmonauts
55:01but maybe it needs a race to move governments
55:33this episode of nova will repeat
55:36tomorrow afternoon at 4 pm and watch part three of this special nova presentation tomorrow night
55:41at 8 pm now stay tuned for scientific american frontiers right after a news update
56:12next time on nova the russian right stuff
56:19what it takes to be a modern cosmonaut
56:23two men
56:26ten years of preparation
56:29six grueling months aboard the near space station
56:33it's a trip that culminates in a life-threatening emergency
56:37from their training in star city to their return to earth we follow the mission
56:47funding for nova is provided by lockheed a bold new force in systems engineering management and
56:55technology services for defense space and industry
57:00and the johnson and johnson family of companies supplying health care products worldwide
57:09major funding for nova is provided by the financial support of viewers like you
57:18for a transcript of this program send five dollars to this address or call 212-227-READ
57:26and we'll see you next time
57:28so
57:28you
57:28Oh
Comments