Apollo 15s lunar touchdown was so rough it destroyed the descent engine bell. Had that engine been required for ascent (like the Soviets) the crew would have died
Ah...the nozzle bell was a modified version that was designed to crush with no consequences when it impacted the surface. It was enlarged and lengthened for more thrust output over a larger area due to the extra weight of the LEM for that mission. In other words: It was DESIGNED for impact, they PLANNED it being crushed. Do a little research before you post.
@@montylc2001 welcome to the real world- where pilot error, engine failure, unseen terrain features, or erroneous fuel calculations could all easily cause a lander to touch down too hard and destroy the bell, contingency plan or not. In the case of the Soviets, that would cause mission failure and cosmonaut death. In the case of the Americans, it's ok. You really didn't say anything other than confirm my point that the American design is better
@@ericrisinger1241 I think you missed my point. Not trying to lamblast you or anything....but the bell on that mission was DESIGNED to impact. As in it was not an accident, but meant to impact. Is why they made it crushable and not be a problem.
@@montylc2001 Monty, I hate to tell you this, but that's really not true. I've done ALL the research. In point of fact, there were concerns over the lengthened engine bell contacting the surface while the engine was still running, so the J-mission commanders were told to shut their engines down the moment the contact light came on, so as to avoid the potentially lethal effects of the bell becoming blocked by lunar regolith while still firing. That could cause the combustion chamber to explode, which would likely have been a non-survivable situation for the crew. So, the engine extension was specifically NOT supposed to EVER hit the ground! In point of fact, on Apollo 15, the engine bell crumpled because the LM landed straddling the rim of a small-ish 10-meter crater, and while Dave Scott shut the engine down the moment he had a contact light, he had also gone into a near-hover at that point, so his LM fell harder to the surface than any other LM. The engine bell only hit the crater rim after the front and left footpads hit, and the whole LM tipped back into the crater about 20 degrees. Thankfully, the engine had enough time to mostly stop firing by then, though the remaining pressure in it caused a big burp of soil that you can see flying out as the LM tipped back, on the descent film. If you listen to the first EVA, when Scott is doing a walkaround of the LM, you'll note he says "You can tell the Program Manager that I got his engine bell." The Program Manager was Jim McDivitt, and was the guy who told Scott, upon pain of pain, do NOT let your engine bell hit the ground on landing. HIS engine bell, you note. That's why Scott made that particular comment, to tell his old pal Jim that he had indeed crumpled the engine bell, and had survived, so maybe the dire warnings were a bit overstated. If you'd have read, say, all of the crew debriefs for the flight, you'd have this kind of information.
The Blok Ye stage on the Soviet LK had a design optimised to direct landing debris and engine exhaust away from the engine, and featured a backup engine in case of failure of the main engine. The engine bell on the Blok Ye was nested, making damage less likely as the bell was not exposed as on the LM. The basic argument therefore that an Apollo 15-esque landing would have stranded the Soviets on the Moon is incorrect.
Hell yeah the LK was a fascinating spacecraft, but oy, that would have been a hell of a workload for one cosmonaut. Then an EVA transfer back to the Soyuz? Exhausting.
At least the LK had a small digital computer that would have managed the flight trajectory for its pilot. The LOK (Soyuz) of the time made due with mechanical sequencers, the mainline Soyuz spacecraft didn't get digital computers until the Soyuz-T, IIRC, in the mid 70s. Interestingly. no one knew how easy or hard it would be, or how exhausting, to move around on the Moon. One thing the Soviets came up with was to land a small electric cart at their intended landing site, to scout it out, and use a beacon from it to steer the piloted LK lander to a pre-selected spot near the cart. The moonwalking cosmonaut would then only need to walk as far as the cart, get into its seat, activate its manual controls, and go puttering around his landing site in his mobility aid, When the LOK/LK system was abandoned, the cart had its manual controls and seat removed and was sent to the Moon as Lunokhod, a remotely controlled rover. In any event, the pilot would have two transfer EVAs, one to get into the lander and one to get back into the LOK orbiter, but at least there were plans to make his surface excursions less physically taxing.
So this is missing a few interesting details about the Soviet L3 complex, which is that it wasn't envisioned quite like Apollo. From 1967, concerns about engine issues or other problems led to the modification of the plan to include various other elements. First, given the limited hover time of the LK (only like 10 seconds, compared to about ten times that for LM) it would be very crucial to land without delay or error in guidance--no waiting like Armstrong did looking for a spot without rocks if you missed the main target. Thus, they planned to have a probe landed on the surface akin to Lunakhod rovers, which could broadcast radio signals the LK could use as beacons for precision landing at a surveyed location, and then the rovers could be used by the astronaut for transport to maximize science during the limited time on the surface. Next, those beacons would also be used for an entire second LK launch on a second N1, with the intent of this other LK landing automatically. If the LK the cosmonaut landed in was damaged or defective, this second LK could still return them to orbit, and it could possibly carry a little extra supplies to stretch time on the surface. Only then would the crew LK/Soyuz launch on a second N1. See Siddiqui, Challenge to Apollo, p517 "The Lunar Flotilla" and this description of the state of the project from the same source on p643: "The repeated additions and modifications to the N I-L3 plan in 1965-67 also complicated mission design. Even after the ink was dry on a final draft plan for a particular element of the L3 complex, months later, engineers would propose modifications based on new anticipated needs. This not only made it impossible to manufacture flight models of the spacecraft, but also added layer after layer of complexity to the N I-L3 mission. By 1968, the following components were part of the entire program: • Ye-6LS (two robot probes to map lunar gravitational anomalies) • Ye-8LS (two robot lunar satellites to photograph the lunar surface) • TIK-T2K (automated and piloted flights of the LOK and LK in Earth orbit) • LIE (automated test of the Blok D stage in Earth orbit): • NI-LI (two lunar orbital LI flights as test payloads for early N I launches) • Ye-8 (two lunar rovers to serve as transport for cosmonauts); • NI-L3 (one N I launch with the backup LK) • NI-L3 (one N I launch with two cosmonauts to land on the Moon)"
Always as interesting to read the comments as watching the show. Simply put, I’ve always liked the simplistic expression if it looks right it’ll fly right, not so true for spaceflight maybe but seems to hold true.
Being an astronaut in the lander sounds horrifying when returning to the command module. It's a speck in the sky, and if you miss it, you're as good as dead floating in space
10:33 that’s is the MOST accurately sized LK I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen anyone using a stayputnik to make the shape of the lander before. Good job! And I assume there’s an external command seat in there?
While Apollo's lander is clearly better (having twice the mass budget helps), it's worth remembering that both were hugely risky: Orbital docking in lunar orbit, requiring that the lander launch into the correct plane at the correct time. Blasting a rocket engine into the lunar regolith and praying that none of it gets into the engine bell of your ascent engine. Your only ascent engine. A single point of failure that can strand you on the moon if it fails. No airlock or decontamination, so if you're allergic to moon dust there's no way to get rid of it. One astronaut on their own for a record setting several days in zero-gee, with no hope of medical assistance if something went wrong. And you need that person alive and well to keep the return spacecraft in the correct orientation for docking. So that's another mission critical singleton component.
Thankfully, the LEM was a two-stage lander with a separate engine for the descent and ascent stages. So the ascent engine was shielded from the regolith.
thats another major point I like to bring up why we havent been eager to go back to the moon even if we have had the tech since the 60s after the end of the Apollo program (besides the obvious budget cuts and infrastructure loss) until recently, we had absolutly no business going to the moon with where we where at in tech at the time. we where only able to get everything to the barest of bare minimum of functionality and launched for the sake of the propaganda win and after the Apollo program ended and the cold war thawed a bit the standards for what was acceptable risk rose above "basically a suicide mission, do it for your country, you will be immortalized as a hero" and so did the costs and development needed for any potential mission instead of shrinking costs you would expect for an already developed program.
@@JCDavis314 Very true. But it's also an entirely separate engine, with its own set of tanks, pipes and wires. By using a separate engine, you roughly double the main engine components that could fail. And you set up the scenario where a lander with a descent engine that worked great could land on the Moon with no problems at all, but kill its crew if the ascent engine crumps on them. Whereas, by the time the LK lander had landed its pilot, its engine was used and proven to work well, so you'd have less concerns about it than you might have, sitting on the Moon, depending on an engine that hasn't been fired since it was rebuilt after its acceptance testing. Each path raises its own particular horrors, lol.
@@coreytaylor5386 I dunno -- the Apollo program, at least, wasn't that hare-brained, or suicidally risky. If everything worked as planned and designed, within an allowable range of errors and malfunctions, it really wasn't much riskier than Earth orbital flights. Every time they actually started up the LM's engine and headed to the surface, it all worked. They landed safely on every actual attempt, the ascent engine worked every time, and rendezvous (around the Earth, Moon, or wherever) turned out to be relatively forgiving of small errors, if you paid close attention to what you were doing. And the one time something major DID go wrong, with a little luck (that it happened with the LM still attached) and a ton of thought on how to use a LM as a lifeboat, that crew (13, of course) suffered the loss of function of one entire spacecraft, and worse, that was the only one that could get them home. But they got home, because someone sat down in 1963 and said to themselves: "This flying to the Moon is risky, how can we make it less risky? Well, we can add a few pounds of oxygen and water to the LM, enough to get a whole crew of three back home from the Moon, if worse came to worse. It'll make our LM last on the Moon longer, and make the flight out, anyway, less risky." So, it was NOT gung-ho flyboys itching to die for their country who volunteered for "basically a suicide mission," it was smart people who only got comfortable flying the missions because other smart people did everything they could think of to mitigate the risks at each stage of the mission. The Soviets, I don't know enough to say how they approached it, but I bet they figured their plan, while risky, was solid enough that they expected it to work.
The simple answer is that "NO" the Soviets had no real chance to beat the United States to the lunar surface, even if Korolev hadn't died on the operating table in 1966. The Soviet effort was too divided by infighting between rival design bureaus and the capricious whims of Soviet politics to muster the resources in time to do more than come in second place. The problems with the N1 itself prove this with no money or anything else to work out the temperamental first stage's problems on a battleship test stand, like was done with Apollo's Saturn V S-IC at Marshall Space Center's 4670.
Nice to know Apple's For All Mankind tv show is utter bullshit. Just another example of that show being far left propaganda (I'm a lefty BTW) along with North Korea being the first to Mars! It's not so much a space opera as an increasingly stupid soap opera about space, if anything it makes me appreciate The Expanse even more.
UR-700: Am I a joke to you? But seriously, this was an absolutely nutty proposal by Chelomey's design bureau for a direct ascent lunar mission. And this rocket also had its engines, the RD-270(world's first full flow staged combustion cycle engine), actually fired on the test stand. And you can see examples of that engine today.
I would say there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the Russian mission profile, other than the N1 rocket itself. Yeah the need to EVA to change vehicles is not great, but saved them launch mass and that was truly the overriding factor for both the US and Russia. Keep in mind the Apollo airlock was more than an airlock, it was a connection that had to support rocket impulse in the CM + LM stack, so it was also highly structural. Elminimating a heavy structure that also needed to handle a large, airtight connection point saved them a ton or more of launch mass over using a structural container without an airlock interconnection.
I dunno. I’m in favor of the one we used. It’s more eye appealing. It had 2 engines! It was good enough to save the lives of 3 astronauts. Yeah. Pretty cool lander. 🎉❤
I've been a huge fan of the space race my whole life, though I was not even four when Apollo 11 landed and I don't remember it at all. Before the fall of the Soviet Union the Soviet moon lander was just a rumor. The first time I ever saw a picture of it wasn't until the mid 90s!
You didn't see any photos of the Soviet lander until after the fall of the USSR in 1991. The Soviets never admitted that they actually tried to land men on the moon.
Well, the Soviet lander was a rookie attempt at the final competition.... a prototype at best, (it never flew in space, right?) The USA flew 2 LM missions (one in earth orbit, one in lunar orbit) before even attempting landing. The USA did things differently....we relied on the 'men' to do a lot of the 'flying' and the big earth mainframe computers for others. The actual computers on the LM were mostly running the final approach software. (The computers were modified ICBM flight guidance modules... with MIT developed software)., USA set a goal (with unlimited funding).... it was an unprecedented time in America... social turmoil, but incredible tech advancement.
The scariest part of the Russian approach is the two EVAs. On the other hand, I like the approach of the decent and assent engines on the lander being the same engine. The total mass will be less, and in the U.S. approach the accent engine's first firing would be in its only use. We should remember that on Apollo 11, the circuit breaker used to Ingnite the accent engine was broken. It only takes one flaw to wreck the entire mission.
They were spheres suspended inside the conical outer structure--unlike Saturn, the tanks weren't structural. According to Siddiqui's book "Challenge to Apollo," the engineers said this was because they couldn't source aluminum sheeting thick enough to machine tank walls that were both carrying their pressure loads and the weight of the vehicle above them. It made it rather inefficient, as the stages ended up with higher dry mass.
The Soviets kicked out ass at space exploration for more than 10 years. It’s really surprising that they didn’t beat us to the moon. They had many firsts. The first satellite, the first Man, the first spacewalk. But that’s EXACTLY how you know the Moon Landing was no hoax. Because as soon as the USA made it the Soviets credited NASA and stopped trying for the moon.
It’s not true, the USA lunar module only used hypergolic on the ascent stage!! They only did that because of how important that engine was. If it failed to fire then 2 astronauts would die on the moon and they didn’t want that.
No, both stages used hypergols, the same Aerozine 50 fuel, a 50:50 mix by weight of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), and Nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer.
If the Soviets ever did actually reach the moon, there was a high chance of having a rough landing like Apollo 15. In which the descent engine bell hit the ground due to the lander having two of the legs hit the ground first and listing over. The engine was a write off. The soviet design would have stranded the lonely astronaut on the moon. Left to die.
Not entirely correct. The Engine bell on Apollo 15-17 was larger, so that it could provide more thrust due to the fact that the LM was heavier (more consumables for longer stays on the surface, more experiments and the rover). They knew it was a big chance that the bell might hit the surface (which it did on 15 as you mentioned), so they designed the nozzle extension (which provided the extra thrust needed) to "collapse" so as to not completely destroy the DPS and potentially the LM altogether. The astronauts also shut the DPS down IMMEDIATLY upon getting contact light when one of the 3 probes on the lander-legs touched the surface, so the DPS was already off before the LM settled on the surface (unlike on Apollo 11, where the DPS was still firing by the time the LM settled on the surface of the moon).
I commented on this earlier, but the Soviet plan from 1967 to 1972 actually included an entire backup LK which would launch on a separate N1 and land under automatic control using radio guidance beacons mounted on rovers to have a pre-emplaced backup LK if needed. See Siddiqui, Challenge to Apollo, p517 "The Lunar Flotilla" and this description of the state of the project from the same source on p643: "The repeated additions and modifications to the N I-L3 plan in 1965-67 also complicated mission design. Even after the ink was dry on a final draft plan for a particular element of the L3 complex, months later, engineers would propose modifications based on new anticipated needs. This not only made it impossible to manufacture flight models of the spacecraft, but also added layer after layer of complexity to the N I-L3 mission. By 1968, the following components were part of the entire program: • Ye-6LS (two robot probes to map lunar gravitational anomalies) • Ye-8LS (two robot lunar satellites to photograph the lunar surface) • TIK-T2K (automated and piloted flights of the LOK and LK in Earth orbit) • LIE (automated test of the Blok D stage in Earth orbit): • NI-LI (two lunar orbital LI flights as test payloads for early N I launches) • Ye-8 (two lunar rovers to serve as transport for cosmonauts); • NI-L3 (one N I launch with the backup LK) • NI-L3 (one N I launch with two cosmonauts to land on the Moon)"
It was odd to see the Kerbel LM Descent Stage move after the Ascent Stage left. It's inaccurate to Apollo and took extra steps to animate the movement. The Shocks on the Apollo LM were designed to absorb the shock of impact by crushing the material inside. There were no springs or any way to un-crush the material.
A limitation to the game, The landing gear is generic to the game's base parts, and aren't historically accurate. The springs in the landing gear are there by default, meaning a lack of movement would actually take an additional finagling with a custom dampening and spring slider post-landing and pre-ascent. The animations are simply the engine adjusting to the weight change on the built in springs.
The Soviets took much bigger risks than the U.S. did, that is why they were ahead in the Space Race until the Moon Landing. That is not to say they didn't effectively engineer everything, and until Saturn V, they did have much heavier lift than we did. Nor that we didn't have risks and setbacks as well. But engineering what we saw as the proper safety did slow us down compared to the Russians.
Not really. When you look at the "space firsts" of the Soviet Union, it was pretty much a bunch of stunts with only a modest amount of useful practical benefit towards real human spaceflight. Even several Soviet designers and engineers admit this. They quickly fell behind during Gemini as the USA's greater unity under NASA and the vast amount of resources pushed past them in almost all aspects. By the end of Gemini, the USA was ahead in most areas with longest duration, fuel cell development, EVAs, rendezvous, docking, and more. It wasn't until the late 60s that the Soviets started to turn things around for themselves, but by then it was far too late. They acquitted well themselves later with Salyut, but that's another story. The skills and vehicles for a manned Moon landing was done and the race was lost.
The Apollo Lunar Module wikipedia article lists the status of each. Looks like a mixture of being left in lunar orbit, impacting lunar surface, or entering earth's atmosphere.
@@ArchivalQuality Basically, they started crashing stuff into the Moon the moment they had a continuously working seismometer on the surface. While Apollo 11 deployed a seismometer, it operated off of solar panels and only worked for the remainder of the lunar day during which the landing happened. But starting with Apollo 12, it was planned to impact each LM ascent stage on the Moon, to create a seismic signal that could tell them about the Moon's structure. And starting with Apollo 13, the Saturn S-IVB third stages were also crashed on the Moon, for the same reasons. Now, that plan had two exceptions -- obviously, Apollo 13's LM didn't have any part of itself touch or crash onto the Moon, because of the abort on the outbound trip. The other exception was on Apollo 16, where the plan was to crash the ascent stage, but the timelines got all messed up because of the 6-hour delay in the landing on that flight. So, instead of going through their normal procedures, they were told after returning to orbit and docking with the CSM to move everything out of the LM that was coming back, and then button everything up and delay the LM jettison until after a sleep period (the LM crew had been up for like 26 hours by that time). They went back in the next day and thought they finished the config properly, but after LM jett they found that the ascent stage was in free drift and not responsive to attitude control or propulsion control from the ground. That was chalked up to poor management of the procedures by Houston to try and get the LM crew to sleep, but after the flight all three crewmen said they thought the better thing would have been to just follow the regular procedure and get rid of the LM before going to sleep. But there was a lot of complaining done about how Houston tried to rewrite the flight plan from scratch after the landing delay on 16, so losing the ability to crash the LM ended up being one of the more minor of the resulting issues.
Shouldn't you say Soviets in the title ? By saying "Russian" you are being unfair of the countless of engineers and scientists from the other republics that contributed to the Soviet space programme...
That proves that the American lander worked, but it proves nothing about the Soviet lander, because it never had a functional rocket to launch on. I could say that Soyuz has had 153 crewed flights, while the Apollo CSM only had 19, so clearly the CSM sucked, but that’s not really the full story is it?
Somehow I doubt the LK could’ve pulled off an Apollo 13 “lifeboat” role, making the LM a multi role spacecraft. Also more payload to/from the lunar surface makes the LM clearly better.
@@HALLish-jl5mo Yes, that’s why it was never an official contingency procedure. Certainly more practical than necessitating an EVA to access said lifeboat and not having enough life support consumables for 2 crew for 3.5 days
Incorrect! Lunar module test article LTA-8 was tested extensively in thermal vacuum chambers: "LTA-8 was delivered to Manned Spacecraft Center's thermal vacuum test chamber "B", the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory (SESL), on September 18, 1967. LTA-8 underwent separate series of tests in support of LM-3 (Apollo 9, an earth-orbital mission) and LM-5 (Apollo 11, the lunar landing mission). The objectives of these tests included demonstrating that the lunar module's environmental control system could provide a habitable environment and temperature in both the cabin and pressure suit loops and that the cabin atmosphere and suit loop contained no contaminants which would affect the crew, verify that the heat generated by equipment could be properly dissipated, demonstrate that the cabin leak rate was acceptable, verify that the cabin could be depressurized in simulated lunar conditions when anti-bacterial filters installed in the relief and dump valves, and demonstrate that the lithium hydroxide cartridges (used to remove carbon dioxide from the air) could be replaced when the cabin was depressurized. The Space Environment Simulation Laboratory consists of a series of vacuum chambers, two of which were large enough to hold the Apollo spacecraft. The vacuum chambers employ carbon arc solar simulators, lamps to subject the chambers' contents to anticipated solar heating. The chambers also contain black, nitrogen-cooled heat sink panels to cool the chambers' contents down to 100°K. Chamber A was used to conduct tests on the command module (the 2TV-1 tests), while Chamber B was used for LTA-8. The tests were designed to test the spacecraft under simulated mission conditions, for simulated mission durations. Tests conducted on LTA-8 ranged from 3½ to 12 days in length. However, since the lunar module was designed for use under 1/6 G, it was not feasible to keep LTA-8 manned for the full duration in a 1G environment. The crew manned the LM in shifts ranging from 9 to 12 hours, ingressing and egressing the vehicle while under full vacuum conditions."
@@thebruffy1077 Apollo 5: LM test in Earth orbit Apollo 9: LM test in Earth orbit Apollo 10: LM test in lunar orbit Apollo 11: LM test in lunar landing
Apollo 15s lunar touchdown was so rough it destroyed the descent engine bell. Had that engine been required for ascent (like the Soviets) the crew would have died
Ah...the nozzle bell was a modified version that was designed to crush with no consequences when it impacted the surface. It was enlarged and lengthened for more thrust output over a larger area due to the extra weight of the LEM for that mission. In other words: It was DESIGNED for impact, they PLANNED it being crushed. Do a little research before you post.
@@montylc2001 welcome to the real world- where pilot error, engine failure, unseen terrain features, or erroneous fuel calculations could all easily cause a lander to touch down too hard and destroy the bell, contingency plan or not. In the case of the Soviets, that would cause mission failure and cosmonaut death. In the case of the Americans, it's ok. You really didn't say anything other than confirm my point that the American design is better
@@ericrisinger1241 I think you missed my point. Not trying to lamblast you or anything....but the bell on that mission was DESIGNED to impact. As in it was not an accident, but meant to impact. Is why they made it crushable and not be a problem.
@@montylc2001 Monty, I hate to tell you this, but that's really not true. I've done ALL the research. In point of fact, there were concerns over the lengthened engine bell contacting the surface while the engine was still running, so the J-mission commanders were told to shut their engines down the moment the contact light came on, so as to avoid the potentially lethal effects of the bell becoming blocked by lunar regolith while still firing. That could cause the combustion chamber to explode, which would likely have been a non-survivable situation for the crew. So, the engine extension was specifically NOT supposed to EVER hit the ground! In point of fact, on Apollo 15, the engine bell crumpled because the LM landed straddling the rim of a small-ish 10-meter crater, and while Dave Scott shut the engine down the moment he had a contact light, he had also gone into a near-hover at that point, so his LM fell harder to the surface than any other LM. The engine bell only hit the crater rim after the front and left footpads hit, and the whole LM tipped back into the crater about 20 degrees. Thankfully, the engine had enough time to mostly stop firing by then, though the remaining pressure in it caused a big burp of soil that you can see flying out as the LM tipped back, on the descent film. If you listen to the first EVA, when Scott is doing a walkaround of the LM, you'll note he says "You can tell the Program Manager that I got his engine bell." The Program Manager was Jim McDivitt, and was the guy who told Scott, upon pain of pain, do NOT let your engine bell hit the ground on landing. HIS engine bell, you note. That's why Scott made that particular comment, to tell his old pal Jim that he had indeed crumpled the engine bell, and had survived, so maybe the dire warnings were a bit overstated. If you'd have read, say, all of the crew debriefs for the flight, you'd have this kind of information.
The Blok Ye stage on the Soviet LK had a design optimised to direct landing debris and engine exhaust away from the engine, and featured a backup engine in case of failure of the main engine. The engine bell on the Blok Ye was nested, making damage less likely as the bell was not exposed as on the LM. The basic argument therefore that an Apollo 15-esque landing would have stranded the Soviets on the Moon is incorrect.
I think Shadwozone can write off his Legos as business expenses... ;)
Pssst ;)
@@ShadowZone I wish!!!
Hell yeah the LK was a fascinating spacecraft, but oy, that would have been a hell of a workload for one cosmonaut. Then an EVA transfer back to the Soyuz? Exhausting.
At least the LK had a small digital computer that would have managed the flight trajectory for its pilot. The LOK (Soyuz) of the time made due with mechanical sequencers, the mainline Soyuz spacecraft didn't get digital computers until the Soyuz-T, IIRC, in the mid 70s. Interestingly. no one knew how easy or hard it would be, or how exhausting, to move around on the Moon. One thing the Soviets came up with was to land a small electric cart at their intended landing site, to scout it out, and use a beacon from it to steer the piloted LK lander to a pre-selected spot near the cart. The moonwalking cosmonaut would then only need to walk as far as the cart, get into its seat, activate its manual controls, and go puttering around his landing site in his mobility aid, When the LOK/LK system was abandoned, the cart had its manual controls and seat removed and was sent to the Moon as Lunokhod, a remotely controlled rover. In any event, the pilot would have two transfer EVAs, one to get into the lander and one to get back into the LOK orbiter, but at least there were plans to make his surface excursions less physically taxing.
So this is missing a few interesting details about the Soviet L3 complex, which is that it wasn't envisioned quite like Apollo. From 1967, concerns about engine issues or other problems led to the modification of the plan to include various other elements. First, given the limited hover time of the LK (only like 10 seconds, compared to about ten times that for LM) it would be very crucial to land without delay or error in guidance--no waiting like Armstrong did looking for a spot without rocks if you missed the main target. Thus, they planned to have a probe landed on the surface akin to Lunakhod rovers, which could broadcast radio signals the LK could use as beacons for precision landing at a surveyed location, and then the rovers could be used by the astronaut for transport to maximize science during the limited time on the surface. Next, those beacons would also be used for an entire second LK launch on a second N1, with the intent of this other LK landing automatically. If the LK the cosmonaut landed in was damaged or defective, this second LK could still return them to orbit, and it could possibly carry a little extra supplies to stretch time on the surface. Only then would the crew LK/Soyuz launch on a second N1.
See Siddiqui, Challenge to Apollo, p517 "The Lunar Flotilla" and this description of the state of the project from the same source on p643:
"The repeated additions and modifications to the N I-L3 plan in 1965-67 also complicated mission design. Even after the ink was dry on a final draft plan for a particular element of the L3 complex, months later, engineers would propose modifications based on new anticipated needs. This not only made it impossible to manufacture flight models of the spacecraft, but also added layer after layer of complexity to the N I-L3 mission. By 1968, the following components were part of the entire program:
• Ye-6LS (two robot probes to map lunar gravitational anomalies)
• Ye-8LS (two robot lunar satellites to photograph the lunar surface)
• TIK-T2K (automated and piloted flights of the LOK and LK in Earth orbit)
• LIE (automated test of the Blok D stage in Earth orbit):
• NI-LI (two lunar orbital LI flights as test payloads for early N I launches)
• Ye-8 (two lunar rovers to serve as transport for cosmonauts);
• NI-L3 (one N I launch with the backup LK)
• NI-L3 (one N I launch with two cosmonauts to land on the Moon)"
Always as interesting to read the comments as watching the show. Simply put, I’ve always liked the simplistic expression if it looks right it’ll fly right, not so true for spaceflight maybe but seems to hold true.
Being an astronaut in the lander sounds horrifying when returning to the command module. It's a speck in the sky, and if you miss it, you're as good as dead floating in space
10:33 that’s is the MOST accurately sized LK I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen anyone using a stayputnik to make the shape of the lander before. Good job! And I assume there’s an external command seat in there?
Thanks! And yes, there is :)
While Apollo's lander is clearly better (having twice the mass budget helps), it's worth remembering that both were hugely risky:
Orbital docking in lunar orbit, requiring that the lander launch into the correct plane at the correct time.
Blasting a rocket engine into the lunar regolith and praying that none of it gets into the engine bell of your ascent engine.
Your only ascent engine. A single point of failure that can strand you on the moon if it fails.
No airlock or decontamination, so if you're allergic to moon dust there's no way to get rid of it.
One astronaut on their own for a record setting several days in zero-gee, with no hope of medical assistance if something went wrong. And you need that person alive and well to keep the return spacecraft in the correct orientation for docking. So that's another mission critical singleton component.
Thankfully, the LEM was a two-stage lander with a separate engine for the descent and ascent stages. So the ascent engine was shielded from the regolith.
thats another major point I like to bring up why we havent been eager to go back to the moon even if we have had the tech since the 60s after the end of the Apollo program (besides the obvious budget cuts and infrastructure loss) until recently, we had absolutly no business going to the moon with where we where at in tech at the time. we where only able to get everything to the barest of bare minimum of functionality and launched for the sake of the propaganda win and after the Apollo program ended and the cold war thawed a bit the standards for what was acceptable risk rose above "basically a suicide mission, do it for your country, you will be immortalized as a hero" and so did the costs and development needed for any potential mission instead of shrinking costs you would expect for an already developed program.
People forget the human factor too, just a look can convey a thousand words. The moral support of another during the risky landing and then moon walk.
@@JCDavis314 Very true. But it's also an entirely separate engine, with its own set of tanks, pipes and wires. By using a separate engine, you roughly double the main engine components that could fail. And you set up the scenario where a lander with a descent engine that worked great could land on the Moon with no problems at all, but kill its crew if the ascent engine crumps on them. Whereas, by the time the LK lander had landed its pilot, its engine was used and proven to work well, so you'd have less concerns about it than you might have, sitting on the Moon, depending on an engine that hasn't been fired since it was rebuilt after its acceptance testing. Each path raises its own particular horrors, lol.
@@coreytaylor5386 I dunno -- the Apollo program, at least, wasn't that hare-brained, or suicidally risky. If everything worked as planned and designed, within an allowable range of errors and malfunctions, it really wasn't much riskier than Earth orbital flights. Every time they actually started up the LM's engine and headed to the surface, it all worked. They landed safely on every actual attempt, the ascent engine worked every time, and rendezvous (around the Earth, Moon, or wherever) turned out to be relatively forgiving of small errors, if you paid close attention to what you were doing. And the one time something major DID go wrong, with a little luck (that it happened with the LM still attached) and a ton of thought on how to use a LM as a lifeboat, that crew (13, of course) suffered the loss of function of one entire spacecraft, and worse, that was the only one that could get them home. But they got home, because someone sat down in 1963 and said to themselves: "This flying to the Moon is risky, how can we make it less risky? Well, we can add a few pounds of oxygen and water to the LM, enough to get a whole crew of three back home from the Moon, if worse came to worse. It'll make our LM last on the Moon longer, and make the flight out, anyway, less risky." So, it was NOT gung-ho flyboys itching to die for their country who volunteered for "basically a suicide mission," it was smart people who only got comfortable flying the missions because other smart people did everything they could think of to mitigate the risks at each stage of the mission. The Soviets, I don't know enough to say how they approached it, but I bet they figured their plan, while risky, was solid enough that they expected it to work.
The L3 is soooo.... kerbal
The simple answer is that "NO" the Soviets had no real chance to beat the United States to the lunar surface, even if Korolev hadn't died on the operating table in 1966. The Soviet effort was too divided by infighting between rival design bureaus and the capricious whims of Soviet politics to muster the resources in time to do more than come in second place.
The problems with the N1 itself prove this with no money or anything else to work out the temperamental first stage's problems on a battleship test stand, like was done with Apollo's Saturn V S-IC at Marshall Space Center's 4670.
Nice to know Apple's For All Mankind tv show is utter bullshit. Just another example of that show being far left propaganda (I'm a lefty BTW) along with North Korea being the first to Mars! It's not so much a space opera as an increasingly stupid soap opera about space, if anything it makes me appreciate The Expanse even more.
UR-700: Am I a joke to you?
But seriously, this was an absolutely nutty proposal by Chelomey's design bureau for a direct ascent lunar mission. And this rocket also had its engines, the RD-270(world's first full flow staged combustion cycle engine), actually fired on the test stand. And you can see examples of that engine today.
I would say there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the Russian mission profile, other than the N1 rocket itself. Yeah the need to EVA to change vehicles is not great, but saved them launch mass and that was truly the overriding factor for both the US and Russia. Keep in mind the Apollo airlock was more than an airlock, it was a connection that had to support rocket impulse in the CM + LM stack, so it was also highly structural. Elminimating a heavy structure that also needed to handle a large, airtight connection point saved them a ton or more of launch mass over using a structural container without an airlock interconnection.
I dunno. I’m in favor of the one we used. It’s more eye appealing. It had 2 engines! It was good enough to save the lives of 3 astronauts. Yeah. Pretty cool lander. 🎉❤
I've been a huge fan of the space race my whole life, though I was not even four when Apollo 11 landed and I don't remember it at all.
Before the fall of the Soviet Union the Soviet moon lander was just a rumor. The first time I ever saw a picture of it wasn't until the mid 90s!
You didn't see any photos of the Soviet lander until after the fall of the USSR in 1991. The Soviets never admitted that they actually tried to land men on the moon.
Well, the Soviet lander was a rookie attempt at the final competition.... a prototype at best, (it never flew in space, right?) The USA flew 2 LM missions (one in earth orbit, one in lunar orbit) before even attempting landing. The USA did things differently....we relied on the 'men' to do a lot of the 'flying' and the big earth mainframe computers for others. The actual computers on the LM were mostly running the final approach software. (The computers were modified ICBM flight guidance modules... with MIT developed software)., USA set a goal (with unlimited funding).... it was an unprecedented time in America... social turmoil, but incredible tech advancement.
Did Soviets or Americans Build the Better Lander? Well in fairness the US LM worked at least 6 times under the conditions that it was designed for.
The scariest part of the Russian approach is the two EVAs. On the other hand, I like the approach of the decent and assent engines on the lander being the same engine. The total mass will be less, and in the U.S. approach the accent engine's first firing would be in its only use. We should remember that on Apollo 11, the circuit breaker used to Ingnite the accent engine was broken. It only takes one flaw to wreck the entire mission.
The N1 looked really cool but how are the fuel tanks properly fueled? Because of that V shape?
They were spheres suspended inside the conical outer structure--unlike Saturn, the tanks weren't structural. According to Siddiqui's book "Challenge to Apollo," the engineers said this was because they couldn't source aluminum sheeting thick enough to machine tank walls that were both carrying their pressure loads and the weight of the vehicle above them. It made it rather inefficient, as the stages ended up with higher dry mass.
Cool that there is a lego version of the LK Lander
May you please do SLS vs Saturn V? There were actually ppans to possbly use upgraded F1 and J2 engines on SLS, but they were dropped.
L1 looks very Kerbal.
The Soviets kicked out ass at space exploration for more than 10 years. It’s really surprising that they didn’t beat us to the moon. They had many firsts. The first satellite, the first Man, the first spacewalk. But that’s EXACTLY how you know the Moon Landing was no hoax. Because as soon as the USA made it the Soviets credited NASA and stopped trying for the moon.
that is? something wrong with the US' word?
Love videos like this!
Also, historically USSR's space program was no doubt the more dangerous one!
11:18 and if the last stage did not fire right the pilot would only have 5 to 10 minutes to fix it.
That’s why they would do it in secrecy
And he’s gonna be your first man to be on the moon in for all mankind
It’s not true, the USA lunar module only used hypergolic on the ascent stage!! They only did that because of how important that engine was. If it failed to fire then 2 astronauts would die on the moon and they didn’t want that.
No, both stages used hypergols, the same Aerozine 50 fuel, a 50:50 mix by weight of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), and Nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer.
no subtitles/captions and the Voskhod 2 video mentioned isn't linked at all :\
Love you’re content keep it up! Grüße aus Deutschland
Could you do R7 v. Falcon rocket families, weighting for era used?
Did the Soviet build at least one working prototype of the lander?
1:36 *first WITH CREW. uncrewed landers had already been used
You are absolutely correct. The Soviet Luna probes had been to the moon a lot earlier.
Ah...the landers that landed before any crewed mission were just probes and not even close to being able to be occupied.
Great video...👍
You may try it the soviet stuff with the Raydernik mods
I have a question do you believe Apollo 10 can learn on the moon
If the Soviets ever did actually reach the moon, there was a high chance of having a rough landing like Apollo 15. In which the descent engine bell hit the ground due to the lander having two of the legs hit the ground first and listing over. The engine was a write off. The soviet design would have stranded the lonely astronaut on the moon. Left to die.
Not entirely correct. The Engine bell on Apollo 15-17 was larger, so that it could provide more thrust due to the fact that the LM was heavier (more consumables for longer stays on the surface, more experiments and the rover). They knew it was a big chance that the bell might hit the surface (which it did on 15 as you mentioned), so they designed the nozzle extension (which provided the extra thrust needed) to "collapse" so as to not completely destroy the DPS and potentially the LM altogether.
The astronauts also shut the DPS down IMMEDIATLY upon getting contact light when one of the 3 probes on the lander-legs touched the surface, so the DPS was already off before the LM settled on the surface (unlike on Apollo 11, where the DPS was still firing by the time the LM settled on the surface of the moon).
I commented on this earlier, but the Soviet plan from 1967 to 1972 actually included an entire backup LK which would launch on a separate N1 and land under automatic control using radio guidance beacons mounted on rovers to have a pre-emplaced backup LK if needed. See Siddiqui, Challenge to Apollo, p517 "The Lunar Flotilla" and this description of the state of the project from the same source on p643:
"The repeated additions and modifications to the N I-L3 plan in 1965-67 also complicated mission design. Even after the ink was dry on a final draft plan for a particular element of the L3 complex, months later, engineers would propose modifications based on new anticipated needs. This not only made it impossible to manufacture flight models of the spacecraft, but also added layer after layer of complexity to the N I-L3 mission. By 1968, the following components were part of the entire program:
• Ye-6LS (two robot probes to map lunar gravitational anomalies)
• Ye-8LS (two robot lunar satellites to photograph the lunar surface)
• TIK-T2K (automated and piloted flights of the LOK and LK in Earth orbit)
• LIE (automated test of the Blok D stage in Earth orbit):
• NI-LI (two lunar orbital LI flights as test payloads for early N I launches)
• Ye-8 (two lunar rovers to serve as transport for cosmonauts);
• NI-L3 (one N I launch with the backup LK)
• NI-L3 (one N I launch with two cosmonauts to land on the Moon)"
Imagine yourself alone on the moon. 😅😅
8:27 song here?
26 June 1969 for all mankind
It was odd to see the Kerbel LM Descent Stage move after the Ascent Stage left. It's inaccurate to Apollo and took extra steps to animate the movement.
The Shocks on the Apollo LM were designed to absorb the shock of impact by crushing the material inside. There were no springs or any way to un-crush the material.
A limitation to the game, The landing gear is generic to the game's base parts, and aren't historically accurate. The springs in the landing gear are there by default, meaning a lack of movement would actually take an additional finagling with a custom dampening and spring slider post-landing and pre-ascent. The animations are simply the engine adjusting to the weight change on the built in springs.
Love your Soviet Lander model, is it LEGO?
Lego compatible. I got it from Bluebrixx for 25 Euro.
@@ShadowZone I have to get me one of those! 🤣
The Soviets took much bigger risks than the U.S. did, that is why they were ahead in the Space Race until the Moon Landing. That is not to say they didn't effectively engineer everything, and until Saturn V, they did have much heavier lift than we did. Nor that we didn't have risks and setbacks as well. But engineering what we saw as the proper safety did slow us down compared to the Russians.
Not really. When you look at the "space firsts" of the Soviet Union, it was pretty much a bunch of stunts with only a modest amount of useful practical benefit towards real human spaceflight. Even several Soviet designers and engineers admit this.
They quickly fell behind during Gemini as the USA's greater unity under NASA and the vast amount of resources pushed past them in almost all aspects. By the end of Gemini, the USA was ahead in most areas with longest duration, fuel cell development, EVAs, rendezvous, docking, and more.
It wasn't until the late 60s that the Soviets started to turn things around for themselves, but by then it was far too late. They acquitted well themselves later with Salyut, but that's another story. The skills and vehicles for a manned Moon landing was done and the race was lost.
where does the kerbal go in your KSP LK recreation?
Command seat clipped inside the Stayputnik probe core.
The americans did, they were the only ones to actually do it.
really dont matter Africa could have built the best one but only AMerica's was used
Don't care. 100,000 subscribers.
weren't the LM ascent stages crashed into the moon?
The Apollo Lunar Module wikipedia article lists the status of each. Looks like a mixture of being left in lunar orbit, impacting lunar surface, or entering earth's atmosphere.
@@ArchivalQuality Basically, they started crashing stuff into the Moon the moment they had a continuously working seismometer on the surface. While Apollo 11 deployed a seismometer, it operated off of solar panels and only worked for the remainder of the lunar day during which the landing happened. But starting with Apollo 12, it was planned to impact each LM ascent stage on the Moon, to create a seismic signal that could tell them about the Moon's structure. And starting with Apollo 13, the Saturn S-IVB third stages were also crashed on the Moon, for the same reasons. Now, that plan had two exceptions -- obviously, Apollo 13's LM didn't have any part of itself touch or crash onto the Moon, because of the abort on the outbound trip. The other exception was on Apollo 16, where the plan was to crash the ascent stage, but the timelines got all messed up because of the 6-hour delay in the landing on that flight. So, instead of going through their normal procedures, they were told after returning to orbit and docking with the CSM to move everything out of the LM that was coming back, and then button everything up and delay the LM jettison until after a sleep period (the LM crew had been up for like 26 hours by that time). They went back in the next day and thought they finished the config properly, but after LM jett they found that the ascent stage was in free drift and not responsive to attitude control or propulsion control from the ground. That was chalked up to poor management of the procedures by Houston to try and get the LM crew to sleep, but after the flight all three crewmen said they thought the better thing would have been to just follow the regular procedure and get rid of the LM before going to sleep. But there was a lot of complaining done about how Houston tried to rewrite the flight plan from scratch after the landing delay on 16, so losing the ability to crash the LM ended up being one of the more minor of the resulting issues.
Wouldn’t the best one be the one that actually landed on the moon
well that’s the fault of the n1 rocket, not the lander
Спасибо вам за видео!
Shouldn't you say Soviets in the title ? By saying "Russian" you are being unfair of the countless of engineers and scientists from the other republics that contributed to the Soviet space programme...
Very true, thanks for reminding me. Title changed.
Nitpicking. It was the U.S.S.R The united soviet states of RUSSIA. it's no different than interchanging USA with America.
@@TotesRandom USSR = United Soviet socialist republics.
Well, considering the fact that the Americans used their lander on the Moon multiple times and the USSR did not do it once, we all know the answer.
That proves that the American lander worked, but it proves nothing about the Soviet lander, because it never had a functional rocket to launch on.
I could say that Soyuz has had 153 crewed flights, while the Apollo CSM only had 19, so clearly the CSM sucked, but that’s not really the full story is it?
Somehow I doubt the LK could’ve pulled off an Apollo 13 “lifeboat” role, making the LM a multi role spacecraft. Also more payload to/from the lunar surface makes the LM clearly better.
@@HALLish-jl5mo I agree. If it had made it to orbit I think it would’ve had a decent chance
@@aerospacematt9147 Northrop Grumman doubted the LM could pull off it's Apollo 13 lifeboat role as well.
@@HALLish-jl5mo Yes, that’s why it was never an official contingency procedure. Certainly more practical than necessitating an EVA to access said lifeboat and not having enough life support consumables for 2 crew for 3.5 days
10:08 Block Gay ☠️☠️
I always unsubscribe from RUclipsrs who brag about how many subscribers they have.
None of the LMs were tested in a vacuum chamber.
Incorrect! Lunar module test article LTA-8 was tested extensively in thermal vacuum chambers:
"LTA-8 was delivered to Manned Spacecraft Center's thermal vacuum test chamber "B", the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory (SESL), on September 18, 1967.
LTA-8 underwent separate series of tests in support of LM-3 (Apollo 9, an earth-orbital mission) and LM-5 (Apollo 11, the lunar landing mission). The objectives of these tests included demonstrating that the lunar module's environmental control system could provide a habitable environment and temperature in both the cabin and pressure suit loops and that the cabin atmosphere and suit loop contained no contaminants which would affect the crew, verify that the heat generated by equipment could be properly dissipated, demonstrate that the cabin leak rate was acceptable, verify that the cabin could be depressurized in simulated lunar conditions when anti-bacterial filters installed in the relief and dump valves, and demonstrate that the lithium hydroxide cartridges (used to remove carbon dioxide from the air) could be replaced when the cabin was depressurized.
The Space Environment Simulation Laboratory consists of a series of vacuum chambers, two of which were large enough to hold the Apollo spacecraft. The vacuum chambers employ carbon arc solar simulators, lamps to subject the chambers' contents to anticipated solar heating. The chambers also contain black, nitrogen-cooled heat sink panels to cool the chambers' contents down to 100°K. Chamber A was used to conduct tests on the command module (the 2TV-1 tests), while Chamber B was used for LTA-8.
The tests were designed to test the spacecraft under simulated mission conditions, for simulated mission durations. Tests conducted on LTA-8 ranged from 3½ to 12 days in length. However, since the lunar module was designed for use under 1/6 G, it was not feasible to keep LTA-8 manned for the full duration in a 1G environment. The crew manned the LM in shifts ranging from 9 to 12 hours, ingressing and egressing the vehicle while under full vacuum conditions."
You keep posting this lie everywhere. The Grumman LM was tested both in man-made vacuum chambers and in the absolute vacuum of space.
@@rwdavidoff so? The actual LMs weren't.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver they might have taken one to LEO
@@thebruffy1077 Apollo 5: LM test in Earth orbit
Apollo 9: LM test in Earth orbit
Apollo 10: LM test in lunar orbit
Apollo 11: LM test in lunar landing
fifth