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''That are building a highly secret base,''
''Hip Hip Hurrah for the U.S.S.R,''
''We are sending our men to outer space!"''|''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}hWTFG3J1CP8 A Complete History of the Soviet Union Arranged to the Melody of Tetris]''}}
([[I Thought It Meant|Not to be confused with]] [[Alien Tropes|races of creatures that live in space]].)
The Soviets didn't rest on their laurels either. Once the Vostok series was done, they modified the capsule into a two-crew version, the Voskhod series. They also performed the first spacewalk, again, ahead of the Americans. Around this time the Soviets also managed to get the first unmanned probe to actually land on the moon (Luna 9 in 1966). Later, they landed a spacecraft with a remote-controlled moon rover and also launched three successful sample-and-return missions. Despite these successes, their actual manned Moon program was beset by various problems virtually from the start.
First,The Sergeimain Korolevproblem fellwas somewhat afoulexcess of politics at the newexpense Sovietof governmentfocus: --three hequite wascompetent Khrushchev'smajor darling,designers andpulled afterin thethree latterdifferent gotdirections, himselfand oustedof incourse 1964,splitting itfunds meantand apersonnel lotthree moreways [[Executiveslowed Meddling]]things arounddown. andlater athey lotattempted lessto funding:make theup Sovietfor Moonlost programtime hadwith barelyundue one-fifthhaste, which of thecourse purchase-powercaused offailures theand Americanmore budgetdelays. [http://scramcannon.blogspot.com/2014/10/an-analysis-of-failure-of-soviet-lunar.html] Then, Korolev famously feuded with leading rocket engine designer at the time, Valentin Glushko<ref>Glushko advocated the use of [http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#hypergolic (that is, room-temperature)hypergolic fuels,] like NDMHmethylhydrazines and NO4, and had built several very successful ICBMs and carrier rockets based on them, while Korolev feltdeemed it unsuitable (upsides are storage advantages, which that thematters fuelmore toxicityfor outweighedmilitary itsthan advantagesspace race applications, and ignition upon mixing, which prevents some failures, downsides is being hideously toxic, corrosive, and still having lesser specific impulse than [http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#section_id--Chemical--Liquid_Rocket--RP-1_-_Oxygen kerosene + liquid oxygen]). Plus there was the small matter of Glushko having named Korolev as a traitor during the purges of the 1930s.</ref>. The third was Chelomei who got extra clout thanks to employing Khrushev's son; his Universal Rocket project was good (it eventually grew into "Proton"), leadingbut perhaps premature, and had to theuse selectionengines offrom Glushko<ref>as a requirement for military use</ref>. So Korolev picked Nikolai Kuznetsov as the engine designer. Kuznetsov had built only jet engines before, and couldn't supply anything like the Saturn V's enormous engines, so he went for "a lot of mid-sized ones" approach. The Soviet Moon launcher, the N1, had a staggering ''thirty'' engines on its first stage. This complexThe engine as such wasn't too bad<ref>eventually wasdeveloped resulted in reliable engines with record characteristics</ref>, but the complex array hadmade anthe rocket overcomplicated, enormouslyespecially labyrinthine plumbing systemand control<ref>with 1960s electronics, whichand USSR was already far from leading edge in that</ref> and couldn't be fully tested before the rocket's launch, so it was plagued by a number of unknown bugs and resonance modes.<ref>Americans basically had the same problem with Saturn V, but it had only 5 engines instead of 30, so the problem could be isolated and solved much easier.</ref> In all, four unmanned test launches of the N1 were attempted, all resulting in mid-flight explosions. ([[Oh Crap|including once at an altitude of 300 feet]]). In the second N1 test flight skipped tests bit back hard — it stalled, fell, exploded and killed everyone near the launch pad. In 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power, Chelomei's branch withered soon after, so the final choice was N1/Soyuz. But in 1966, in the middle of the N1 debacle, Korolev himself unexpectedly died of complications after pretty routine heart surgery. His death left a vacuum in the leadership position of the Soviet program that proved impossible to fill.
In 1967, the US Apollo missions began; the very first, Apollo I, a ground test, ended in disaster when a fire broke out in the capsule. Early Command Modules were defective and had faulty wiring. Nominally everything was fireproof, but they'd failed to account for the fact that the capsule had been filled with a pure-oxygen atmosphere at greater than sea-level pressure for testing. The three astronauts (Mercury veteran Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White - who had made the first US spacewalk - and space rookie Roger B. Chaffee) all died in the capsule due to smoke inhalation. One of the reasons was that the hatch wouldn't open (it opened ''inward'', which meant that the increased pressure held it shut) and couldn't be blown off by explosive bolts in an emergency ([[Nightmare Fuel|as the flames spread in the capsule, the astronauts attempted to unbolt it from its mountings]]). Ironically, Grissom himself was responsible for this feature. During his Mercury flight, there had been problems with the hatch. His capsule was lost in the Atlantic and he nearly drowned when the hatch prematurely blew open while it was still in the water. Thus, a "safer" version had been installed on Apollo 1. The problems were quickly rectified, however.
The Soviets also experienced disaster in their efforts the same year. OnThey hasted to manned flight test, and on April 24th, 1967, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when (to cap a series of potentially lethal malfunctions) on an emergency re-entry his parachutesprimary parachute failed to deploy onproperly anand emergencybackup re-entrydeployed, but failed to work properly, causing a fatal crash into the ground. Much like Apollo 1, the disaster put the Soviet program on hold while flaws with the craft were worked out. This had been the maiden flight of the Soviet's new Soyuz capsule (test launches had been cut as a time and cost saving measure) which was large enough to hold a crew of three cosmonauts with the intention of also making it to the Moon by 1968. Though the problems behind the crash were also quickly solved, continuing problems with the N1 meant that the Soyuz still did not have a reliable launcher to get it there, appropriate symmetry to the US's early rocket failures that had put it initially so far behind in the Race.
Meanwhile, the Americans were back on track with their Apollo program. A series of manned and unmanned test flights of various lunar hardware culminated in December of 1968 with the Apollo 8 lunar flyby that performed all functions of a Moon mission except the lunar landing itself. Next year saw the final fruition of the program with Apollo 11; [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got to walk on the lunar surface in the Mare Tranquillitatis on July 20th, 1969.]]
After Apollo 11, six more manned US moon landings would be attempted. [[Thirteen Is Unlucky|Apollo 13]] famously had to abort mid-flight when an oxygen tank ruptured, forcing an emergency return that was dramatically depicted in [[Apollo 13|the film of the same name]]. Apollo missions 12 and 14-17 were all successful. The last 3 Apollo missions, 18-20, were canceled under budgetary pressure and their resources diverted to other space projects. The Apollo 17 mission of 1972 was the last time to date that man has walked on the Moon.
The American success effectively ended the Soviet effort. Ironically, by that time the Soviets basically had ''everything'' needed to make a successful Moon landing (including a one-person lander that was tested in Earth orbit) except for the booster. The flight could have been possible if they decided to launch the various parts of the spacecraft separately and assemble them in orbit. But with Korolev's loss, and lacking funds, no one had enough clout to insist. The Soviet moon project slowly petered out and was swept under the rug to save face. TheIn 1974 Glushko was made the head of formerly Korolev's bureau and ordered N1 rocket program itselfcanceled, arguing that Americans won this step and one-man Moon mission is now pointless, the next milestone is a moon base. Which most likely delayed some next stages of Soviet space development, in addition to screwing over Kuznetsov's team, because by that time they implemented a comprehensive testing system on their own, then polished reliable and reusable rocket engines<ref>one was canceledsubjected to ''ten'' burns in 1976a row without overhaul, and didn't show deterioration, let alone critical failures</ref>.
'''International Co-Operation'''
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=== {{examples|Depictions in fiction ===:}}
== Film ==
* ''[[The Right Stuff]]''
* ''[[Apollo 13]]''
== Video Games ==
* ''[[Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space]]''
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[[Category:Useful Notes/Russia]]
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