Lost in (Storage) Space

Russia got to the Moon first only in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Advise and Consent. Few have ever seen the spacecraft Russia was developing in hopes of making a first manned Moon landing but now someone has photographed the stash of spacefaring equipment at the Moscow Aviation Institute. A photo of the lander is among those that illustrate “Inside Moscow’s Secret Failed Moon Program”.

Getting to the Moon requires launching a command module and a lander. Both are heavy objects and require massive amounts of thrust to get into orbit. The Soviet’s planned to use their N-1 rocket, but two failed launches in 1971 and 1972 destroyed dummy landing and control modules, as well as the rockets themselves, and led to the program being shelved for lack of a proper launch vehicle.

[Via James Hay.]

One thought on “Lost in (Storage) Space

  1. I had previously seen photos of some of the soldered elbow joints and valve wheels inside — apparently it was just about that primative — but never saw a shot of the outside of this vehicle. This is one for the photo album… or hard drive, at least.

Comments are closed.