So if they were racing the US to the moon why didn’t they also publicly proclaim their intent to go to the moon? They rejected the race, tried to make a Saturn V, didn’t work, moved on. Hardly seems like a race to me
From the references in that same wikipedia article you’re referencing, the one I linked in my comment:
"On June 23, 1960 the USSR gave the go ahead to the N-1 project via a decree: "On the Development of Powerful Launch vehicles, Satellites, Spacecraft, and Space Exploration 1960-1967". This was Sergei Korolev’s design for a family of launchers, the key one being the largest, the N-1.
This initial design while a powerful heavy lift rocket, had a planned payload capacity of 75 tonnes - a lot less than that for a lunar landing mission. Korolev was thinking flyby missions of Mars, which require a much lighter payload."
Why is it so hard to accept the moon landing was just pompous Americanism?
The whole thing was about national pride on both sides. The soviets didn’t admit they were striving for the same thing because they never wanted to be seen to lose. Their pattern was always the same:
- They didn’t say they were working towards having the first satellite. They just announced it when they were successfully.
- They didn’t say they were working towards having the first living animal in space. They just announced it when they were successfully.
- They didn’t say they were working towards having the first man in space. They just announced it when they were successfully.
- They didn’t say they were working towards having the first man on the moon. They just denied it when they were unsuccessful.
However, the Soviet lunar program was confirmed many years after the fact under Gorbachev’s policy of Glastnost when the Soviet Union fell. The Soviet Lunar program is fact. Their lunar landers were built just months after the US. Some still exist. There’s one on loan for display at Disneyland in Paris. I’ve seen another at the London Science Museum. Russia loans them out to show how advanced they were at the time. To take pride in what they accomplished, and rightly so.
This is all very public, yet you’re trying to convince me that 50yo face saving propaganda is the truth?
