posted 10-23-2005 07:50 PM              

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Scott Schneeweis

URL:

posted 10-23-2005 09:06 PM               

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Brian

385th Bombardment Group
B-17 Bomber "War Horse" http://warhorse.omegappg.com

posted 10-23-2005 11:38 PM            

When Apollo 8 flew, Kamanin wrote in his private diary that “the holiday is darkened with the realization of lost opportunities and with sadness that the men flying to the moon today are not named Valery Bykovsky, Pavel Popovich or Alexei Leonov.” That pretty much sums it up.

FF

posted 10-24-2005 10:56 AM               

If you meant, "When did the MOON race end?", it ended IMHO when Apollo XI safely landed on the Moon and then safely returned to the Earth.

posted 10-24-2005 11:49 AM               

While the Space Age is still alive and well, can't tell that any of the major players are really racing anymore.

That's not to say that there won't be other space races in the future. (Or even now, with the race to get launch a suborbital tourist -- I just have trouble thinking of that as THE Space Race.)

posted 10-24-2005 11:47 PM            

Many different takes on what the 'Space Race' really is, or was.

The race started with the launch of Sputnik, and perhaps did in fact end with the ASTP, contrary to my earlier post.

There was a lot of activity going on shortly after that launch, with the Soviets in the lead. Two years after Sputnik, Luna 3 sent us our first image of the 'dark side of the moon'.

Next, they put a man and a woman into space and started EVA's

While we were perfecting orbital rendezvous, the USSR was sending probes to other planets. Superiority was certainly a motive, and the Soviets had a knack and a passion.

Sending men to the moon A8, and landing men on the surface (and of course bringing them back home safely) was certainly a setback for our comrades. Fortunately, we were all able to work together for a common goal ASTP, and I think they might have conceded at that point.

But who really knows?

Great post.

posted 10-25-2005 03:38 AM               

21st February 1969: The first launch of the Russian N1 moon rocket ends in failure after 69 seconds. Ending all realsitic chances of the Russians beating the Americans. From this point it didn't matter when Apollo 11 landed (or even if it rsan into problems and Apollo 12 made the first landing) from that point the 'race has been won.'

3rd July 1969: The second N1 launch ends in failure. The possibilty that the US programme might still run into trouble meant the N1 programme continued. Russia might have tried for a landing by April 1970 which was the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth, but this 2nd failure doomed even that hope.

2nd May 1974: The N1 project is cancelled. Even though the third N1 launch in 1972 also failed the project was not cancelled until May 1974. From this point Russia was not even trying (however secretly or quietly) to pursue a lunar landing capability.

posted 10-25-2005 11:27 AM            

Imagine if the US hadn't pushed up the Apollo 8 lunar mission, but instead had stuck to the original schedule, and waited for the LM to be completed, despite its schedule slippages.

The Russians had no hope to beat the US to a landing. However, they had tested the capability to send humans around the moon and back. A small rubber pressure gasket failed on the last unmanned test flight, but would have been an easy fix. All it took was the Soviets to take a leap of faith, and they could have send a human around the moon even before Apollo 8.

So imagine a scenario where the Russians sent a human around the moon first, but the Americans landed first, a few months later. Knowing how Soviet-era propaganda works, it would have been easy for them to say:

"We went to the moon first. We traveled the quarter of a million miles, and everything we wanted to study could be seen from orbit. So what if the Americans went another couple of dozen miles extra? We visited the moon first."

I think such an argument would have persuaded enough people, particularly at the time, that there would be endless and still-continuing debate about who 'went to the moon' first, and the consensus might be that the countries each snagged an important first - in effect, a tie.

Based on this highly possible scenario, I think we can't rate Apollo 8 highly enough as being the deciding factor for the Americans winning the lunar "Space Race."

FF

posted 10-25-2005 04:46 PM               

America (JFK) took the position early on that landing a man on the Moon was the finish line of this race, but I don't believe the Soviets ever thought of it that way, rather it was just another first that they would have liked to achieve.

It seems to me that from America's perspective, Apollo 8 was a tremendous accomplishment, Apollo 11 was the end of the race, and Apollo Soyuz was the party where we could all shake hands and be friends. The race was over for the US.

The Soviets however wanted to keep on playing the game. When they saw the US building a shuttle they didn't want to get behind so they built one too. While both countries stayed in low orbit, the Soviets strove to set longer and longer endurance records until MIR came down.

So my opinion is that the space race from the Soviet perspective started with Sputnik and ended with MIR. And from the American perspective it ended with the Apollo program.

posted 10-26-2005 09:12 AM               

Certainly, the Soviets seemed to want to beat Skylab into orbit with Salyut, and certainly the U.S. seemed proud of its duration records with Skylab.

One could argue that the "race" even continued until the Soviets been the Skylab III duration record, but, by that point, it was pretty obvious that the U.S. was no longer "racing" with them for duration.

Given the time difference, I also have trouble seeing Buran as a "race" with the shuttle.

Basically, it seems like after Skylab at the latest, the two programs each took their own course, certainly focused on setting new milestones, but no longer in direct reaction to what the othe was doing.