Originally Posted by TelevisionUser:
“The interesting thing is, HenryGarten, how the Soviets viewed the progress of the Americans. They apparently regarded the Americans as behaving almost recklessly with the fast pace at which they proceeded so potentially endangering astronauts' lives.
The later Proton-launched Zond missions (4-8) were almost certainly tests for a crewed circumlunar flight doing a figure of 8 around the Moon and back again. With the failure of the enormous N1 rocket programme, it became increasingly clear that the only way they could get to the Moon ahead of the American would be to do a flight and return mission with no landing. Powerful though it is, that is all the Proton launcher could manage. Even so, that would have been a publicity coup and they would have been able to get many stunning photographs just like Apollo 8 did. This was also one of the few times when the Soviets employed sea splashdowns for mission returns just like the Apollo capsules.
There were about two dozen cosmonauts selected for the N1 Moon mission (including Alexei Leonov) and (IIRC) about half a dozen of them petitioned to be allowed to go on a manned Zond circumlunar flight but the cautious authorities were not having any of it. I suspect the loss of the N1s and the tragic loss of Vladimir Komarov made them decide that it was just simply too dangerous to even attempt going round the Moon.
Personally, I think they a little overcautious and a Zond mission would probably have been less likely to go wrong than an Apollo one. I suspect part of the problem was the way they Soviets handled their Moon mission. Instead of going with one system, the Soviets had different design bureaus (and personalities!) all doing the same thing and there did not appear to be an early decision on which bureau's design to go with which was an unfortunate waste of both resources and time so they ultimately lost the race to the Moon.”
Lovely to see someone writing with authority of the moon race.
Actually the real reason for the difference between the Russian and American is one that never gets mentioned and that is clustering of engines. The Russians gained an early advantage in the rocket world by clustering of engines. However that was carried much too far in the N1 rocket where there were about 30 engines on the first stage. It gets a bit complicated in the plumbing.
Now America went down the road of building big engines rather than cluster lots of smaller ones. That ultimately proved the difference between the programmes.
Also the Russian programme was too geared to having spectaculars like Voskhod I and II. Then when the American Gemini programme began it achieved things like rendevous and docking which were essential to any moon mission. During the 23 months of the Gemini programme not one Russian left the ground.
Another thing is that the first N1 launch attempt was about 3rd June 1969. Even if it was successful, which it wasn't, it was far too late to compete with Apollo 11 which was due away 13 days later.
To be honest I find it hard to see where the whole N1 programme was going. Mind you we did not know about the N1 for at least another 20 years.