(Left) Carefully designed, but ultimately never used: LK, the Soviet Lunar Lander (Right): Luna-17, the unmanned Lunar Rover. Its brother still sits on the Moon. |
From the brief description of
Komarov’s tragic death and the film of Leonov’s spacewalk, we pass through a
flimsy curtain which acts as a reminder that at the same time as the Soviet
Space programme was opening new horizons, the Americans were desperately trying
to catch up. And in this one acknowledgement of the US programme we see that,
despite all the Russian Space “firsts”, the Americans achieved the one which
grabbed the biggest headlines: first man on the Moon; indeed, first man to set
foot on another planet.
"One small step for man..." |
On a television set from the 1960’s, we see firstly President
Kennedy announcing in 1961 that by the end of the decade the USA would put a
man on the Moon; then we cut to the launch of Apollo 11 and we see the lunar
lander approaching the Moon’s surface. Next, Neil Armstrong steps onto the
surface of the planet, with the immortal words, “This is one small step for
Man; one giant leap for Mankind.” The film clip ends with the truly iconic first
shot of the Earth taken from the Moon.
Passing on there is the largest
object in the Exhibition; along with Vostok-6 and Voskhod-1 it is the most
stunning artefact on display: the Soviet
lunar lander, LK. Although it was never used, it speaks volumes about the
ingenuity of the Soviet engineers and designers. It also tells us much about
the secrecy of the Soviet system. Although the USSR was trying to put a man on
the Moon in the late 1960’s, at the same time as the Americans succeeded, they
admitted only in 1989, under Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (openness), that they had been trying to do this. When the Curator came across the Lunar Lander in the Moscow Aviation Institute, it was still classified as Top Secret. It speaks volumes about the worldwide reputation of the Science Museum that LK and the document establishing the long-range rocket programme were both declassified so that they could be exhibited in London.
(Other examples of this secrecy – often bordering on paranoia – were the lack of an announcement about either the launch of Sputnik-1 or of Yury Gagarin; and also that when Valentina Tereshkova flew in Space for three days in 1963 the Soviet Union had come up with the world’s first disposable nappy. But whereas the American Space programme had a huge number of spin-offs for the civilian economy, the Soviet programme, being under the auspices of the military kept its secrets to itself. Instead of taking what would have been the capitalist approach of making the invention of the nappy commercial (and turning its designers in the process into millionaires) Tereshkova’s nappy was classified “Top Secret”.)
LK, the pride and joy of the Exhibition - even though it was never used. |
So important is the Soviet lunar
lander, and thus, such a coup for the Museum to be able to display it, that one
Japanese scientist came to London from Japan specially to see the lander. He
sat in front of it for six hours, studying and sketching every detail. An
American who works for NASA and whom I showed around the Exhibition had come from the States also not just to see the Exhibition but
particularly to see for himself the lunar lander.
Had the lander been used, it was to
be a one-man craft, in which Aleksei Leonov would have stepped onto the Moon.
He would have climbed out of the blue hatch on the side (visible in the top picture) and down a simple
extending ladder onto the Moon’s surface. After some 20 minutes gathering
samples of rocks, and possibly taking supplies from the unmanned lunar rover which had been sent on ahead and an
example of which stands next to the lander in the Exhibition, Leonov would have
climbed back on board, blasting off to negotiate a manual docking with the
capsule orbiting the Moon.
A major difference between the
American Apollo craft and the Soviet Soyuz craft at this point was that, unlike
Apollo, the Soyuz had no hatch in the docking mechanism. So after docking with
the orbiting capsule, Leonov would have had to leave the lunar module through
the blue hatch and climb up the outside before entering the capsule through an
air-lock similar to the one from which he exited Voskhod-2 when he made the
first spacewalk.
So why did the mission not take
place? There are three reasons. Firstly, Sergei Korolev had died in 1966. A large bust of a pensive Korolev sits
opposite the lunar lander and rover (right). Korolev was such a driving force behind
the Space programme that it was very difficult to take his place. Vasily
Mishin, who took over, simply did not have Korolev’s authority, and a series of
disputes arose which upset the programme.
Secondly, the payload for the lunar
mission – with the lunar lander and the orbiting capsule – was to be the
heaviest payload that the Soviet Union had yet sent into Space (the lunar
lander itself weighs over three tons). With its 20 engines, the Vostok rocket
which had been used since Gagarin’s launch, and a variation of which is still
used today, would not have been sufficiently powerful to take this load into
Space.
A prototype of a new rocket, the N-1, with 36 engines, was designed.
There is a line drawing of it on the wall behind the lunar lander (Left). The N-1 was
tested twice, but on each occasion it blew up with a massive explosion. It was
a case, quite literally, of going back to the drawing board.
Finally, of course, after the
Americans won the race to the Moon the urgency for the Soviet Union to do this
vanished. The Russians had had so many “firsts” in Space, that to be second to
the Moon would be considered a defeat. Research continued until 1974, but was
then abandoned and Soviet Space efforts were concentrated on creating Space
Stations, the first of which, Salyut-1, had been put into orbit in 1971.
The story of how the lunar lander
came to be in the Exhibition raised many an eyebrow and a smile. The Curator
came across it in an enormous hangar in the Moscow Aviation Institute. His
immediate thought was that this would make an amazing centrepiece for the
Exhibition, although he realised that there would be certain logistical
challenges in bringing it to the Museum and installing it in the area which had
long been designated for the Exhibition.
With this in mind, among his first
questions were, how heavy is it and how tall is it? The height of just over
five metres was easy enough to determine, and that it could be displayed with
the legs not fully extended, so it would fit under the ceiling in the
exhibition area. But no-one knew the weight – or the answer to the next
question: how does it come apart? The machine had stood where it was since 1974,
when Mishin moved to the Moscow Aviation Institute and metaphorically slipped
the lunar lander under his coat and took it with him, afraid that if left where
it was it might be broken up.
A retired engineer was found who
had worked on the lander. He was able to tell them its weight, and that it
could be dismantled into four parts: the docking mechanism at the top; the
capsule below it; the engine block; and the cradle and legs, which would have
stayed on the Moon.
Perfect. Now to get it out of the
hangar. The first problem there was that the huge hangar door had not been
opened for many years, and was rusted shut. Added to which, a tree had grown at
an angle across the door on the outside. The door was freed, the tree chopped
down, and a new roadway laid to take the weight of the cargo.
But the Curator saw one more
logistical difficulty. Yes, it could now be transported in its four component
parts all the way to the back door of the Science Museum; but would they be
able to move it from there to the exhibition area? Exhibits such as
Stephenson’s Rocket could be moved, but not walls or pillars. The Tesco beach
ball, bought to practice wrapping Tereshkova’s capsule for transportation, came
into its own again. A trolley was made up and the beach ball taken through the
Museum to the area immediately below where the ticket desk for Cosmonauts was to be, where a hydraulic
lift system could be installed to lift the lunar lander into place, section by
section. When this proved possible, it was all systems go for the lunar lander
to be in the Exhibition – indeed, the Exhibition would, effectively, be built
around it, as the lander had to be in place before any partitions could be put
up.
But there was one final surprise in
store when they came to put the lander together on the spot. They hadn’t taken
into account the fact that the capsule did not simply sit on the engine block.
The engine block was convex, the capsule concave. So the cradle and legs had to
be very carefully tipped forward to allow the capsule and docking mechanism to be
put on top. The whole process of bringing the lunar lander to London and
installing it in the Exhibition had been a massive logistical challenge, but visitors to the Exhibition agreed it was well worthwhile.
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