Why did the Russians never bother to land a man on the moon?

Question

It surely can't have been because it was beyond them?

Answer 1

It was beyond the abilities of their space agency with the budget they were given.

In order to get to the Moon they built a huge rocket called the N-1. It was more powerful than the Saturn V in terms of the thrust it generated at liftoff. However, they never got it to work.

The US had succeeded in perfecting metallurgical techniques and rocketry to the point where they could build a huge engine that would deliver 1.5million pounds of thrust. The Saturn V rocket used five of them to provide the lift necessary to get the huge vehicle off the ground and on its way to orbit. The Russians never developed that technique, and the N-1 used no fewer than thirty engines in the first stage to deliver the thrust needed. Unfortunately the Russian space agency was never allocated the funds needed to build a test facility that would allow them to test the first stage before they tried to launch the rocket, and when they did try to launch the rocket they discovered quickly that it didn't work. A combination of bad engine layout and the complex control systems needed to keep thirty engines working together resulted in a number of catastrophic failures. The project was cancelled and the Russians devoted their efforts to Earth orbiting space stations.

Answer 2

The 1960's space race challenge was which country between the USA and the USSR (Russia was included in this as part of the Soviet Union) could land a man on the moon first. The Americans achieved this on 21st July 1969 (Neil Armstrong being the very first man to step foot on the moon). The Russians were the first to get a man into space (1959 Gagarin) and still hold the record for the longest man in space (just over the year of being in space). They were also the first to get a satellite into space (Sputnik). The Russians have achieved more firsts than any other nation when it comes to space travel.

Answer 3

As to the whys that has been pretty much covered, but I should think they are all kicking themselves now. With the discovery of Helium 3 on the moon every Technically developed and developing nation on the planet will be pulling out all the stops no expense spared for manned moon landings within the next 20yrs. Should be interesting!

Answer 4

As per other answer regarding the Russian technical problems with launching their spacecraft, But i think Russia and America made a costly mistake by not pursuing their plans back in the 70s, because i believe if man is to conquer space we need a low gravity platform to launch from, and if we'd have been stationed on the moon, then i think we would have made much more progress than we have to date.

Answer 5

The russians did have a very elaborate lunar program but they had serious problems getting their lunar rocket to work. They suffered a catastrophic failure when it exploded on the launchpad killing hundreds of technicians. After this failure and after the americans won the race they decided the effort to be too costly. After all they had succesfully landed unmanned probes that returned lunar soil to earth (the samples matched the american samples in composition). So what more could be learned or gained by going to the moon? Instead the russians put their sights on mars with spacestations in low earth orbit to simulate the long duration spaceflight. When the russians started building spacestations the americans also turned their attention to low earth orbit operations instead of (manned) deep space flights. No one has made it to mars yet but that´s another story.

Answer 6

Both N1 rockets exploded on the pad, so the Soviets scrapped the moon landing program. They had already constructed moon suits, a moon lander but didn't have a way to get there.

Answer 7

The Americans discovered artifical structures on the Moon, and have never been back since. Actually nobody has been back since.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9075306542842977658&q=moon+base&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6552475158249898710&q=the+disclosure+project&hl=en

Answer 8

It's because the Americans did it first. But the Russians were the first to launch manned spacecraft.

Answer 9

They neverdeveloped their techno;ogy to a working level after a severe accident wich kiiled many of their technicians and wiped out a major portion of their facility

Answer 10

Because they realised how much f......ing whinging the Yanks would have done