This is clearly seen in this picture. We continue to watch the video. At 4:10 - attention! At 4:14 am, the flame from the 1st stage engines suddenly disappears! And at the same 4:14, suddenly a powerful explosion! It turns out that the powder accelerators worked, which were oriented on the spent first stage with the nozzles forward. This is for braking the shot off the first stage - so as not to interfere.
And then you can see how the first stage is disconnected from the second. This footage is at 4:18 am. Then the hydrogen engines of the 2nd stage are switched on - an almost colorless blue flame from 4:18, Apollo flies with the second and third stages. I was alarmed by the fact that there is no torch from the second (hydrogen) stage! And so on until 4:58, when the connecting ring between the second and first stages is fired off. At 5:01 a rescue module is fired from the bow. This is where the fragment I cite ends, followed by shots of congratulations to each other by employees of the American MCC. By the way, it is also alarming, why are they so happy and congratulate each other? Just think, something has been put into low orbit. The main difficulties that NASA has never encountered (not once (!)) - they are still ahead! And they are happy ... In general, they are somehow professionally happy. And what were they doing at the MCC all this time? On the video - only looked through binoculars. This is when launching into orbit! Why is this MCC even needed then?
There are still questions.
1) From 4:18 on, when the Apollo flies on the 2nd stage, the torch is not visible. That is, it is not at all visible, as if the engines do not work at all.
2) Until the launch into orbit (this is the moment when they began to show joy in the MCC), there is no separation of the second stage.
I answer to myself.
On the first question - perhaps this is typical for the operation of hydrogen engines. This can be seen in the shuttle flight video. After dropping the boosters, the shuttle's hydrogen engines turn on - and no torch, just a bright spot when looking at the nozzles from behind. In our video we are looking at the Apollo from the side, the nozzles are not visible, maybe the J-2 is working ... But still, something does not fit ... Look - at 4:18 the torch is still visible! Semi-transparent light blue torch typical for the operation of a hydrogen engine. And at 4:21 it is visible! And then - no.
On the second question. At a stretch, it can be explained by the hacky editing of the video. That is, the joy of the MCC is mounted at the moment when the second and third stages have not yet separated. But then the bigger question is, why should these filmmakers substitute themselves like that? Well, they are creative humanitarians, okay, but did any of the experts actually watch this video?
There is also a third question
3) If this is an orbit (well, congratulations to each other in the MCC) - then why is it shot from the nose in orbit, after a while the rescue module begins to lag behind in the direction of movement? We are in orbit, the engines are off, everything is purely by inertia. Why is the fragment lagging behind?
Maybe because it is blown back by air? And, since there is air, then there is no normal orbit! Something suborbital at best!
In short, Dr. Popov with like-minded people believes that now this whole bundle is going straight to the Atlantic Ocean.
In this mysterious topic there are as many "though" as "by the way" ... Therefore, although ... If this is still not an orbit, but the hack of filmmakers, then at this time the hydrogen engines of the second stage with a colorless torch are working. And that means acceleration. So the shot module is lagging behind.
Talk that Apollo was a scam, in which, at best, the launches of Saturn-5 carrier rockets were real, went already in December 1968, during the Apollo 8 flight around the Moon. The countdown of the campaign to "expose" "Apollo" begins in 1974 with the release of the first book on the subject, "We Never Fought the Moon: A Thirty Billion Fraud," written by Bill Kizing and Randy Reid. Moreover, Kaising worked for the Rocketdyne company, which produced engines for the Saturn-5. This fact gave special weight to his opinion.
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Americans have not been to the moon The role of the USSR Official position of Russia Chinese Scientists Deny US Lunar Mission The Big Space Lies About the Moon Landing |
The theory of falsification of the US lunar program was most vividly expressed in the feature film "Capricorn-1", filmed in the same USA in 1978. He talked about how NASA faked the flight using special effects. True, not the Moon, but Mars, but the hint was obvious.
The famous American film director Stanley Kubrick, the author of "A Space Odyssey - 2001", admitted that, at the request of NASA, he imitated some alleged episodes of astronauts on the Moon in the film studio. But there is no malicious intent here: NASA was simply not sure that the telecast from the surface of Selena would be of high enough quality to give viewers an idea of what the astronauts were doing there. So the agency has recreated on Earth what should have happened on the Moon.
The most famous Russian author Yuri Mukhin wrote the book Anti-Apollo: The US Lunar Scam. A relatively new argument in anti-Apollo conspiracy theories concerns the engine. If the United States was really able in the mid-1960s to create such a powerful oxygen-kerosene engine as the F-1 (there were five of them on Saturn-5), then why did they then turn to Russia in the late 1990s with a request to sell them almost half the powerful RD-180, which also run on oxygen and kerosene?
Is this not confirmation that Saturn 5 was in fact a flying rattle, the purpose of which was to create the impression of a super-powerful carrier, supposedly capable of delivering people to the moon?
They flew to the moon, but lost the films ...
That circumstance also raises serious suspicions. that along with the original video recording of the first steps of people on the Moon, tapes with the telemetry recording of the operation of the lunar module systems and telemetry data on the health of Armstrong and Aldrin while they were on the Moon also disappeared: a total of about 700 boxes with various kinds of tapes ... However, according to Florida Today, film and television evidence not only of the Apollo 11 mission was missing, but of all eleven Apollo flights, including near-Earth, circumlunar and landing. In total - 13,000 films.
Lies to save the nation
The Americans are the kind of people who fool, fool and wake up to fool all of humanity. Of course, there are many honest people among them who do not want to hide the truth. But the "discoverer" of the North Pole, American Robert Peary, cannot be attributed to them. Only in 1970, in Greenland, they found a parking lot, where Piri sat for two months, not intending to go to the pole. And then he came and told everyone that he was there. Piri's diaries found in the parking lot told about everything.
But who already cared about it then? The road is a spoon for dinner ... The train has already left, and now the Americans will be forever proud of their Piri - the "discoverer" of the North Pole. Until now, in some textbooks of geography, you can read that the first person to visit the North Pole was the American Robert Peary. So now, all space passions remained in the XX century, so that the Americans will forever remain the people who first set foot on the moon.
Ambitious America, which considered itself the greatest country in the world, could not endure the space successes of the USSR.
President Kennedy had no choice but to arrogantly declare:
“By the end of the decade, we will land on the moon. Not because it is easy, but because it is difficult. "
America, busy with bombing Vietnam, threw just insane money on the great task - to wipe the Russians' nose.
And in 1969, in the presence of almost a million people gathered at the cosmodrome, a super-powerful whopper, the Saturn-5 launch vehicle, was launched live.
She carried the Apollo ship and three astronauts. "Apollo" flew up to the Moon, a landing module separated from it, which landed safely on the moon, and Neil Armstrong climbed out of the capsule, saying the prepared: "This is a small step for man, but a huge step for all mankind." .
For some reason, the eyes of the American do not shine with happiness, like our Yuri. Astronauts "who have been on the moon" are extremely taciturn and do not seek meetings, unlike our sociable astronauts. Armstrong generally lived in a castle with a descending bridge. So 82-year-old Neil Armstrong took his secret to his grave on August 24, 2012.
The world applauded. The Americans set up their flag, collected stones, took pictures, shot a movie ...
Then the capsule took off from the lander, docked with the Apollo, then - a safe landing in the Pacific Ocean and America's triumph at all times.
Triumph, but mother-in-law does not believe!
It was America's name-day, she went crazy with happiness, neither before nor after did the Americans rejoice so much. Then there were five more successful expeditions ...
From the Soviet cosmic minds, no one doubted except the General Designer Mishin, who replaced the deceased Korolev. During the live broadcast, he smoked all the time and repeated:
"This is impossible," Apollo "will not be able to break away from the earth's orbit and head to the moon ..."
Presumably, he knew what he was saying ... But then the cheerful voice of the American commentator said: "Apollo has left the earth's orbit and is heading towards the moon" ... Mishin could not understand anything, got up, went out, slamming the door ... He realized that the Americans are smarter than us. We all believed it, but my wise mother-in-law never wanted to believe it.
Then more and more often the voices of skeptics began to be heard, claiming that there were no flights to the Moon, but there was a hoax. The American space agency NASA twisted a finger at this and stated that she would not discuss this issue with anyone. Why discuss with cretins? And such cretins turned out to be journalists and their fellow bloggers ...
A book by Y. Mukhin first came out of his fundamental works. "Anti-Apollo" .
The recently published work of the physicist A. Popov "Great Breakout or Space Scam" represents a huge number of analyzed facts, which can only be dismissed as the Main Argument in All Disputes - you don't understand Tydurakinich!
The blogosphere has split into three unequal parts: the skeptics; fans of Americans; and the most numerous wise comrades - those who do not care.
Stubborn why
- Why are the shadows cast by the stones clearly converging at an angle, while the shadows from the Sun are always parallel? Spotlight in the studio?
- Why is the surface of the moon illuminated unevenly, while the sun should flood everything equally? Not enough lighting fixtures?
- Why is there a crushed cockroach in the photograph of Armstrong's trail?
- Why do astronauts jump 50 cm in footage, when they should be 2 meters?
- Why, when every gram of roads had to be transferred to an electric car (rover) and ride it?
- Why is the dust from under the wheels of the rover swirling like in air?
- Why does the shadows give the estimated height of the Sun 30 degrees, while it was at an angle of 10 degrees at the time?
- Why is the astronaut clearly visible even when the Sun shines directly on his back? Backlight?
- Why are the stars not visible in the lunar sky?
- Why did the lander's engines have to sweep away tons of dust (Armstrong wrote: “We raised the dust hundreds of meters”), and under the engine nozzles the dust is pristine, as if the module was installed by a truck crane? Etc.
Skeptics of lunar flights argue that space suits of astronauts on the Moon 80 centimeters thick can serve as salvation from radiation.
- One American specialist generally claims that the radiation belt around the Earth is insurmountable for a living being.
- During the "flight" to the Moon, Armstrong wanted to go out into space for a walk for some guy. The footage of Armstrong's spacewalk coincides with footage of Astronaut Shepard's spacewalk from the Gemeni spacecraft three years earlier. Only in specular reflection and slightly changed color.
- Shots of how the Earth gradually decreases in size as it moves away from it "Apollo" - a cartoon made from one photograph.
- "The moon is coming" - a similar cartoon.
- Spectacular movie of the flight over the Moon, when the shadow runs over the craters - filming of a huge lunar globe, which is owned by NASA.
- The lunomobile, in size, cannot fit into the capsule, even when folded.
- During the preparation of the "flights to the moon" 11 astronauts died in car accidents and otherwise. Sad record. Gagged with dissent?
Booster rocket
Launch vehicle "Saturn-5"
Some conspiracy theorists believe that the Saturn 5 rocket was never ready to launch, and they argue as follows:
After a partially unsuccessful test launch of the Saturn-5 rocket on April 4, 1968, a manned flight followed, which, in the opinion of N. P. Kamanin, was a “pure gamble” in terms of safety.
In 1968, 700 employees of the Marshall Space Research Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Saturn 5 was being developed, were fired.
In 1970, in the midst of the lunar program, the chief designer of the Saturn-5 rocket, Wernher von Braun, was relieved of his post as director of the Center and removed from the leadership of rocket development.
After the end of the lunar program and the launch of the Skylab into orbit, the remaining two rockets were not used for their intended purpose, but were sent to the museum.
The absence of foreign cosmonauts who would fly on Saturn-5, or work on the super-heavy object launched by this rocket into orbit - the Skylab station.
The lack of further use of the F-1 engines or its descendants on subsequent missiles, in particular, the use instead of them on the powerful Atlas-5 missile.
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 13.04.2019
The version about NASA's failures in the creation of hydrogen-oxygen engines is also being considered. Supporters of this version claim that the second and third stages of "Saturn-5" had kerosene-oxygen engines, like the first stage. The characteristics of such a rocket would not be enough to launch Apollo into a circumlunar orbit with a full-fledged lunar module, but it would be enough for a manned spacecraft to fly around the Moon and drop a greatly reduced model of the lunar module on the Moon.
Photoshop made its way to the moon
Retouched NASA image in original and gamma corrected form. After gamma correction, digital retouching of the scanned image appears on the photo.
Retouched NASA image in original and gamma corrected form. After gamma correction, digital retouching of the scanned image appears on the photo.
The main exposer of this whole lunar production was ... Photoshop. After all, no one knew that 30 years after the "landing on the moon" this damn computer program would appear for processing images. When, with its help, the photographs were added to the maximum brightness and contrast, instead of an absolute black sky, painted backdrops appeared in the photographs, on which streaks of light from searchlights and shadows from astronauts were clearly visible. And there were traces of retouching literally everywhere. The photo was especially touching: an astronaut at the American flag, right above the flag - distant Earth. With an increase in brightness-contrast, the astronaut's shadow became clearly visible in the lunar sky, and the Earth turned out to be a cardboard circle,
And then even cunning mathematicians, combining two photographs taken with a pause of several seconds (therefore, the camera moved 20 centimeters to the side), calculated the distance to the lunar mountains, which are visible behind the astronauts. Globe to them - 5 kilometers, according to measurements - 100 meters. The backdrop, with the mountains painted, is unambiguous. And the line between the sandbox and the backdrop is very clearly visible ...
Then the fans of the Americans admitted through clenched teeth: “Well, yes, something was filmed in Hollywood for clarity. These are the Americans. But on the moon they were, were, were!
What color is the moon? According to NASA - the moon is gray, according to Soviet scientists - brown. On December 15, 2013, the Chinese space mission Chang'e-3 transmitted images from the Moon: Moon is brown! Here the supporters of NASA (Vitaly Egorov, aka Zelenyikot) caught themselves and came up with an explanation: "the white balance was not trivially set on the cameras." This video proves that NASA supporters are wrong.
Convincing evidence of the falsity of the photographs allegedly taken on the moon, where the astronaut, the American flag and the Earth are simultaneously captured. The proof is based on an analysis of the Earth's appearance using the Celestia astronomical program.
The video uses photographs, the author of which is NASA, the materials of which are the property of all mankind. Photos posted on flickr by link.
This video is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International free license.
To the moon - without preparation?
The one-hundred-meter whopper "Saturn-5" was supposed to deliver to the moon a module with a capsule, the height of a three-story building. The first test of the rocket with a stretch was called successful. But during the second unmanned takeoff, the rocket wobbled and exploded.
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 30.09.2017
Yale University professor David Gelernter, science adviser to the American president, denies even the possibility that Americans were on the moon. And he gives reasons ...
“How can we organize a mission to Mars for the American team by the mid-2030s, if we have not even been on the Moon? The idea itself is laughable, as is the entire Obama administration. "- said the scientist. - "The Apollo landing is a hoax in human history better than global warming."
What is logical to assume in such cases? That's right, you need to test the rocket in unmanned mode until it flies like a clock. Then again, without pilots, you need to send it to the moon with its help and do all the necessary operations. It is clear that there should be a lot of tests and, according to statistics, half of them will fail.
But the Americans are sending three astronauts to the moon within three weeks. Apollo 8 flew remarkably around the moon and returned beautifully to Earth. Also, “Saturn-5” did not disappoint, throwing “Apollo-9, 10” to the Moon. And then it was Apollo 11's turn with Armstrong and others. And everything is as if on notes. The most sophisticated space technology suddenly refused to refuse. What god helped the Americans?
The lander has never landed on the moon without people. The landing capsule, accordingly, did not take off.
Nevertheless, all six American expeditions to the moon went off without a hitch. According to the theory of probability, this simply could not be
Our lunar rocket took off four times and exploded four times, after which the Soviet program was closed, since the Americans "got ahead of us anyway."
And it was supposed to first send two lunar rovers to our companion. They had to carefully examine the landing site and choose the most even one. For at an inclination of more than 12 degrees, the lander will either not land or the capsule will not take off from it.
Then a spare rocket was to land on the radio beacons from the lunar rovers. If she landed safely, the lunar rovers would examine her to see if she could safely take off from the moon. Only then would you launch the module with ONE astronaut. A second cosmonaut, and also a lunomobile, is an impermissible luxury when every gram counts.
The Americans, on the other hand, were not touched by these little things. After all, they were kept by the cosmic God.
Fantastic landing accuracy
And in one more question, the Americans rubbed their nose to us - exactly the landing (splashdown). During landing, Gagarin was blown away for hundreds of kilometers, he was searched for almost a day from helicopters. And then the hits were not much closer.
But the accuracy of the splashdown of the American returned capsules was: from 2 to 15 kilometers. Amazing result. Ours gnashed their teeth with envy ... And only by the end of the 80s it became clear that, according to the laws of physics, a landing with an accuracy of more than 40 kilometers was unattainable. But in the 60s, no one knew this yet.
Stones were collected on the moon. Where did you go?
And further. The Americans together "collected on the moon" as much as 400 kilograms of soil. The Soviet automatic station "Luna-16" brought only 100 grams. When the Americans were offered to exchange samples for research, they dragged out for almost three years, and only in 1972 they gave us a whole ... 3 grams.
Skeptics assure that it was then, at last, that the automatic station "Sekveyor" flew secretly to the Moon and brought the same one hundred grams of lunar powder. And those 400 kilos of moon stones have never been seen, they are kept behind seven locks and are not given out to anyone.
All in all, the Americans gave us 28 grams of regolith - lunar sand, which three of our automatic stations delivered about three hundred grams. Moonstone - not a single one!
There was a case. when they gave a pebble to some prince, but after the death of the prince, this pebble turned out to be a piece of petrified wood.
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 23.12.2017
Tracked down, tracked down, but not tracked down
The American, like the gypsies who inflate the nag with the aim of selling it, fictitiously increased the size of the launch rocket. A. Popov analyzed the take-off of the Saturn-5 rocket. And that's what I found. A quarter of a second before the separation of the first stage, a bright explosion occurs on the surface of the rocket. And one hundredth of it becomes visible how the outer hull of this whopper collapsed, under which a body much smaller than the much less powerful American Saturn-1 rocket was revealed.
All the same evil tongues suggested that the Americans simply increased the size of "Saturn-1" with the help of the casing. When it took off and disappeared from sight, its remains fell into the ocean.
Unfortunately, our eminent specialist and honored cosmonaut, respected Alexei Leonov, like everyone else, fell for the American spoon of deception. He fiercely defends the Americans and repeats all the time: “We tracked all the stages of the Apollo flight. Alas, they did not track ...
Our space specialists followed the flight as well as the whole world, i.e. according to the "picture" provided by NASA. Only two Soviet scientific ships, which were in the Atlantic Ocean, could monitor the takeoff of "Saturn-5". So, an hour before "take off" our ships surrounded the American Navy, helicopters, which turned on their jammers at full power.
Kennedy's plans are not destined to come true
Yes, in the beginning, the Americans honestly and enthusiastically set about realizing Kennedy's dream. But after a few years, having spent 25 billion rubles, they were convinced that this was not yet possible. We need more weeks, months, years, billions, billions ... And the Russian turtles have already circled the moon. How could this be explained to taxpayers, to Congress?
And then NASA and the CIA created the Great Hoax during the Cold War.
Of course, many of us want the Russian tricolor to be the first flag set on the moon.
But, most likely, it will already be the Chinese flag.
The role of the USSR
Yu.A. Gagarin and S.P. Korolev
One of the aspects of the "lunar conspiracy" theory is also attempts to explain the recognition by the Soviet Union of the American landing on the moon. Proponents of the lunar conspiracy theory believe that the USSR did not have convincing evidence of NASA's falsifications, other than incomplete intelligence information (or that the evidence did not appear immediately). The possibility of collusion between the USSR and the United States to cover up the alleged scam is assumed. The following versions of the reasons are named that could have prompted the USSR to enter into a "lunar conspiracy" with the United States and stop its lunar flyby and lunar landing manned lunar programs at the last stages of implementation:
1. The USSR did not immediately recognize the scam.
2. The leadership of the USSR refused to publicly disclose for the sake of political pressure on the United States (threats of exposure).
3. The USSR, in exchange for silence, could receive economic concessions and privileges, such as the supply of wheat at low prices and access to the West European oil and gas market. Possible suggestions also include personal gifts to the Soviet leadership.
4. The United States had political compromising material on the leadership of the USSR.
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 18.11.2017
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 09.12.2017
Opponents express doubts on all points:
1.The USSR was closely monitoring the US lunar program both according to open sources and through a wide network of agents. Since the falsification (if it were) would have required the participation of thousands of people, there would be a very high probability among them an agent of the Soviet special services. In addition, the lunar mission was followed by continuous radio and optical observation from various points in the USSR, from ships in the World Ocean and, possibly, from aircraft, and the information received was immediately verified by specialists. In such conditions, it is almost impossible not to notice anomalies in the propagation of radio signals. In addition, there were six missions. Therefore, even if the deception had not been detected immediately, it would have been easily revealed later.
2. This probably would have been possible in the 1980s but not in the context of the Moon Race and the Cold War. In the USSR and in the world in those years there was euphoria from the successes of Soviet cosmonautics, which supported the thesis, fundamental for the USSR and all Marxist movements, of the "superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist system." For the USSR, the defeat in the "Moon Race" had significant negative ideological consequences both within the country and in the world, but the proof of the failure of the United States and falsification (if it really took place) was a very strong trump card in the propagation of the ideas of Marxism in the world, which would allow to give a new breath to the communist movements in the West, which by that time had begun to lose popularity. Against this background, the possible bonuses from "conspiracy" with the United States for the USSR would not look very tempting. It should not be forgotten that the late 1960s - early 1970s in the United States were marked by a fierce internal political struggle and, if there was a falsification, it could have been exposed by American politicians themselves in the course of the struggle. In this case, the USSR would have gained nothing from its silence.
3. The principle of "Occam's razor" works here. The reasons for the USSR's entry into the West European oil and gas market have been well researched, and to explain them, there is no need to involve a possible collusion between the United States and the USSR. The price for the supply of wheat to the USSR was, although somewhat lower than the exchange price, but this is due to the huge volumes of supplies, self-pickup of products by the Soviet merchant fleet and a payment system that was advantageous for the West. The version about personal gifts is completely doubtful, since in such a vital issue for the superpowers, these gifts, obviously, should have been very valuable. It is even difficult to imagine their content here. In addition, after the collapse of the USSR, information about them would certainly have become publicly available.
4. Both before the start of the "Moon Race" and after it The United States carried out a continuous and tough information campaign to discredit the leadership of the USSR, using both real compromising materials and fakes created by the special services. Among the leaders of states, a kind of "information immunity" to this kind of propaganda has developed, and it is unlikely that in such an environment any new materials would be taken seriously with political consequences for the USSR.
Fragment of the program “Secrets of Chapman. And what was really there? " from 02.06.2017
Official position of Russia
Making it clear to the public that one should not doubt the truth of the statement about the flights of American astronauts to the moon, neither the country's top leadership, nor the domestic official science, in response to a direct question, does not provide a single proof that would sweep away all doubts and become an unconditional confirmation of their correctness. positions on this issue.
And if Russia, as one of the leading space powers in the world, and in the 20th century the USSR is a leader in the space race, cannot bring through the lips of its leader or official science a single convincing fact proving or refuting the flights of American astronauts to the Moon, then all information about these flights, published in textbooks, scientific and popular science literature, shown in newsreels, posted in the media, the Internet, displayed on postage stamps, badges, coins, etc., is a simple repetition of the version proposed by the Americans and is based either on the naive faith of people into this version, or, most likely, on the fulfillment of the will of the highest officials of the state by the authors of these products.
What Putin says about landing on the moon
What is the position of official Russia today on the issue of flights of American astronauts to the moon? It is best to ask this question to the head of state, who, according to his status, should be better than anyone else aware of the credibility of this global event.
A. Anisimov: Good afternoon, Vladimir Vladimirovich, my name is Alexey Anisimov, the city of Novosibirsk. I have this question. Do you think the Americans landed on the moon, well, landed on the moon?
V. V. Putin: I think yes.
A. Anisimov: There is a version that ...
V. V. Putin: I know this version, but it seems to me that it is impossible to falsify such an event. This is the same thing that some argue that on September 11, the Americans themselves blew up these twin towers, they themselves directed the actions of the terrorists. Complete nonsense! Brad, this is impossible! … Complete nonsense! The same applies to the landing on the moon: it is impossible to falsify an event of this magnitude.
A. Anisimov: Thank you.
V. V. Putin: We can say that Yuri Gagarin did not fly either - you can think of anything you like. Meanwhile, let us not forget about it, after all, our compatriot took the first step into space.
What conclusions can be drawn from this dialogue?
First. V.V. Putin knows the version according to which the Americans falsified flights to the moon.
Second. It turned out that V.V. Putin, being the head of state - a pioneer in space exploration, forty years after the flights of American astronauts to the Moon, does not have reliable data that would allow to unequivocally answer the question posed: yes, the flights of Americans to the Moon are reality, their reliability confirm such and such facts.
Third. V.V. Putin, although he had the opportunity to request information confirming or refuting the official version about the flights of American astronauts to the moon, in the archives of the secret services, the foreign policy department and scientific organizations engaged in the study of space, for unknown reasons did not do this, but expressed his point of view as an ordinary citizen who does not always have the opportunity to obtain reliable information from competent sources.
The point of view of V.V. Putin is that American astronauts landed on the moon, although no new evidence is given to confirm this, it just seems to him that it is impossible to falsify an event of this magnitude.
But if enough money is allocated, then anything can be falsified. The only problem is the quality of the fake. And the higher the quality, the more likely the falsification will be perceived as reality.
But, as you know, doubts about the reliability of the American flights to the moon arose in the United States immediately after the completion of these flights and were not dispelled for forty years. It is believed that the basis for these doubts was the results of a close study of materials related to the flights of American astronauts to the moon, but it can be assumed that the primary source of these doubts was a leak of information, deliberately or accidentally by some of the organizers or performers of lunar flights.
But be that as it may in reality, in the end V.V. Putin turned out to be right that it is impossible to falsify such an event, or to be more precise, it is impossible to pass off the falsification of such an event as reality.
The answer of the highest-ranking official does not contain any new information confirming the stay of American astronauts on the moon, but only indicates that the head of state has a personal opinion on this issue based on indirect data and analogies.
It is surprising that an official, who by his status has access to any information held by the state, did not provide a single fact, including from competent sources, confirming the reliability of these flights, although the version of flight falsification is familiar to him.
Thus, the answer of the head of state to the question whether the Americans landed on the moon did not put an end to the dispute about the possible falsification of manned flights to the moon by NASA.
Roscosmos has no information
Having expressed his opinion on this issue, V.V. Putin outlined the position of the state, namely, the flights to the moon declared by the Americans are true. This position is supported not by facts, but by the authority of the head of state, and, by default, this position should be guided by Russian state structures and official science.
However, having received the instruction that flights to the moon are a reality, Russian government agencies and official science did not receive any convincing facts from NASA or the country's leadership, confirming the reality of these flights, to present them to the public.
The question of the stay of the Americans on the Moon was posed to V.V. Putin and in 2012.
So, V. Grinev in his article "That be or not to be?" ( Newspaper "His names", N14, April 2, 2013) writes:
“In December of the past year, a conference of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin was held, at which everyone could ask the head of state a question that interests him ... and I asked the question in writing: "Were the Americans on the Moon or Not?" ... The question was not heard on the air, but the president's reception office soon received an answer that my question had been accepted and sent to Roscosmos. Some time later, a response was received from Roscosmos signed by the Chief Scientific Secretary of the Scientific and Technical Council A.G. Milovanov. …Turns out, "Roscosmos has no information to support your point of view regarding the American landing on the moon."... ... You can understand A.G. Milovanov's answer from two angles: either A.G. Milovanov really does not know about the landing (or non-landing) of the Americans on the moon - which is impossible to believe, or A.G. Milovanov for one reason or another - which is more likely - he did not consider it necessary to be frank with me. "
At first glance, it would seem that the right decision was made - to transfer this issue to a specialized department dealing with space issues. But neither Roscosmos nor its predecessors participated in NASA's program to send a man to the moon and, accordingly, do not bear any responsibility for the reliability of reports on these flights. Therefore, formally Roskosmos cannot have information either confirming or refuting the landing of American astronauts on the moon.
Of course, a department such as Roskosmos can be presented as an expert whose activities are most closely related to the issue under discussion and who, dealing with space issues, can resolve a long-standing dispute. However, as can be seen from an excerpt from the letter of the Chief Scientific Secretary of the Scientific and Technical Council of Roscosmos, Roscosmos does not act as an expert in this matter. And how can he take on such a role when such famous astronauts as G.M. Grechko and A.A. Leonov, who have no doubts about the flights of American astronauts to the moon, admit that the Americans will carry out additional filming of the "lunar episodes" in the studio.
The question arises, where should the question of the reliability of the lunar expedition be directed? Without a doubt, to the bodies of the foreign intelligence service (formerly the KGB of the USSR) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the Cold War, the employees of these departments successfully obtained information important for the security of our country (atomic weapons, military-technical developments, the military potential of the enemy, etc.). It is impossible to imagine that such strategically important information as the first manned flight to the moon would be left unattended by these departments.
Nevertheless, as follows from the above article, the task of confirming or refuting the stay of American astronauts on the moon is set before Roscosmos, as if it was the responsibility of this agency or its predecessors to determine the reliability of information provided by other states in the field of space exploration.
Roskosmos is formally right in answering that it does not have information confirming the falsification of the landing of American astronauts on the moon. Firstly, Roskosmos could not officially receive such information from any sources (from the higher management, other ministries and departments, foreign states and citizens), Secondly, the task of analyzing and assessing the reliability of information about the flights of American astronauts to the moon was not set before Roscosmos.
Roscosmos' answer does not refute, but does not prove the version accepted by the state that the flights of American astronauts to the moon did take place.
Probably, it would be more correct to ask Roskosmos to present evidence confirming the flights of American astronauts to the moon. But since V.V. Putin cited only one indirect argument as confirmation of these flights, then, apparently, for Roscosmos to prove the presence of American astronauts on the moon would be a problematic task.
Voluntary moratorium on the dissemination of information about these flights will allow not to "lose face" and to preserve the scientific authority of the authors of works on flights of American astronauts to a natural satellite of the Earth in the event of direct evidence of the falsification of lunar expeditions by the Americans.
Chinese Scientists Deny US Lunar Mission
Chinese scientists have started exploring the moon not so long ago. And the first practical results were obtained about 10 years ago, when the launch of the research apparatus " Chang'e-1»To the Earth satellite. Throughout the year, "Chang'e-1" collected and transmitted data. These were photographs of the surface, from which a three-dimensional map was subsequently formed.
The second launched device studied a specific section of the Moon, where the landing of the next lunar module was planned, called " Chang'e-3" in 2013. China became the third country in the world that managed to successfully land a research vehicle on the surface of an earth satellite. True, for technical reasons, the module failed to complete all the tasks.
In addition, Chinese scientists are constantly monitoring the space object using modern telescopes and equipment. The purpose of these studies is a detailed study of the lunar surface, as well as the search for the landing site of astronauts from the United States. They photographed areas of the proposed lunar landing site of the Americans, as well as an area within a radius of 50 kilometers around.
In the course of these observations, it was possible to examine in detail the lunar craters. Even traces of impacts from large meteorites were visible. The giant Red Star telescope was aimed exactly at the place, which according to NASA documents appears as the area where the American lunar module was abandoned after the Apollo expedition. However, the landing stages of the American spacecraft, as well as the Stars and Stripes flag, never came to the attention of scientists.
Based on the research carried out, representatives of the PRC made a statement on the official website of the Chinese space agency that the Americans had not been to the moon. This caused a violent reaction from the public, due to the fact that many do not believe in the flights of astronauts from America to the moon.
Fragment of the program "Postscript" with Alexei Pushkov from 01.12.2018
The big US space lie about the moon landing
Russia was and remains the leading space power. But at the same time, she literally has to survive in a serious struggle for an orbit. Those who are usually called "our Western partners" directly declare their superiority in space. And they are trying to achieve this superiority by all available means. Dozens of them are launching military satellites into the skies, announcing missile threats, and preparing to fly to Mars. At the same time, the fight is not always fair. For example, Russian cosmonauts in foreign blockbusters are shown as unshaven men in earflaps. Or they generally forget about their existence. At the same time, the Americans fly into space on Russian engines and undergo training at Russian cosmonautics centers. So who is the master in orbit?
Video of the TV channel "Zvezda" from 10/08/2018 │ "Hidden Threats" with Nikolai Chindyaykin
The first Americans in space
In this chapter I want to tell not only about the flights of the ships "Mercury", which took place in 1961-1963, but also about those who piloted these ships.
It would be more logical if I start with a story about the pilots.
The first group of astronauts was formed in the United States in 1959. This happened earlier than in the Soviet Union. The requirements for the candidates were strict: excellent health, age up to 40 years, height up to 180 centimeters, higher education, qualifications of a jet pilot and at least 1500 hours of flight time. Applicants were also required to have a test pilot school graduate diploma. American requirements for anthropometric data were based on the size of the spacecraft cabin. Soviet doctors did the same. The Vostok descent vehicle was slightly smaller than the Mercury cabin (although in general the Soviet ship was larger and heavier than the American one), so our doctors were laid at 160 cm (with a margin, they could have been at 170 cm), and the Americans at 180 cm.
Of the 508 military test pilots who were at that time in the US Armed Forces, 110 met these requirements. 68 were invited to interviews in Washington. Of these, 36 pilots were selected and offered to undergo a medical examination. 32 pilots gave their consent to this procedure. Of these, seven people were chosen, who on April 9, 1959 were presented to the press as future astronauts.
This group, now known as Mercury 7, included: John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Malcolm Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Donald Slayton, Alan Shepard and Walter Schirra.
All of them had considerable flying experience, almost all of them took part in the hostilities.
John Herschel Glenn was the oldest in the seven astronauts. He was born on July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio. In 1943 he graduated from the flight school of the Naval Aviation Training Center in Texas, after which he took part in the war in the Pacific. He has 59 combat missions behind him.
After the end of World War II, he continued to serve in the aviation units of the fleet and until December 1950 trained young pilots at a base in Texas. Then there was Korea, where Glenn flew the F-86. His track record includes 90 sorties during the Korean War and three victories over MiGs.
In 1954 he graduated from Test Pilot School in Maryland and took up test work. In 1957 he made a non-stop transcontinental flight from Los Angeles to New York on the F-8U "Cruz-der" supersonic aircraft, setting a flight speed record.
Virgil Ivan Grissom was born on April 3, 1926 in Mitchell, Indiana. Since 1944 - in the ranks of the US Air Force. Graduated from Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana in 1950 with a BS in mechanics.
Member of the Korean War 1950-1953. He flew about 100 sorties.
After the end of the Korean War, he served as an instructor pilot at Brian Air Force Base, Texas. Graduated from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1953 and from Edwards Air Force Base Test Pilot School in 1956.
By the time Grissom was enrolled in the astronaut corps, he had flown 4600 hours, including 3500 hours on jet aircraft.
Malcolm Scott Carpenter was born on May 1, 1925 in Boulder, Colorado. Graduated from the University of Colorado in 1949 with a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering. Received flight training in Pensacola, Florida and Corpus Christi, Texas. He took part in the war with Korea in 1950-1953, flew on patrol planes over the waters of the Yellow Sea. After graduating from Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland in 1954, he worked in the Electronic Systems Division of the US Navy Aviation Test Center. Later he studied at the Naval Aviation Intelligence School in Washington.
Leroy Gordon Cooper was born on March 6, 1927 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He began to fly independently at the age of 17 on his father's plane. He served in the army, then in the navy, then in the aviation. In 1945 he joined the Marine Corps. Later he began his studies at the Naval Academy, but dropped out and entered the University of Hawaii, from which he graduated in 1949. While in the army, he attended evening courses at the University of Maryland for four years. Graduated from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1956 with a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering. He graduated from Edwards Test Pilot School in 1957 and served there as a test pilot and engineer.
Donald Kent Slayton was born on March 1, 1926 in Sparta, Wisconsin. In the United States Air Force since 1942. A participant in World War II, flew 56 sorties as a pilot for a B-29 bomber. In the spring of 1945, together with his squadron, he arrived on the island of Okinawa and made seven sorties to Japan.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1949, he received a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering and worked for Boeing. In 1951 he was again called up for military service. Served at air bases in Germany. After returning to the United States in 1956, he graduated from Test Pilot School and served at Edwards Air Force Base.
Alan Bartlett Shepard was born on November 18, 1923 in East Derry, New Hampshire. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1944, he took part in US military operations in the Pacific Ocean. In 1950-1953 and 1955-1957 he worked at the US Navy Test Pilot School, participated in the tests of the F-3H Demon, F-8U Crusader, F-4D Skyray and F-11F Tigercat fighters. Graduated from the Naval War College in 1958. Attended civilian flight school.
Group "Mercury-7"
Walter Marty Schirra was born on March 12, 1923 in Hackensack, New Jersey, to a family of pilots - both his father and mother were pilots. In 1940-1941 he studied at the College of Mechanical Engineering in Newark, New Jersey. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1945, he served in the aviation units of the fleet. Member of the Korean War 1950-1953. He also graduated from the Naval Aviation Officer School at the University of Southern California and the Test Pilot School at the Patuxent River Naval Aviation Test Center.
These seven were to pilot the "Mercury" and conquer space.
In total, within the framework of the Mercury program, six flights were carried out: two suborbital and four orbital. It was originally planned that there would be more of them. But then it became clear that these missions could not bring anything new to the collection of knowledge. Well, as we know, the Americans know how to save money, so it was decided to limit ourselves to two "jumps" and four trips into orbit. Moreover, each flight that took place was accompanied by such a heap of problems that it was not worth playing with death once again.
The first manned flight under the Mercury program took place on May 5, 1961. This happened a year later than it was once planned, and 23 days after Yuri Gagarin opened the way for mankind into space. In a sense, the Americans followed the already beaten path, although this path was different from the one that the designers took in the USSR.
In the "Mercury" program, the first manned flight had the designation MR-3 (Mercury-Redstone-3) and its own name "Freedom-7" (Freedom - Freedom). The first American to touch space was Alan Shepard. When he took his place in the cockpit of the ship, all of America, as in December 1957 (see Chapter 14), clung to radios and televisions. But it took more than two hours to wait: first, clouds came running, threatening to disrupt the filming, then failures in one of the systems came to light. And yet, the prelaunch preparation was brought to an end.
The start was given at 9 hours 34 minutes 13 seconds local time. At the same moment, classes in schools and work in institutions were stopped, and street traffic stopped. Nearly 70 million Americans watched and listened to live coverage from Cape Canaveral.
Shepard's flight was very short - 15 minutes 22 seconds from launch to splashdown. The first 142 seconds lasted for insertion. The engine cutoff occurred half a second earlier than planned at an altitude of 59.7 kilometers. Shortly thereafter, the ship separated from the carrier, but continued to climb.
And after 3 minutes 10 seconds after taking off from the launch pad, the astronaut turned on the manual control mode and began to control the spacecraft. This fact has already been forgotten, but this was done for the first time in the world. "Mercury", like the Soviet "Vostok", could fly completely automatically, but the USA decided already during the first mission to entrust the pilot with the main operations. First, Shepard lowered the bow of the ship, then raised it slightly, then successively deflected it to the right and left.
After 5 minutes 11 seconds, the ship reached the climax of the trajectory - an altitude of 187.4 kilometers. After that, the ship's braking mode was turned on. The astronaut also performed this operation manually. Manually, he also maintained the orientation of the vehicle while the braking lasted. All this could not have been done, the ship would have sat down anyway, but the maneuver was being practiced with an eye to a future orbital flight.
The reduction of the capsule occurred as it was calculated, without deviations from the normal mode and without surprises that threatened to turn into trouble. At an altitude of 3.2 kilometers, a parachute was deployed, under the dome of which the capsule landed on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean 130 kilometers northeast of Grand Bahama Island. Four minutes after splashdown, a rescue helicopter hovered over the capsule.
And six minutes later, the capsule with the astronaut was delivered on board the warship Lake Champlain.
The second flight was made by Virgil Grissom on July 21 of the same year on a ship named "Liberty Bell-7" (Liberty Bell). A small remark. All proper names of the ships of the "Mercury" series had a digital index "7". Thus, it was emphasized that the members of the "Mercury-7" group perform flights on them.
The second flight was also a "jump into space". Structurally, the Grissom ship was almost an exact copy of Shepard's ship. It was distinguished by the presence of a large trapezoidal window, while Shepard used only a periscope and two side round 25-centimeter portholes. And the entrance hatch with fire bolts was also much lighter, which made it easy to open it both from the inside and from the outside.
The start of the "Liberty Bell-7" went without any problems. The flight itself went just as smoothly. Grissom's mission was not as stressful as Shepard's: he had to spend less time navigating the ship, but more time observing the earth's surface.
Grissom had problems at the very last moment, when the capsule had already landed on the water surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The flight from the calculated splashdown point was 15 kilometers, so it took the rescue helicopter a little more time to fly up to the ship and hook it with a cable. There was nothing wrong with that, if, 10 minutes after splashdown, the explosive bolt charges unexpectedly went off, firing off the side hatch. Water immediately began to flow into the capsule.
Grissom was saved by the fact that he had an excellent response as a test pilot and had time to prepare to exit the capsule. Throwing off his helmet, the astronaut literally flew into the ocean. One of the rescue helicopters managed to pick up the sinking capsule with a cable and walked aside, dragging it through the water. Two other rotorcraft, interfering with each other, tried to save the astronaut. This was not done immediately. The "swim" lasted almost 4 minutes and the pilot was picked up from the water just a second before he went to the bottom. But the capsule could not be saved. The pilot of the helicopter, on the cable of which the apparatus "dangled", discovered a drop in oil pressure and overheating of the engine, so he had to get rid of the load.
Monument at Cape Canaveral, dedicated to the group "Mercury-7"
For exactly 38 years, the Liberty Bell 7 capsule rested at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 4890 meters. It was only on the night of 19-20 July 1999 that it was raised to the surface as a result of an expedition organized by the Discovery TV channel. Now it can be seen on display at the Kansas Museum of Astronautics in the city of Hutchinson.
The first "real" space flight took place on February 20, 1962. John Glenn became the pilot of the Friendship-7 (Friendship) spacecraft and, accordingly, the first American to orbit an artificial Earth satellite.
Actually, this flight was also planned as a suborbital one. But the vain Glenn insisted that the suborbital launches be stopped, and instead they began to prepare an orbital launch. He was appointed for December 28, 1961.
But it was not possible to take off the first time. At first, they did not have time to prepare the rocket for launch in time, then there were delays either due to meteorological conditions or due to technical problems. During these days, Glenn managed to visit both at home and at the Langley Research Center, and even visited President Kennedy at the White House. In terms of the number of postponements of the launch date, Glenn's flight was among the leaders - it was postponed 10 times.
And then came the long-awaited start day. In the early morning, the astronaut took his place in the ship, and at 9 o'clock local time, a nationwide television broadcast from the cosmodrome began. After 47 minutes, the American "Let's Go!" - "We are on the way!"
The orbit went well. Events developed favorably on the first orbit around the Earth. But then, one after another, problems began to arise. At first, the automatic attitude control system failed, and the astronaut had to manually orient the ship almost until the end of the flight.
At the 96th minute of the flight, a communication session with President Kennedy broke down, and immediately in the Flight Control Center via telemetry information was received that the inflatable landing shock absorber and the heat shield were not fixed. And this meant that after braking the screen would fall off the ship and it would burn up in the earth's atmosphere. Unless, of course, the sensor is lying.
By the beginning of the third orbit, the fuel reserve in the manual attitude control system had dropped to 60%, and the astronaut was advised to move the spacecraft into a drift. But "Friendship-7" flew somehow strange: the instruments showed zero deviation, and the pilot clearly saw that it reached 40-50 degrees. I had to "earn extra money" manually.
Four hours after the launch, the ship went to land. To avoid losing the heat shield, the braking propulsion system was not fired, and Glenn had to manually stabilize Friendship 7.
Fortunately, everything ended well. Flooding occurred 267 kilometers east of Grand Turk Island. After 21 minutes, the capsule with the astronaut was already on board the destroyer Noa. Glenn's flight lasted 4 hours 55 minutes 23 seconds.
The second orbital flight was to be made in April 1962 by Donald Slayton. His ship has already been given a name - "Delta-7". But then the unexpected happened. During the next medical examination, Slayton was found to have interruptions in the work of his heart, and he was suspended from the flight. The seat in the cockpit of the next "Mercury" was given to Malcolm Carpenter, and the ship was renamed "Aurora-7". The launch was scheduled for May 24, 1962. A rare case during the first manned flights in the United States - the start took place on the first try.
Carpenter's flight was like two peas in a pod similar to Glenn's flight. Although there were much fewer technical problems, the planned scientific experiments were only partially completed. True, it was possible to launch the world's first subsatellite - 98 minutes after the launch, the astronaut performed a discharge from the antenna compartment of an inflatable target - a Mylar sphere with a diameter of 76 centimeters.
Minor troubles happened during the landing. When leaving orbit, the pilot did not notice that the manual stabilization control mode was turned on and quickly consumed fuel. As a result, the flight of the calculated landing point was almost 400 kilometers. After splashdown, Carpenter had to wait almost two hours for rescuers.
In the same 1962, another manned flight took place under the Mercury program. Walter Schirra was entrusted to carry it out. The spacecraft, named Sigma-7, was adapted for a six-orbit flight in low-earth orbit. Some changes were made to the design of the device compared to the previous one. To avoid excessive fuel consumption for orientation, a toggle switch was introduced to turn off the engines in the electro-remote control mode, the thermal insulation was removed from the braking propulsion system and two five-meter short-wave antennas were installed there to improve communication. We also made a number of other improvements.
Climbing into the cockpit of the ship early in the morning of October 3, Walter Schirra found a sandwich in the glove compartment, and an ignition key near the steering wheel. This was a joke from the members of the starting team. The launch took place with a 15-minute delay due to a radar malfunction in the Canary Islands. Having risen above the launch pad, the carrier suddenly began to turn around, almost reached the emergency corner, but then leveled off. The rocket engine ran for 10 seconds longer than the estimated time, as a result, the ship was in orbit with an altitude higher than that of the two previous Mercury.
The main task of the pilot on this flight was to stretch the small - only 27 kilograms - fuel supply of the attitude control system and not get into the difficult position in which Carpenter found himself. The cosmonaut coped with this task, but difficulties arose in another. Even on the first loop, Shirra felt that it became hot in the spacesuit - the temperature rose to 32 degrees. As it turned out later, the cause was dried silicone grease. Fearing that the heat exchanger would freeze immediately after turning the knob a few notches, the astronaut removed the heating halfway. While he was doing this, on Earth they were deciding whether to land the ship after one orbit? But by the time the decision was made, the temperature had stopped rising and the flight continued.
As Sigma 7 sailed its fourth orbit over California, a two-minute snippet of conversations between Shirra and John Glenn at Mission Control was first broadcast live on television.
The ship splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 507 kilometers northeast of Midway Island. For a full 30 seconds, the capsule went under water, but then surfaced and leveled off. As Shirra himself later recalled, at these moments he felt very uncomfortable. But everything ended well.
The last manned flight under the Mercury program took place in May 1963. By that time, work was already in full swing on the project of the new Gemini spacecraft (Gemini), so NASA decided it was time to end the risky solo flights. Nevertheless, it was decided to carry out the daily flight. Gordon Cooper was entrusted to carry it out.
The ship "Faith-7" (Faith - Vera) was significantly different from their brethren. The modernizations carried out make it possible to call it a spacecraft to a greater extent than the previous devices of the series. Experts counted 183 design changes. Of these, 19 are assessed as significant.
The attitude control system included a third fuel tank, pouring another 4.5 kilograms of fuel into it. Doubled the capacity of two of the six onboard batteries. A low-frequency television device was installed to monitor the pilot's condition and the tape feed rate of the on-board tape recorder was halved. Increased oxygen supply. Etc. So that the mass of the capsule did not exceed the capabilities of the rocket, the periscope was removed from it, which made it possible to save 34.5 kilograms, part of the orientation equipment and spare transmitters.
The main task of the "Faith-7" mission was to study the effect of long-term space flight factors on the human body and the astronaut's ability to control the spacecraft.
Of course, the flight was long at that time. Today, when expeditions to orbit last for six months, this can be taken with a smile. But he had to start somewhere.
Launch of the Atlas carrier rocket
According to plans, Cooper's flight was to begin on May 14. The astronaut had already taken his place in the cockpit of the ship, but then one after another problems began to arise. First, the radar failed in Bermuda. Then, for more than two hours, they could not start the diesel engine and take the service tower away from the rocket. When we dealt with this problem, Bermuda again "distinguished itself": the data converter failed. After four hours of torment, the start was postponed for a day.
The reaction of Gordon Cooper to what was happening was interesting. Making sure that he could not fly away at the estimated time, he decided to take a nap. and fell asleep right in the ship preparing to take off. And after getting out of the capsule he joked that the training was very realistic and went fishing.
The next day, the start took place with only a 4-minute delay due to a malfunction in the ground equipment. But Cooper also managed to take a short nap this time.
Launching "Faith-7" into low-earth orbit passed without incident. During the first two orbits, the pilot had to face only minor "dirty tricks" of the temperature regulator. Otherwise, everything was fine, so the astronaut was given the command to proceed with the planned experiments. The flight mission included 11 of them.
At the beginning of the third orbit, Cooper fired a subsatellite target from the brake propulsion unit - a ball with a diameter of 148 millimeters and weighing about 4.5 kilograms with two xenon flash lamps. The astronaut tried for a long time to see a new artificial object, which he himself created, but was able to do this only on the fourth orbit, when the ball was 15 kilometers away from the ship.
This subsatellite was not the only one. It was assumed that the pilot would still launch an inflatable one and a half-meter sphere and, by the tension of the 30-meter cable, determine the atmospheric resistance at altitudes from 160 to 260 kilometers. But this could not be done - the pyrocharge of the container lid did not work.
The further flight program provided for observations and photographs of the earth's surface, with which Cooper coped brilliantly. His pictures were considered the best, taken by that time from space heights. They managed to see many details, including the smoke of a steam locomotive in Africa.
From the 10th to the 13th orbit, the ship lay in a drift, and the astronaut was asleep. His sleep was intermittent: either his hands floating up in weightlessness interfered, or he had to catch a camera that had flown away, or he was worried about the rise in temperature inside the suit.
On the morning of the second day, the pilot received congratulatory telegrams from the President of El Salvador and the Australian Minister of Supply, and sent greetings to the African heads of state gathered in Addis Ababa. As we can see, not only Soviet cosmonauts did such things.
Until the nineteenth orbit, the flight proceeded normally, and then problems began that nearly cost Cooper's life. The overload indicator suddenly came on. And although it showed only 0.05 units, the attitude control system began to work out the signal, as if the descent in the earth's atmosphere had already begun. At the same time, the pilot clearly saw that all objects continue to be in zero gravity. This was probably due to the liquid that the astronaut spilled while trying to cook his own food. She hit the remote, forcing the sensor to give out incorrect information.
But all this was still half the trouble. The trouble came a little later, when Cooper had already received all the necessary instructions for the descent from Earth. First, the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the ship increased, and then two short circuits occurred at once in the automatic orientation power supply network. And if so, then all the rest of the operations Cooper had to do manually. By the stars and lights of Shanghai at night, he turned the ship to de-orbit and, on command from the Earth, turned on the braking propulsion system. Manually "held" the ship while the engines were running. Manually fired off the brake system. Manually oriented to enter the atmosphere. The parachute worked normally and soon Faith-7 landed safely on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Experts then analyzed Cooper's actions and admitted that if there was no pilot on board the ship, the flight would have ended in disaster.
This marked the end of the first phase of the American manned program, and began preparations for new flights within the framework of other programs.
And now I will take this opportunity and tell you about the fate of the first American astronauts after the completion of "Mercury".
Six of the seven members of the "Mercury-7" group received their portion of "star glory" back in 1961-1963, but in the future they continued to prepare for new flights into space. True, not everyone managed to do this.
John Glenn was still in the NASA astronaut corps for some time, but he was well aware that he would hardly be able to make a second flight in the foreseeable future. In government circles, the United States decided not to risk the life of the first American to make an orbital space flight, and unofficially banned him from participating in new expeditions to orbit. In 1964, Glenn retired and went into politics. His career in the new field was more than successful: in 1974 he was elected Senator from Ohio, and in 1984 he ran, albeit unsuccessfully, for the presidency of the United States.
And yet Glenn managed to visit space for the second time. In the mid-1990s, he proposed to NASA management to send him back into orbit. Glenn wanted to prove that even at that age (and by that time he was over 70), you can live and work in space. In 1998, such a flight took place. Glenn is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest person to ever leave Earth.
Glenn is currently retired, but still fit and healthy. He does not dream of new space flights, but he follows with interest everything that happens in this area.
The second time was able to visit space and Virgil Grissom. After completing the Mercury program, he was transferred to training for flights under the Gemini program. On March 23, 1965, Grissom flew with John Young on the Gemini 3. This was the first manned flight on the new ship. It lasted 4 hours 53 minutes and was not easy. But, thanks to the high training of the crew members, first of all, Grissom, the mission ended successfully.
Then there was the Apollo program in Grissom's biography. He was assigned to command the first spacecraft to be launched into space in February 1967. Many believed that he would be trusted to be the first Americans to set foot on the lunar surface. But these plans were not destined to come true. On January 27, 1967, Virgil Grissom died during ground tests of the ship. More about this tragedy will be discussed in the chapter "The Fire at Cape Canaveral".
Elements of the spacesuit of astronauts from "Mercury"
Alan Shepard, the first American to travel to space heights, took an active part in the Apollo program and in February 1971 set foot on the surface of our natural satellite. Until 1974, he remained the commander of the American astronaut corps. Then he left NASA and worked in American industry. After retirement, he headed the Mercury-7 Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting space students studying at US colleges. He died on July 21, 1998.
Gordon Cooper left the NASA astronaut corps in 1970, having managed to visit orbit once more - in August 1965, he spent 8 days in space with Richard Gordon. Participated in the Apollo program. After retirement, he worked in the private sector of American industry. He died on October 4, 2004.
Walter Schirra became the most "flying" of the first seven. In December 1965, he flew Gemini 6, and in October 1968 he commanded the first manned Apollo. Since 1969 - retired. Headed the Environmental Protection Advisory Bureau. He then led the Technology Perches division of Jones-Manville. He died on May 3, 2007.
Malcolm Carpenter became the only Mercury pilot who was no longer destined to fly into orbit. He worked at NASA for several more years. He participated in the design and development of the lunar cabin for Apollo, acted as assistant director of the Manned Flight Center in Houston, led a group of aquanauts at the Seleb-2 underwater marine laboratory. Spent 30 days at a depth of about 75 meters. During this experiment, he negotiated with Gordon Cooper, who flew on the Gemini 5 ship. After a car accident in 1969, he left the astronaut corps and was engaged in private business. He is also currently retired.
But Donald Slayton has been waiting for his finest hour for almost 15 years. He was supposed to make a second orbital flight in May 1962, but was withdrawn from training due to minor heart problems, which were identified during the next medical examination. Soon he was appointed head of the Astronaut Division, where he had to be in charge of all affairs in the NASA astronaut corps. Among other things, he had to supervise the selection and formation of crews. It was a fairly high position in the structure of the aerospace department, but Slayton did not give up his dream of flying into space. And he achieved his goal. By strict adherence to the regime, he got rid of heart problems and was again included in the astronaut corps. In 1973 he was assigned to the Apollo crew, which was to fly as part of the Soviet-American experiment ASTP (Apollo-Soyuz Experimental Flight). This flight took place in July 1975. Later Slayton took part in the development of the Space Shuttle reusable spacecraft. In 1982 he left NASA and worked in the private sector of the American industry. He died on June 13, 1993. From the book How We Train Dogs the author Zapashny Askold
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US space program. How it was - the story of a big swindle
For sane people, it has long been clear that the Americans have never flown to any moon. But few people have thought about the program of American manned space flights as such. In this note, I will not touch on the technical side of the matter - it has been described in detail and tastefully in various sources. More interesting to me seems to be the chronology of events, motives and decisions that were made by the rednecks.
After the epic flight Gagarin the Americans felt they were losing their undisputed technical leadership. The damned Russians once again showed that there are no obstacles for them, and they are capable of performing any, even the most difficult task. It was decided that such a thing could not be tolerated, and the Americans began to work on their own flight into space.
However, creating a spacecraft capable of launching humans into space and returning them to Earth proved to be a difficult task. The USSR was able to do this by concentrating colossal scientific, labor and natural resources in this area. Of course, this had to pay off with a decline in the living standards of the population. Instead of conventional tractors for agricultural - lunar tractors. Instead of accessible assholes - space metal, and for the people - creaking and crumbling buses, and so on. The Americans could not agree to this in any way, because it would have blown up America from the inside. The question arose - what to do? And then the masters of psychological warfare said - why, in fact, should we fly? To achieve our goals, it is enough for us to show the visibility of our flights.
After all, nuclear missiles fly, and they fly well. The satellites provide excellent pictures and radio communications. Nothing else is needed! And the work began to boil. Tin cans called Gemini were created, and the equipment installed on them showed pictures from space quite tolerably.
There were also suborbital launches of these ships with people on board, they rose up to 120 km above the Earth's surface - more advanced FAU-2 missiles von Braun could not give out. But the most respectable public did not need to know about this, they did not know. Although in most cases, the crew solemnly loaded onto the rocket actually calmly descended into the protective room inside the launch pad (its photo is on the network), and after the start went to work at the radio center, from where it conducted its transmissions, relaying them from a tin can dangling in space. And everything went off with a bang - the Russians believed that the Americans could go into space.
However, in America they understood that this was a temporary solution. Not today or tomorrow, the Russians will deploy a network of satellites in space, on land and in the ocean - a network of stations and tracking ships, and the deception will be revealed. Therefore, it was decided to achieve victory in space over the Russians by landing on the moon.
However, without solving the problem of creating a habitable capsule, it was impossible to do this. Initially, work in this direction was carried out very intensively. But as more and more difficulties were identified in the rocket, the life support system, the possibility of overcoming the newly discovered radiation belts around the Earth, the US leadership realized that the task facing them was impracticable. This is where the historic meeting of the President of the United States took place. Johnson, constructor Werner von Braun and the former chief lawyer of the United States Roberta Kennedy... On it, von Braun stated that a manned flight on his rocket impossible- hydrogen engines do not work (they cannot work in zero gravity, but then no one knew this).
The USSR was almost ready to fly around the moon. Of course, there was no question of any landing on the moon. However, Johnson, realizing that further delay in flying puts a fat end on the entire "American dream" and the West is losing leadership, which is being transferred to the Russians, makes a desperate decision to bluff further. Kennedy, using his fame in the Soviet establishment, promises to probe the ground on the topic of Russian approval of the lunar scam, does it - and dies, struck by bullets Sirhan Sirhana(who, kmk, will never be released from the jail - he will suddenly blab out why he killed RFK). The moon scam begins. The Soviet leaders of the space program do not receive information about the Brezhnev-Johnson deal, and do not receive, on the personal instructions of dear Leonid Ilyich, intelligence about the "space" flight of Apollo - and they did. For the intelligence of the army, and even more so the navy, does not put any words of the enemy into a penny. The Americans are well aware of this, and are blocking Soviet ships that read telemetry from the Apollo launches, having an order from the president to sink them immediately if they intercept information about a missile flight. However, the Russian sailors were not bastards, and by the next Apollo launch they had put out to sea all the ships at their disposal, including minesweepers, and fished out in Biscay In the bay, a few hours after the launch, another dummy of the "lunar" ship, which took place in Hollywood as "Apollo 13".
Under the cover of cruisers and submarines, an iron barrel was delivered to Murmansk, and later, in the presence of journalists, was handed over to the American authorities. Thus, the USSR acquired, in the literal sense, an iron, galvanized hook, which allows us to firmly hold America by the gills in the space issue. For participation in the lunar scam, the USSR received a number of tasty buns - the end of the exhausting arms race, the US withdrawal from French Indochina, almost free supplies of Anglo-Saxon food and, most importantly, the admission of Soviet oil and gas to the markets of Western Europe - that is, an uninterrupted source of the coveted currency. The Soviet lunar exploration program was buried, as was the American one. No one else flew to the moon. As a reinforcing gesture of the deal, a joint, as they said, Soviet-American expedition "Soyuz-Apollo" was carried out.
Which, of course, was also staged by the American side - even by 1975, the United States did not have a residential space compartment... Films from orbit were now provided by a great defender of the lunar fraud, and then the cosmonaut Leonov... For which he received the Star of the Hero and the Order of Lenin. Hero of deception, yes. I do not even mention the attempts to create an orbital station in Hollywood by the Americans - the attempt frankly failed.
Having started the space game with the USSR, the Americans understood that agreements could not last forever. They were based on a deal with Comrade. Brezhnev. The followers of dear Leonid Ilyich could easily spit on them. And the Americans did not plan to deceive people forever. It seemed to them - just a little bit, and they would be able to create an inhabited ship, they would assemble blocks for a flight to the moon, clean everything up there, and they could forget about the story with the scam. Once again, based on technologies that were new by that time, the Americans are starting the Space Shuttle program.
And a miracle is happening - the Americans are building a really large, advanced for those times spacecraft, capable of launching people into space. And, drawing a line under twenty years of solid lies, April 12, 1981, exactly 20 years after Gagarin's flight, symbolically deduce first Americans into near-earth orbit. Thus, giving a signal for those who understand - yes, we were 20 years behind, but now we have undoubtedly pulled ahead - and the Russians are stagnating. It is very important that the first real the flight of American cosmonauts took place during the life of dear Leonid Ilyich. It seemed that the space deal could be safely completed. Ronald Reagan, immediately after a successful launch, he began to do so by announcing the Star Wars program. But…
The shuttle turned out to be an extremely expensive and unreliable design - the problems followed one after another. The flight schedule was going to hell, and with it the chances of ever assembling an apparatus for a flight even to lunar orbit looked more and more ghostly. Meanwhile, Brezhnev died. And then a tragedy occurred - the explosion of the spacecraft's oxygen tanks was no longer in Hollywood, but in reality, and the death of the astronauts. The shuttle flight program was stopped completely. The design of the lunar scam staggered, threatening to bury many American, and not only people, under its rubble - after all, the participants in the scam committed, no less, the gravest crime against America - they lied to the American Congress. Reagan instantly changed his anti-Soviet rhetoric, and backed down - no star wars, radical arms cuts, friendship, etc.
But then the USSR had internal problems, and it was not up to space. And then it completely collapsed, and with it the threat of exposure of the US space fraud went away for some time. The shuttle program was resumed and they continued their flights. But not for long - the next shuttle collapsed with a crash while landing. The United States became the leader in the number of space victims, and it became clear to everyone that the king is naked. That the vaunted American technologies are not able to provide safe flights into space in the 21st century and, therefore, all the more could not provide them in the 20th century. The Americans had to bow to the Russians, and buy from them first "Mir-2", and then flights to it. And then the motors for the missiles. The degradation of American industry has reached its climax. After the PRC's announcement about the start of its own lunar program, Obama said something about the resumption of the American one, but very quickly deflated - the United States does not have the ability to go into space.
The big US space lies
Technology of lies or as long as fools live in the world
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Although NASA selected the first astronauts for space flight back in 1959, the United States failed to get ahead of the Soviet Union. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and the Americans flew a month later.
The original test group consisted of 110 pilots. NASA immediately weeded out men taller than 180 cm (they would not fit in the cockpit of the ship) and over 40 years old. Then they were selected according to the following criteria: the candidate must be a qualified pilot, have a flight time of at least 1500 hours, a compulsory bachelor's degree and excellent health. Each of the remaining 32 people underwent a series of grueling physical, psychological and emotional tests. Each was placed in extreme conditions of heat and cold, as well as the intense vibration and noise associated with rocket launching. After all the tests, there were 7 people left with no medical contraindications that NASA could recommend. The list, announced in early April 1959, included Malcolm Carpenter, Leroy Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Walter Schirra, Donald Slayton, and Alan Shepard. Over the next several months, the press followed the team's every move, eagerly awaiting who would become America's first astronaut. And only in February 1961, NASA announced that Alan Shepard would fly into space, and Gus Grissom was appointed as the backup crew astronaut.
Photo of the Earth taken aboard Freedom 7
Preparing an astronaut for flight
The flight of the spacecraft "Mercury-Redstone 3" was the second manned flight into space and the first for the United States.
For three days before the flight, the pilot lived in a separate apartment on Cape Canaveral. He had everything he needed for life: a comfortable bed, TV, radio, newspapers and, of course, personal space. The cosmonaut was protected from the attention of the curious public, and the apartment also had a certain degree of protection from carriers of infectious diseases.
The astronaut was given a strict diet and a personal chef. The report indicated that the menu was compiled by “Miss Beatrice Finklestein of the Aerospace Medical Laboratory. The diet is delicious and nutritious. " Here's an example of breakfast: Orange juice - 4 ounces; semolina porridge - 1 portion; scrambled eggs from two eggs; 1 white bread toast; crispy bacon - 2-3 slices; butter - 1 tsp; strawberry jam - 1 tbsp a spoon; coffee with sugar - unlimited. The list of dishes has not changed. The cook prepared several portions, one for the astronaut, several for other people, and one more portion was put in the refrigerator for a day in order to conduct research in case the astronaut had problems with the digestive tract.
NASA recommended that astronauts go to bed early, but this requirement was not strict. It is known that on the eve of the flight, Alan Shepard went to bed at 22.15 and did not see any dreams that night. It was forbidden to drink coffee during the day before the flight due to its stimulating and diuretic effect.
Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7 before launch
Flight of "Mercury"
The flight of the Americans is more like a "jump" into space. The carrier rocket "Redstone" could not reach the first space speed and enter low-earth orbit, the flight was suborbital. The device climbed to an altitude of 187 km and landed back, the entire flight took 15 and a half minutes. The Americans believe that if NASA had not listened to Von Braun, Shepard would have flown on March 24 and thus would have become the first person in space instead of Gagarin.
On the day of the flight, Shepard woke up at 1:10 am and proceeded to normal procedures. After breakfast with co-pilot Grissom, Shepard went for a medical check-up. Biosensors were connected to his body, the places for which were previously marked on the skin. At 5:15 am, the astronaut was already on the take-off site and boarded the spacecraft capsule. The dimensions of the "Mercury" were 1.9 m in diameter and almost 3 m in height. The habitable compartment was no larger than the cockpit of a fighter plane. The flight was monitored by two movie cameras: one filmed the dashboard, and the second - the face of the astronaut. In addition, unlike the Soviet Vostok, the Mercury did not have a porthole.
NASA technician Schmitt helped Alan close the hatch by shaking his gloved hand with the words: "Happy landing, commander!" Alan later said that it was the most dramatic moment that he remembered to the smallest detail for the rest of his life. His heartbeat quickened, but Shepard quickly calmed down. At 6:25 am, he began breathing pure oxygen to prevent air embolism or decompression sickness.
The launch of the "Mercury" was postponed several times. 15 minutes before the start, the sky was covered with clouds, visibility dropped dramatically. Forecasters promised a clearing within an hour, so Shepard relaxed, staring through the periscope. When this problem was resolved, another nuisance happened - one of the IBM 7090 computers in Maryland crashed, which required a system restart. The wait for the start was delayed for another two hours.
Shepard was in the cockpit for more than four hours, and in the end he wanted to relieve himself. The starting team was worried. Naturally, there is no toilet in the cockpit, because it was assumed that the flight would take 15 minutes without any delay. The suit contains many electronic sensors, and moisture can cause short circuits. What a shame for the United States if the first American astronaut died during launch from a short circuit in his own urine! After a short meeting, Shepard was allowed to go into a spacesuit when needed, after turning off the power. Fortunately, everything worked out - the liquid was absorbed into the laundry, and the contacts did not suffer.
The long-awaited launch of "Mercury" took place at 14:34 GMT. At this time, all of America froze: traffic on the streets stopped, work was interrupted in all institutions. More than 70 million Americans watched the live broadcast from the Cape Canaveral launch site.
The entire flight was calculated in seconds and went according to plan. Starting from the 45th second, the launch vehicle with the astronaut began to shake violently. Shepard was prepared for this, but the vibration was so strong that he could not read the readings. But soon it decreased, so that the astronaut was able to distinguish the data again. The pressure in the cockpit was established according to the plan, and after experiencing overloads of 6 g in the second minute after the start, Shepard was finally able to declare that all systems are working normally.
The Redstone stage separated at 142 seconds, and the capsule accelerated to 8,000 km / h. The trajectory was only one degree off course. Outside, the skin temperature reached 104 degrees Celsius, while inside it was comfortable at 32 degrees. After 3 minutes of flight, Shepard began manual control. He deflected the nose of the capsule in different directions, rotated the ship along the axis. I looked through the periscope and enjoyed the beautiful views, calculating the distances by eye. Through the clouds, Shepard was able to clearly distinguish the outlines of the mainland, the west coast of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. He saw Lake Okeechobee in central Florida, but was unable to identify a single city.
Start MR-3. May 5, 1961
Mission Complete
"Mercury" climbed to a maximum altitude of 187 km, and after 5 minutes 10 seconds from the start of the start, the brake engines worked. During deceleration, the astronaut tried to make out the stars, but did not even see the horizon. Then he said that these useless attempts distracted him from the main task, and these seconds were the only ones during the entire flight when he did not control the situation. However, the feeling of indecision quickly passed. Zero gravity ended a minute earlier than expected, and then the G-force increased to 11.6 g. As soon as she began to descend, Shepard put the ship on automatic control.
"Mercury" descended to the water at a speed of 11 m / s, at this time Alan Shepard was preparing to land. When the device splashed down 130 km east of the island of Grand Bahama, rescue helicopters were already waiting for it. Having freed himself from the spacesuit, the astronaut left the ship, and half an hour after landing Shepard was invited to the phone. President Kennedy called, who watched the entire landing process on TV and personally congratulated Alan on the first space flight.
Doctors immediately surrounded the astronaut to find out his condition and ask how he survived the flight with overload and weightlessness. Some physiologists believed that even a few minutes in zero gravity could cause disorientation. But Shepard said that 5 minutes in zero gravity flew by unnoticed, and he did not find any consequences. This is evidenced by the flawlessness of the astronaut with the manual control. It was later revealed that during the flight, Shepard damaged his hearing, and he was suspended from space tests for several years.
Flight diagram
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