Russian Rovers on the Moon

An Ignorant American writes "Perusing an Air & Space magazine the other day, I came across an article about Russian Moon Rovers during the space-race era. Thanks to my American science education, I had never heard of this feat. I asked around (friends and coworkers) and nobody else I've talked to has heard of them either. They were called 'lunokhod', and were the first of their kind. Unmanned, remotely operated rovers with basic instrumentation. Two were successfully landed on the Moon, each driving for many miles on the Moon's surface, returning tens of thousands of pictures. You can do a Google Search to start your education, or read what they have to say at Wikipedia on the subject (Wikipedia also has some external links.)"

Robots had another purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting fact is that while the Lunokhod robots transmitted more than 20,000 TV pictures and more than 200 TV panoramas and also conducted more than 500 lunar soil tests, their actual purpose was to try and find US made robots and/or buildings(!) on the surface of the moon.

This was done under a program name of "Timofeev". Timofeev is just a common Russian last name and seems to have no special meaning (not referring to a lead scientist/government official, etc).

Pretty successful, until

[AtariAmarok]

They were pretty successful. The last pictures showed something like this [crystalinks.com] on the lunar surface. After this, transmissions were cut off.

Re:Pretty successful, until

[sniggly]

Guess what R2/D2 saw in the sandcrawler [automaatje.com] that you DID NOT see in the movie!!!

Re:Robots had another purpose

[Em Ellel]

FYI: "Lunokhod" mean "moonwalker" in russian (They should sue Michael Jackson)

As for name, russian engineering projects are most often named after the lead engineer or location where they are made (common for russian planes and cars, like MiG actually is a shortened version of Mikoyan-Gurevich - names of the design team leads)

Re:Robots had another purpose

[strictnein]

As odd as this may sound, I had an uncle who worked for a military listening station in eastern europe during the cold war. He had made mention to something along those lines at one time. I thought it sounded kind of odd, but it was definitely interesting. Other than talking to him about it, this is the first time I've ever seen/heard it mentioned.

Your uncle fell for that?

[raehl]

Everybody knows those pictures were just of a sound stage in Siberia.

Re:Robots had another purpose

[jarda]

Also interesting is the fact that in Soviet Block, they were shown as a proof that USSR does care about pepole's lifes much more than US does, so rather than risking dnagerous human mission on the moon, they only sent robot, while astronauts stayed safely at home.

What's the point?

[TWX]

"...so rather than risking dnagerous human mission on the moon, they only sent robot, while astronauts stayed safely at home."

What's the point of exploring space if we don't go there? The Europeans (and unlucky Africans) that settled North and South America didn't send something to report back saying, "Oh, that's nice", they went there. The U.S., Canada, Mexico, and all of Central and South America as they are now is the result. Yes, negative ramifications abounded, but the collective we wouldn't be where we are today if it weren't for those circumstances. Humanity is stronger because we are spread out, and if we actually get the guts to try to go into space permanently we will be stronger still. I'd like to hope that all of the work we do isn't for nothing in the long haul. We're the most versatile living thing to come about in known history. Let's see what we can really do.

Re:What's the point?

[BalloonMan]

What's the point of exploring space if we don't go there?

OK, what's the point of exploring the inside of a volcano, or the bottom of the ocean, or the surface of the sun if we don't go there? Humans are fragile, but our curiosity is strong, and the knowledge we gain is useful.

The rest of your argument seems to be based on the principle of "manifest destiny". This is not necessarily a good thing.

Re:What's the point?

[Buran]

It's pretty amazing how much stuff they did land on the Moon. The first crash-lander was Soviet. The first soft-lander was Soviet. The first fly-by was by a Soviet probe. The first rover was Soviet. Etc. For whatever reason, those efforts are, as you say, little known among the general public even though the information sent back was vital toward sending humans there (Example: Luna 9 didn't sink into the swamp, so it was pretty safe to guess that it wasn't all that likely that the US Surveyor craft wouldn't, either, and they didn't.)

I once posted in a discussion on fark.com about a different space mission, made a comment in passing about the fact that there were US and Soviet craft on the moon, and somebody informed me, with disdain, that all the flags on the Moon were American.

Nope. Not by a long shot, they weren't. Even the tiny Luna 9 carried some Soviet memorabilia.

Re:Robots had another purpose

[Buran]

The comments about the safety of the crews was pure propaganda and I didn't read it as the opinion of the poster. After Apollo 11 successfully landed, the Soviet lunar program was classified for many years and not publicly acknowledged until the laet 1990s -- little is known among the general public to this day of the giant N-1 booster (Saturn 5-class), the one-man lunar lander, the design elements in the Soyuz spacecraft that are leftovers from the days when Soyuz would have orbited the Moon, the N-1 launch failures, and many, many more elements of the program.

Why?

Because the Soviet leadership did not want to admit that it had failed to beat Project Apollo to a manned landing. So all those things were hidden, and the Soviets claimed that all along, they had focused on staying safely in Earth orbit, building space stations and sending automated probes to the Moon to drive around and send soil samples back (some probes in the Luna series were sample-return spacecraft) rather than letting humans do those things. Never mind that a human can do so much more on-site than he can in a control room a light-second away...

So please, don't tell the guy to shut up -- do a little reading first. The attitude did indeed exist -- but from the Soviet leadership, not someone commenting on an Internet message board decades after the fact.

Re:Robots had another purpose

[vladkrupin]

After Apollo 11 successfully landed, the Soviet lunar program was classified for many years and not publicly acknowledged until the laet 1990s

A lot of the moon-related exploration stuff was available to public - just visit the space museum in Moscow. Some parts of the exhibitions from the 1980s are, I believe, still there.

Re:Robots had another purpose

[ckedge]

> Instantly, Nedelin, his staff, their chairs, and over 100 technicians on the rocket were incinerated

Not entirely correct. There is black and white video footage of dozens of technicians running away from the fireball, all entirely aflame, before dropping to the ground.

It was only "instantly" for those right next to the rocket. Who knows how many burned alive over the course of a half minute or two.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/r16_disaster.html [russianspaceweb.com]

Re:Robots had another purpose

[Buran]

The reliable Soyuz rocket in use today was designed by Sergei Korolev, who was a brilliant rocket engineer who, like Wernher von Braun, dreamed of building rockets that could send people into space. He died in the mid-1960s, however, so his second-in-command designed the giant N-1 -- and the N-1's first stage had many, many small rockets powering it rather than a smaller number of large ones, as in the Saturn V. It's believed (according to a mid-90s NOVA program on the Soviet manned lunar effort, and other sources) that the sheer complexity of the N-1 was largely to blame for the failures.

How the cosmonauts really felt hasn't been addressed much if at all in any of the books or web sites I've read, nor have any documentaries.

Re:Robots had another purpose

[joggle]

I once saw a documentary about the N-1. I agree that it failed due to its complexity. While the Russian engineers liked to reuse old designs, sometimes it can go too far. (If I remember correctly, the problem was fueling all of the mini-rockets at the exact same rate. If there were any fluctuations, the entire rocket would explode)

I believe I saw in the same documentary that the cosmonauts felt that the trip to the moon was a one-way trip due to the untested and underdesigned lunar module.

Re:Robots had another purpose

[Buran]

The US lunar module was no less an unknown quantity, though it was known to be at least somewhat reliable because it was tested several times before the actual landing - several times unmanned, then by Apollo 9 (earth orbit) and Apollo 10 (lunar approach but no landing.)

Re:Robots had another purpose

[mikerich]

It's believed (according to a mid-90s NOVA program on the Soviet manned lunar effort, and other sources) that the sheer complexity of the N-1 was largely to blame for the failures.

That was part of the problem, Korolev who designed the N1 died before the it could be test fired and Mishin who followed him was not in the same league.

N1 was only one of three designs of heavy launch rockets designed by the Soviets (they never designed a specific Moon rocket). It was chosen in preference to a design known as UR700 which would have been far simpler to construct and more reliable. The UR700's smaller brother became the highly successful Proton rocket which is still used and was at one point planned to launch a lunar manned orbiter.

But perhaps the most serious set-back that the Soviets had to face was that they never built a test stand for the N1 (Apollo built one in Mississippi), so the only way of determining its performance was to stack the rocket on the pad and fire the engines.

Four attempts, four different reasons for failure, but by then the N1 was so late that the propaganda advantage of manned missions to the Moon had been lost. The Politburo cancelled the programme just before the fifth launch attempt which the engineers believed would have succeeded.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Don't forget Luna 16 and 15

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Luna 16 which had a descent and
ascent stage and retrieved a lunar soil sample
which it brought back to Earth in Sept. 1970

[wikipedia.org]
Luna 16

Also don't forget Luna 15. Just two hours
before the Apollo 11 Eagle was due to lift
off from the Moon, Luna 15 crash-landed
into the Moon's surface. It's job had been
to robotically retrieve soil samples which
could well have trumped Apollo 11 in doing so
and without risking human lives.

Those old of us to vividly remember the
Apollo 11 landing will also recollect the
drama surrounding Luna 15 right up until the
last moment.

Re:Robots had another purpose

[Black Rabbit]

...as if this was supposed to be some sort of huge secret or something!

I remember visiting the Science and Tech Museum here in Ottawa way back in 1977, the 60th anniversary of the USSR. The Soviets had an exhibition of their space program, including a model Vostok and Sputnik 1, some stuff about the recently completed Apollo/Soyuz joint mission...and a model Lunokhod, which ran on a little track on a grayish moon surface. Most interesting! Somewhere, I still have a brochure or two from it.

So this was hardly any sort of secret, the USSR being very solvent at the time.

Russia's first space rover

[AtariAmarok]

Click here [space.com] to find out the true story of Russia's first space "rover", almost 50 years ago.

Re:Russia's first space rover

[Frymaster]

Russia's first space "rover"

the most interesting thing about all of this is that they remodeled the rover for earthside use under the brand name lada [www.lada.ru].

That explained the suspension

[AtariAmarok]

"the most interesting thing about all of this is that they remodeled the rover for earthside use under the brand name lada.

Tested on the moon? This must explain the "bounce 20 feet in the air when you roll over a pebble" suspension.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what else american public schools forgot to teach me...

Re:Hmm

[product byproduct]

The metric system?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, Americans learn the metric system in school, they just don't use it.

Kind of like the French and personal hygiene.

Re:Hmm

[Galvatron]

Why not, I wonder? Everyone else does.

Because we don't like it. Adults in America refuse to be forced to switch (road signs that listed both metric and imperial speed limits were used as target practice in some areas), and so long as the adults use the imperial system, children will grow up accustomed to it.

I personally would argue that for many human applications, the imperial system is better anyway. For example, temperatures in populated areas generally range from 0 (New England winter) to 100 (Los

So do the rest of us.

[Anonymous Coward]

goddamn, every day i am more and more amazed at how much us American's don't learn in school due to our government. For example, the Civil War. Think for a second what you learned (or retained) about it and the causes for it.

Now go read some real history and find out why it really happened.

The US government is far from honest and open and just.

Re:So do the rest of us.

[flint]

Go read who's real history?

Which author's/publisher's version do you accept as gospel? The one that says slavery? The one that says state's rights? They both have some truth in them.

I was taught in the public schools that Lincoln was trying to preserve the union. Abolishing slavery in the states in rebellion was a carefully considered wartime economic and political move that Jefferson Davis himself considered. Yes, it was hugely symbolic, but that doesn't mean it was *only* symbolic. The preservation of the union was the main thing as at that time in history England and France both had reasons for wanting us divided, weakened, and were really hoping for a divided union for obvious reasons.

I was also taught by my teachers that I would never learn everything in a few hours a day. That the teachers had enough time to cover only very monumental events and that it was the responsibility of ME AND MY PARENTS to make sure that I took the basic tools they gave us in school and go out in the world and read, question, and learn. And, to attempt to synthesize the various slanted historical perspectives before coming to my own conclusions.

Russian rovers! Bah! What monumental historical event should this displace in a curricula that can only cover a finite amount of material?

Stop blaming the system for everything they didn't teach you.

Thank a teacher that you've the wit to get in a flame war here on slashdot!

Re:So do the rest of us.

[Patik]

Very true. I don't even really know anything about Vietnam or many 20th century presidents. It wasn't until I came to college and started thinking about things that I realized how much I didn't learn in grade school.

Re:Hmm how to learn perhaps?

[marcus]

Believe me, if all you have to offer is what was fed to you at school, you've got a long way to go.

How about how to teach yourself?

Try reading, it works great. You can find these things called books at a place called a library.

In addition to teaching me how to use a library, my parents also bought a big pile of paper called an encyclopedia. The purchase includes yearly updates called yearbooks.

Then there's a yellow skinned magazine to which your parents or grandparents should have subscribed. It is call

how about smallpox?

[myowntrueself]

as a 'weapon of mass destruction' against the Native American population? Did they teach you about that?

Re:how about smallpox?

[Atryn]

How about smallpox as a 'weapon of mass destruction' against the Native American population? Did they teach you about that?

Yes they did. Actually, the terminology of WMD as it is used today didn't exist then, but we were certainly taught about the smallpox incidents.

Re:Hmm

[Mr. Piddle]

I wonder what else american public schools forgot to teach me...

Finance for protection from unwise debt.
Scientifically-grounded health and fitness.

Now, Americans are both fat and floating in their own debt.

What's with teaching state history, when teaching the present and future values of a loan is so much much more important towards quenching the blind ambition of college-bound students. It's not like people learn much from history--at least they don't show it (citing all the presidential debates from now until November).

Re:Hmm

[jandrese]

I recently heard something interesting. The recent explosion in short term (high interest) debt in the US may not be as bad as it first appears. Apparently this number is calculated in a method similar to credit reports. They grab the current amount of money on your credit card and compare that with various factors. However, in recent years many many Americans have taken to paying for most things with their credit card (to get the cash back/miles/etc...), and then paying off the credit card at the end o

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

theory of evolution?

Re:Hmm

[baryon351]

One I hear repeated often is that the first woman in space was Sally Ride in June 1983. Sadly, this isn't just a US misconception, as it was one I was taught in Australia too.

It completely ignores Valentina Tereshkova, a russian woman who was not only the first woman in space 20 years earlier (almost to the day, in June 1963) but was about the sixth person into space entirely (I may have that position slightly wrong)

Simple Explaination

[Dr. Bent]

I had never heard of this feat. I asked around (friends and coworkers) and nobody else I've talked to has heard of them either.

That's because in Soviet Russia, moon rovers learn about YOU!

Sorry...couldn't resist.

Re:Simple Explaination

[wolf-]

I had never heard of this feat. I asked around (friends and coworkers) and nobody else I've talked to has heard of them either.

That's because in Soviet Russia, moon rovers learn about YOU!

Sorry...couldn't resist.

Thats because Resistance is futile!

Not just a Google web search

[Anonymous Coward]

Also look at the pictures (images.google.com) [google.com]

candidly

What are they teaching in schools today?

[thewiz]

I remember reading about these rovers when I was in GRADE school. Or am I carbon dating myself?

Re:What are they teaching in schools today?

[Spacepup]

I also remember learning about the soviet rovers (and I'm only 25 so I wasn't even around when it happend). I would conjecture that though US public education can use improvement, we learn what we want to learn.

"Thanks to my American Education?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to try and defend the US Education system for it's lack of bias, but I doubt that you learned about any US Mars Rovers in school either - even if they were current events. We have yet to talk about the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in my school... it's a shame really. :/

Russian schools just as bad!

[ender_wiggins]

I knew someone from Russia that swore that the russians had landed a man on the moon before the USA. She didnt belive me that they never got anyone on the moon...

Re:Russian schools just as bad!

[gujo-odori]

If you go to Viet Nam, you'll find a lot of people who believe that:

1) The Soviets landed people on the moon;

2) The US moon landings were faked.

They learned it in school. I've even heard that from some of my in-laws there, and I'm far from sure I've convinced them it isn't true. Heck, some Americans even believe 2.

Wow. Another Russian First

[ahem]

I can't believe that the Russians beat us there. To think that they could have been the first to build a movie set and fake a lunar rover landing! I'm glad we were first to think of putting human actors on the set, though!

Re:Wow. Another Russian First

[ENOENT]

In Soviet Russia, rovers moon YOU!

popular children toy

[kyknos.org]

in czech republic (fromer soviet ally) was a small model lunokchod with remote control. all people in eastern europ know lunokchods. i am surprised it is not known in usa, because american exploration of space was well known in the eastern block.

by th way, Lunochod means Moonwalker

Ever wonder about the names?

[immel]

I can't believe you've never heard of this (even if you are American). Ever wonder why so many of the features on the dark side of the moon have Russian names? It's the same with many features on Mars, too.

Russian-named features on the dark side

[AtariAmarok]

Ever wonder why so many of the features on the dark side of the moon have Russian names? It's the same with many features on Mars, too.

It really is true. I'm in the Western Hemisphere right now, and it is light out. It so happens that many of the features in the northern part of the dark side of the Earth at this time also have Russian names. Imagine that!

Re:Ever wonder about the names?

[CanSpice]

The names on the far side of the moon (not the dark side, since it's only dark half the time) are Russian because the Russians were the first to photograph the far side. Nothing to do with rovers, everything to do with being the first ones to send men around the moon.

In fact, how would they operate the rovers if they were on the far side?

Re:Ever wonder about the names?

[tverbeek]

features on the dark side of the moon

Features on the dark side of the moon are (nearly) invisible. There's no sunlight there. Nobody's ever spent much time there (even roboticly).

The far side of the moon, however, is another story. The Soviet Union was one of the pioneer explorers of that, and they took lots of pictures... during local daylight periods, of course.

Re:Ever wonder about the names?

[sholden]

There is no "dark side" of the Moon using your definition, the obvious presence of phases of the moon indicates a day-night cycle and hence no side that is in permanent darkness.

So of course nobody has spent much time their, just as nobody has spent much time in the Fairy Kingdom.

Come On...

[mbone]

These rovers were far from secret - they even carried a joint experiment with the French, a set of retroreflectors for Lunar Laser Ranging [nasa.gov], which (together with similar retroreflectors installed by the Apollo astronauts) are still used for a variety of fundamental measurements in celestial dynamics.

I thought american schools were value free

[Anonymous Coward]

In America we tend to forget that we are far from immune from 'evil socializing school.' I remember hearing about flying Russian dogs but never moon rovers. In fact, come to think of it I never knew we landed on the moon more than once until I saw Apollo 13.

It reminds us that our history books stilled talked about manifest destiny in grand terms until the mid 70s and how the genocide of indigenous peoples in our own country was conveniently brushed aside at the same time. Politicians here love to criticize Japanese teachings about WWII, but this is a good reminder that us Americans should temper our supposed superiority from time to time.

Americans are from Mars, Soviets are from Venus

[Chagatai]

The Soviets also were the first ones to land probes on Venus in a series of missions known as Venera [nasa.gov]. These probes, amazingly, were a part of a mission that lasted over 20 years time, and brought us lots of goodies, including how anyone landing on Venus would encounter a lovely environment where lead melts on the ground and sulphuric acid rains from the sky... kind of like Los Angeles.

Re:Americans are from Mars, Soviets are from Venus

[RainbowSix]

Here's a good link [donaldedavis.com] to pictures and info on the Venera missions.

Imagine how much it sucked when, according to the site, two landers had their lens caps stuck, and a third one ejected its lens cap right where its probe arm was supposed to touch the ground!

Re:Americans are from Mars, Soviets are from Venus

[deglr6328]

I cannot help but post a link to this [mentallandscape.com] site about the Soviet missions to Veus, it is absoluely amazing and the level of detail about the engineering is incredible. This guy's even gone through the trouble of reprocessing the original data sent from the cameras to produce sharper more accurate images of the surface; fantastic [mentallandscape.com].

Apollo Lunar Rovers

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone remember that the US landed three rovers [nasa.gov] on the moon that were driven [nasa.gov] by astronauts?

"U.S. astronauts drove three Lunar Rover Vehicles on the last three Apollo missions..."

We did learn about Lunokhod rovers in school

[Muhammar]

"Thanks to my American science education, I had never heard of this feat."

Don't be sad. Thanks to my soviet-era communist education, I was convinced in my school years that the Apollo maned missions to Moon are just an expenisve imperialist publicity stunt with no real scientific value.

Re:We did learn about Lunokhod rovers in school

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Don't be sad. Thanks to my soviet-era communist education, I was convinced in my school years that the Apollo maned missions to Moon are just an expenisve imperialist publicity stunt with no real scientific value.

And gee, they were almost right...

I'd like the poster to quit his whining.

[Moofie]

I went to American public schools.

I knew that Russians had put rovers on the moon.

School's job is not to tell you everything that's ever happened. School's job is to give you the tools you need to find things out. I got those tools. You did not. The fact that we both got an "American" education is irrelevant.

Quit blaming your ignorance on your teachers. Start paying more attention to what they had to work with.

Re:I'd like the poster to quit his whining.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like the next poster to quit comparing his relatively privileged education to that received by the average American.

My schools didn't give me the tools I needed to find things out. Luckily, I dropped out and started reading, which was a great boon once I got into college.

All I was taught about Russia in school was that their government was put in place without concern for the will of the people, their government spied on its own people, corruption was rampant, and a bunch of fat cats at the top lived

There's a Russian joke about it

[prostoalex]

When the Soviet Union wad ruled by Leonid Brezhnev [rcn.com], an extremely elderly person not capable of any mental activity furing his late years, there was a joke about Lunokhod and Brezhnev.

Airport in Germany. Soviet and German leaders meet. As the Germans come to the Soviet airplane, Brezhnev comes out, sniffs everyone from the German delegation, picks up some dirt off the ground, puts it in his pocket and returns to the airplane.

Few minutes later a Russian scientist apologizes: "We messed up and instead of Presidential visit program loaded up Lunokhod program".

Re:There's a Russian joke about it

[ghost4096]

There is another one: What is the difference between Soviet and Americans? The Americans use machines to fetch potatoes and use people to fetch lunar rock; The russiuan use people to fetch potatoes and and machines to fetch lunar rock.

Another one

[Poligraf]

After Americans put men on the Moon, Brezhnev calls for the cosmonauts and tells them:
- In order to win the space race, you will land on the Sun!
- But we'll burn there, Leonid Il'ich!
- Don't worry, the Communist Party's Central Commettee is not stupid! You'll fly there in the night! ;-)

P.S. Anyone can translate the anecdote about Challenger and "zalpy saljuta"?

Yet another one

[Uksi]

Jan 28, 1986, date of Challenger's launch.

The President of the United States gets a call from Russia's Prime Minister, Mikhail Gorbachev:

- Hello, President?
- Yes?
- Please accept our sincere apologies for Challenger's explosion!
- But it's scheduled to launch in 40 seconds!
- Oh? Ok, we'll call back!

If you are in Kansas

[wowbagger]

And if you are in Kansas, you can see them st the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center [cosmo.org].

Also sample return.

[AJWM]

Sheesh, what (if anything) are they teaching kids these days?

The existence of the Lunokhods was certainly well-known at the time. Of course after the first couple of Apollo landings, the attention deficit disordered American public had pretty much lost interest even in humans walking on the Moon, so I guess it's no surprize that hardly anyone remembers the Lunokhods.

In that same time frame (between the two rover landings I think, but I could be wrong) the Russians also landed a vehicle that scooped up a sample of Lunar soil and returned it to Earth. A tiny fraction of what Apollo returned, of course, but significant in that it was from an area of the Moon that Apollo never visited.

"HOLY F*CKING SH*T, HOUSTON!!!"

[instantkarma1]

An imaginary quote from some Astronaut landing on the moon and tripping over one of these, not knowing about them.

His ass would be on monolith alert after that, no doubt!

Ping!

[NanoGator]

What kind of ping times can you get to the moon? Just curious if these guys had to program the rover in a language kind of like logo, or if they just fired up the old Joystick?

Roverlords

[happyfrogcow]

yep, you guessed it...

I, for one, welcome our new Russian Roverlords.

information across the Iron Curtain

[Maimun]

Don't feel so bad about not having heard of Lunokhod. On the other side of the curtain there was a joke that the newspapers tested their absolutely smallest fonts when describing the American landing on the Moon.

I'm American, and I remember that probe

[mark0]

If you had asked me, cold, if the russians had operated a rover on the moon, I probably would have said no. But, looking at that picture, I remember it vividly. As a kid, I was given a coffee table book called "The History of Flight" or some such (I think I still have the book). I remember thinking the picture of the Blackbird was just too cool and the "bathtub" probe too comical to actually be real.

It's not just in the USA

[fsmunoz]

While I might not have the educational system of the USA (in a general sense) in the greatest regard (relax, I don't hold my own in high regard) this apparent lack of knowledge is rather general. I remember Lunokhod very well but I was a) very interest in spacial exploration when I was a kid and b) most of the books I had were from the USSR (or from Novosti Press editions in Portugal).

The thing is, most of my classmates were not even interest in the whole subject, so for them Lunokhod or Appolo didn't meant anything. In the USA it's obvious that people have knowledge (or should have, it is after all a great thing to be prouf of) about their own space missions, but beyond that it's really down to curiosity and personal interest.

I would argue that most knowledge of this kind that people have is not directly derived from taking classes at school but it's a result of curiosity and self-reading. And perhaps rightly so.

Some Russian achievements

[B.D.Mills]

If you can see the 1999 BBC-produced series "The Planets", you will find Lunokhod and other aspects of the Russian lunar missions get some coverage in the "Moon" episode, alongside the American space program. Some more facts about the Russian space program that you can find in that series:

• The Russians developed their own manned lunar module, but never got to the stage of launching cosmonauts. The Russian module would have held two cosmonauts. The unmanned tests were not particularly successful because they lost a number of the unmanned modules. The Russians didn't want to launch cosmonauts until they were 100% sure they would come back alive.
  
• The Russians were the first to send an unmanned probe to another world and have it return with samples. The Russians sent sample-return probes to the moon at around the same time as Apollo. One of these sample-return missions was launched a few days before Apollo 11. This particular mission was unsuccessful, with the probe crashing into the moon instead of landing. Although these missions only returned maybe a few kilos of lunar soil, that is enough for chemistry to be done on it.
  
• The Russians and Americans both prepared artificial lunar surfaces. The Americans used dynamite to create artificial craters and prepared an exact model of a small area of the Sea of Tranquillity, whereas the Russians weren't so exacting.
  

Ignorance isn't bliss.

[Visceral Monkey]

"Thanks to my American science education, I had never heard of this feat.I asked around (friends and coworkers) and nobody else I've talked to has heard of them either."

Let's place the blame where it belongs, with yourself. This is hardly something that was hidden from the public, it's always been there for anyone who cared to look. Was it as well known as the current crop of NASA rovers? No, but there wasn't an internet, etc to splash the latest images around the world in moments either. It has nothing to do with your education, but rather your lack of curiosity up until this moment.

On the subject of Russian space feats, they were also the first country to mount a specially designed machine gun to a satellite and fire it in space. For peacefull purposes only, of course..

Re:Ignorance isn't bliss.

[kevcol]

Let's place the blame where it belongs, with yourself.

Well said. I found about these rovers when I was in grade school from reading science encyclopedias in the library. I remember it being described as looking like a Victorian bathtub [nasa.gov].

You can't learn about every space endeavour through school, you have to be curious enough to find out for yourself some things.

Speak for yourself

[porkchop_d_clown]

Not only did I know about the Russian rovers, I had a set of Russian stamps with Soyuz and the rovers on them.

Thanks to *my* American education.

If you really lament your education, I think you should speak to your parents about their lack of involvement, and to yourself about your lack of curiosity.

Why Lunokhod-2 died after 4 month

[genka]

The rovers were driven in real time, using a very low quality TV- no half-tones, one frame in several seconds. One day they drove Lunokhod-2 into a crater, and had troubles climbing out. The drivers decided to back off a little. Lunokhod-2 had no rear- view camera, and they collided with a rim of the crater. The solar battery was covered in dust, reducing it's output. They try to clean the battery by flipping it, but the dust wouldn't come out, and what would got on a heat radiator surface, which lead to overheating. The drivers got the rover out of the crater, but it didn't wake up after next lunar night. Source (in Russian): http://www.space.hobby.ru/projects/lunochod1.html

Not only that but...

[kaffiene]

The Russians beat the US a very large number of firsts in space. First satellite, first animals in space, first human in space, first safe landings from orbit, first spacewalk, first to the land a probe on Mars, first probe to Venus, first orbital station, first flight around the moon.

The whole notion that the US "won the space race" is an interesting bit of spin. The fact is that the USSR notched up a very large number of firsts and could equally argue that they won the race if the finishing line hadn't been arbitraly decided to be a manned mission to the moon (and you can bet that it wasn't the Russians who decided that that was the only feat which mattered).

The US won the cold war over the USSR, or more to the point, outlasted the USSR, because the USSR ran out of money. Ultimately the Soviet system was a poor means of running a country, so they lost their super power status... but that hardly means they lost the space race.

As Napolean said: history is a lie made up by the victors.

Richard Garriott bought one of them

[MauMan]

It might be of interest to some of you that Richard "Lord British" Garriott of Ultima fame actually bought one of the rovers from the Russians in the 90s.

The other Slashdot effect

[19usc2462bH]

The Wikipedia page has been slashdotted.

Under a list of protected pages [wikipedia.org], the Lunokhod program [wikipedia.org] page is listed because page was listed on a /. story 26 minutes ago, has already been vandalized half a dozen times including insertion of goatsex links. Pakaran. 23:06, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Re:The other Slashdot effect

[Jackdaw Rookery]

Am I the only one who thinks this isn't funny?

Are slashdotters the univited people that smell weird and rifle through your stuff at parties?

Behave on other sites.

Beeing in the middle

[cavac]

"Thanks to my American science education, I had never heard of this feat."

Well, i'm glad to be from Europe (Austria to be exact), because we were - as a neutral country - beeing subject to both western AND eastern brainwashing and so got information of both sides of the space race :-)

Well, to get the truth to it: Science experiments of Austria have flown on both sides; we even got an astronaut (or Austronaut) to MIR, which is quite a feat for such a small country...

BTW, look at quite a nice Lunokhod picture [astronautix.com] and also see the US Ranger Program [nasa.gov] to get a better view of the real pressures in NASA's side of the space race.

Newsflash

[CXI]

This just in! Children are not being taugh all of the knowledge contained in the universe in school! When pressed for comment, the school said "Time is finite". We'll be sure to get more info on this conspiracy in the next hour, stay tuned!

Lets be Fair

[DumbSwede]

The submitter's coworkers must all be under the age of 40. The Russian rovers were no secret; I'm 45 and remember a Johnny Carson joke that circulated widely, something to the effect, "boy those Russians will do anything to erase those foot prints"

Deriding the American educational system for not having kids memorize every event in space history is a bit harsh. To be fair there is quite a bit of space history, and this feat while impressive was clearly not as impressive as walking on the moon, and came second. I also doubt there is some dark sinister nationalism at fault, as also seems to be hinted at.

Lets deride the American education system for failing to teach reading and math, not obscure space trivia.

An unused rover is here in the states

[caffiend666]

There is an unused Lunokhod rover here in the states. Here is a color picture I took [geocities.com] a few years ago. The rover is/was at the Kansas Cosmosphere [cosmo.org]. The Cosmosphere is a wonderful place, and well worth making a road trip.

The top of the rover popped open lengthwise to reveal the solar panels. The long nose looking thing on the front was the antenna. There are rumors that these rovers did sample returns even. Havn't seen any proof though.

Interesting tid-bit

[Pig Hogger]

(Of course, European newspapers and rags were plastered end-to-end with Lunokhod articles when it happenned)

Here is an interesting tid-bit: to remotely drive the rovers, the russians selected people who did not have driver licences.

The idea was that they would not have driver's reflexes they would have to unlearn in order to drive a vehicle with a 1 second lag in response thanks to the Earth_Moon gap...

Re:11 months!

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

sheer dumb luck?

Of course. Everyone knows that only Americans know how to build reliable space vehicles and only Americans deserve to get contracts for software engineering and everyone else in the world is just plain dumb.

Re:11 months!

[Axe]

To be fair, the Soviets accomplished large engineering projects because they just didn't give a fuck about quality control, economics, or long-term consequences.

Funny. I now work for an american corporation, and did work closely with NASA. And we indeed give a fuck about quaity control, economics, or long-term consequences. A very long, hard fuck.

But statistics is a stubbron thing. Russian space craft, from boosters to landers do have higher success rate. Go figure.

Re:11 months!

[arivanov]

If the Russians had a shuttle program, they'd have lost at least ten by now

Get a clue. You desperately need it.

They did. It was started at the same time as US. While the US was from inception and till now intended as a manned system and requires 7 guinea pigs to fly (and die), the russian from inception was designed to run in fully automated mode if needed. It can also carry as many people as the US one, but it took off and landed automatically day one.

It went through a number of prototypes which were considerably smaller then the shuttle and can land on both sea and ground. There are publically available pictures taken from New Zeland destroyer of russians retrieving one of the prototypes after a water landing in the South Pacific in the late 70-es.

The program developement ended with the Buran which had the same spec as the shuttle and could still fly in fully automated mode (take off, dock, land). It completed one fully automatic space flight and landed successfully. On the second flight with crew on board the system malfunctioned at a similar time in the take off sequence like the Challenger. The main difference between the Challenger and Buran was the fact that the Buran had a working ejector system and the crew escaped unharmed. Which makes a remarkable difference compared to the shuttle. And it was not kept secret. It was in the news and well known.

After that incident the powers that be finally did an economical analysis of the program and found that it is completely unviable. The reason being that copying the shuttle was wrong. The shuttle was designed to satisfy several silly USAF requirements and as a result was and still is too big for our rocket technology. The early prototypes were right. We cannot build a reusable vehicle larger then about 30% of the shuttle and keep it reliable.

And the funniest bit is that one of the prototypes for the new NASA vehicle is a literal copy of these prototypes. Compare the Kiwi pictures of the real thing from the 70-es and the NASA material. Actually nothing funny - it is the reality. Same as with the Yak 142 technology making its way into the next generation of US VTL fighter jet, so on so forth. I would not go into why and what as it will be marked as a flamebait though they are well known as well.

Re:11 months!

[ackthpt]

"Lunokhod 1 actually toured the lunar Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) for 11 months in one of the greatest successes of the Soviet lunar exploration program" I wonder how they managed to get them to hold up (and be potentially useful) for that long? sheer dumb luck?

I remember the whispering propaganda of the 60's and 70's. "The soviets all use crapy electronics", "The soviets rockets all crash or explode", "The soviets are way behind the USA", etc. In reality, time has revealed that whatever their politics, the soviets showed great economy and resourcefullness (at a time many US rockets blew up, too but were less publicized) and succeded in many ways. That their information has been so overlooked rather underscores a propaganda war on the part of the USA (and make no mistake, since the day Kennedy launched the Space Program, there was a huge propaganda onslaught to make US look good, inspite of setbacks and disasters.)

I've never met an astronaut, but have met a cosmonaut, an intelligent and personable fellow, who was mercilessly grilled by a college professor on politics rather than the space programs.

Re:11 months!

[el-spectre]

No disrespect to the soviet space pros, but I gotta call BS on 2 counts here:

1) On several occasions, launches were made LONG before ready, for political reasons, risking lives (not that this is a soviet only thing)

2) US failures were less publicized? We had rockets blowing up on LIVE TELEVISION, whilst the world found out about russian flights after splashdown 1/2 the time. The failures we only know about (until recently) because we found massive craters from exploded rockets.

The entire space race was an exercise in propaganda, anyway.

Re:11 months!

[Buran]

Yes indeed, Redstone was a US Army ballistic missile. It was designed by Wernher von Braun, who also designed the A-4 (V-2) ballstic missile you also speak of. Redstone not only launched two suborbital manned Mercury flights (and accompanying unmanned test flights) but its Jupiter-C variant launched Explorer 1, the first US satellite.

A-4 rockets flew to the edge of space while flying from Germany and France to London, and in later years were modified by von Braun and the US Army for increased performance;

Re:WTFipedia...

[Aardpig]

From looking at the Wikipedia history, it appears that the GNAA poster is at 82-32-36-56.cable.ubr05.azte.blueyonder.co.uk (82.32.36.56). This is a Blueyonder cable subscriber in the UK. I am currently hacking their computer.

Re:Not just American education...

[LWATCDR]

I did learn about these in school, but then I was always interested in space.
Try these questions.
What was the name of the first American lander on the moon?
The name of the first lander on Mars?
What was then name of the first US communications sattilite?

Most people know little about space.

You *do* realize

[porkchop_d_clown]

that Mars and the Moon aren't the same place?

not gravity, sun or nearness

[kippy]

This isn't because of proximity to the Earth or gravity or more solar power or anything. The Mars rovers move so slow because one of their mission parameters was that they would not be "torque bound". They wanted them to be able to roll over any obstacle. The motors are made with a power/speed tradeoff so while they are very slow, there's very little that they cannot climb.

the mars rovers are semi-autonomous

[rebelcool]

unlike the moon, mars is so far away that driving the rover in real-time isn't very feasible (you tell it to move, then 30-40 minutes later you'll get your image back showing the result).

So the latest mars rovers are semi-autonomous. Mission control gives them a destination, and the rover finds its own way there.

Now the reason for the slow speed has a bit to do with control theory. One of the most accurate ones we've developed to date works like this: Plot a path to the destination using currently avai

Proverb

[Poligraf]

"Pomirat', tak s muzykoj" - the literal translation will be "If it is to die, then do it with a music".