The unmanned craft was due to make a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole, but failed after encountering problems as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.
It was Russia’s first Moon mission in almost 50 years.
Russia has been racing to the Moon’s south pole against India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is scheduled to land on there next week.
No country has ever landed on the south pole before, although both the US and China have landed softly on the Moon’s surface.
No report on whether or not Russia was attempting to use repurposed anti-ship missiles like the ones they use to attack schools and hospitals here on Earth.
I didn’t know they have schools on the moon. Or was it a power station?
No report on whether or not Russia was attempting to use repurposed anti-ship missiles like the ones they use to attack schools and hospitals here on Earth.
Yeah, Russia should be like heckin’ wholesome NASA and their peaceful apolitical former SS officers who never bombed any hospitals or schools instead.
Ah yea. Who can forget the US operation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim
The US created the first liquid propulsion rocket. While Stalin, oh, imprisoned their scientists in the gulag.
Plenty of SS officers and other Nazis went to Russia to make the R-1 clone of the V2. Which, btw, had a failure rate higher than the US clone.
Ahh yes, bringing German scientists and technical staff to the USSR to learn from them and then repatriating them back to the GDR 5 years later is exactly the same as putting an SS Sturmbanfuhrer who was personally in command of a facility where slave labor was worked to death into leading roles in your space program into the 1970s.
Let’s also just conveniently ignore the fact that the R-2 rocket was developed by Korolev’s team in direct competition with the G-1 rocket developed by a German team working in the USSR. The USSR chose the R-2 over the G-1 specifically because it didn’t want the Soviet space program being led by Germans and by 1950 had repatriated most of the German specialists.
After 1950 the Soviet program was largely indigenous, led by Korolev and other Soviet citizens. All of the major achievements of the Soviet program were led by Soviet citizens, scientists and workers.
The entire V-2 team under von Braun from Peenemunde surrendered to the Americans on May 2, 1945 and brought with them more than 400 core scientific-technical employees, full documentation and reports and more than 100 intact copies of the A4/V-2 rockets ready to be shipped to the front, together with the combat launchers and the military personnel trained to operate the missiles.
The Peenemunde site was by then already deliberately destroyed to prevent anything useful from falling into the Soviet hands.
Operation “Ost” did happen, however, but the highest ranked German scientist they managed to recruit was Helmut Grottrup, who was von Braun’s deputy for missile radio-control and for electrical systems. He had claimed to be an anti-fascist, we may never know the truth, but he was indeed imprisoned by the Nazis for a time.
The vast majority of the German specialists who worked for the Soviets were not former associates of von Braun in Peenemunde, but were instead introduced to rocket technology when the Soviets established the Institutes RABE and Nordhausen in Germany after winning the war.
Werner von Braun later remarked:
“… the USSR nevertheless succeeded in acquiring the chief electronics specialist Helmut Gröttrup… But he was the only important catch from among the Peenemünde specialists.”
Other German scientists who worked for the Soviets such as Kurt Magnus and Hans Hoch (leading academics in gyroscopy) as well as Manfred von Ardenne (later awarded Hero of Socialist Labor) came from the academia and adjacent industries, and were not members of the Nazi Party.
They also managed to recruit workers and technicians who were POWs liberated from the Dora concentration camp (which supplied personnel for the notorious Mittelwerk factory, where von Braun had committed crimes against humanity including the torture, beatings and execution of the prison labor). Many of the POWs were involved in the sabotage of the A4 (V-2) rocket production at Mittelwerk, and resulting in substantial proportion of misfires and inaccurate flight trajectory when the Nazis used the rockets against England.
In other words, the Soviets had to reverse engineer pretty much everything from scratch (the R-1, which is the copy of A4/V-2), while the Americans got everything they needed. The Americans only fired the V-2 a few times, and then went on with their own “hybrid” designs such as the Navaho, Aerobee and Viking.
And in spite of all this, with such overwhelming advantage, the Americans still LOST the race against the USSR. The R-7 became the world’s first ICBM to be launched in 1957.
To put it in the terminology of you computer nerds, the Americans got the entire core dev team, with the complete source code and full documentations, and the whole tech support team, while the Soviets had to work with and piece together information from third party developers, and still raced ahead of the Americans.
Remember that time Americans and West Europeans thought it a good idea to put a literal German Nazi general as head of NATO? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger lol fun times
Aww man…
I like it when space stuff works and when it explodes it makes me sad :(
(Unless there’s a billionaire on board)
Comments exactly what I expected. Disappointed how many people here are knee jerk celebrating the failure. Feels like being in a room full of Republicans when someone says anything about Mexico or Islam.
I hope they fix their shit for Luna 26 for the sake of science and human discovery.
You know normally I would applaud them. Happy when China has a success. Screw Russia though. This was a propaganda mission to get a win. The fact that did it in a rush to beat another country is typical of their philosophy. There was little science in this but mostly just dick waving.
This was my impression. This was a rushed propaganda mission for prestige using existing material.
Still, I’m sure there would have been some useful science done, but the main point of the mission was that Putin’s regime would have been able to crow about how great Russia is doing.
Of course, if it had succeeded, it might have spurred some competitive spirit in other space powers.
Well your intention is admirable but childish.
Nobody gives a fuck about Russia’s scientific endeavours when they’re re starting the biggest military conflict in Europe since WWII and threatening everyone with a nuclear conflict.
Most probably any scientific progress that could be made will not be used for mankind’s progress but for the current militaristic propaganda.
All of Apollo took place during the Vietnam war. Somehow I think you’d feel differently about that.
You’re correct about the Appolo missions, but don’t tell me the Space Race was about science. It’s was fully politically motivated also. Without the Cold War nobody would have put the money and effort in so the Moon landing could happen in '69.
There are a lot of other missions that happened for pure scientific reasons but I don’t think this is one of them.
Disagree. I hate the russian goverment and its fascist invasion lf Ukraine, but a moon lander is great scientific progress no matter where it comes from. It is sad that this happened and its why the lack of international cooperation in space exploration is bad for humanity as a whole.
I understand your point of view and it’s correct but not realistic. This mission is bashed because it’s purpose was never science but propaganda. To validate a Phoenix like revival of the Russian empire. That they are strong and relevant on the world scene. The reactions to the failure were in tune with the intended purpose of the mission. Science (like usual) is the background of the political agenda.
Cope. Most ppl would dislike russia since it is and authoritarian shithole. The only reason russia is tolerated is opposition to the USA. Tolerance is different from endorsement or appreciation. Fuck Russia
Special lunar operation.
