Space Race finale

[major_clanger]

As I expected, the final episode was very rushed, trying to get everything in from the aftermath of the first manned spaceflights all the way up to Apollo 11. As a result, it skimmed over a lot of incidents that would have added to the story, such as:

- Kruschev's pressure on Korolev to stage propaganda stunts, such as Tereshkova's flight on Vostok 6 (after which the USSR didn't bother flying any women for another twenty years) or the three-man Voskhod 1 (a rush job with no launch escape system).

- Korolev's more methodical plans for space exploration (shunted aside in favour of the above).

- Von Braun's development of the Saturn I, the first really large US rocket, and the stepping stone to the Saturn V.

- The full story of Korolev's death. There are persistent rumours that owing to his importance, he was operated on by a surgeon whose party seniority outweighed his expertise; complications ensued, and by the time a more experienced surgeon was called in, Korolev was beyond saving.

There was also a lot of compression of events again, and in particular one might get the impression that there was only one N-1 flight. In fact there were four, although all failed, and it was the second that blew up on takeoff. (The other three at least got clear of the pad). For that matter, it was the second Saturn V flight that had the serious engine problems. A viewer might also wonder why the cosmonauts were so keen to fly a moon mission if the N-1 was nowhere near ready to fly. In fact, that flight would have been via a stripped-down Soyuz flown on the medium-sized Proton booster (powered by Glushko's controversial engines).

But all in all a good depiction of broadly how the USSR ended up losing the race to the moon, whilst at the same time setting itself on the road to long-term space exploration. In particular, it was nice to see the final note on how the R-7 is still in service, 48 years after it first flew - indeed, one launched the latest crew to the International Space Station only last Friday, on the 94th manned Soyuz mission since 1967.

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I liked that bit too.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

The last programme rushed through the history, but it didn't (to me) have a rushed feel, perhaps because of the narration filling in what the drama could not depict (for instance, the observation that a new Gemini mission was being launched practically every two weeks). But what this last programme also made clear -- and what should have been obvious from the voice-over introduction to each episode -- was that this was less a history of the race to the Moon than a story of the rivalry between the leaders of the competing efforts.

Perhaps the fact that people such as you and I know more of the history of this stuff than the so-called average viewer meant that we tended to overlook that point, focusing on what was being dramatised rather than the drama's overall perspective. But I thought the last episode brought out and pointed up that rivalry very well.

Although I'm sure that one piece of archive footage used was actually doctored. I'm sure that the Soviet probe sent to the Moon to try to steal some of the glory from Armstrong and Aldrin did not appear as a moving point of light in the background of the footage of them bouncing around in front of the LEM!

[daveon.livejournal.com]

They skipped the trial Zond missions failing. I was surprised that Leonov et al pushed to be allowed to do it anyway. They also skipped the risk they took with Apollo 8 allowing it to enter orbit rather than just doing a free return.

The other thing that only recently came to light were the orbital tests of the Russian lander - which came as a surprise to pretty much everybody.