Cosmonauts BBC Four

[TomJoad]

Programme on BBC, playing now, Cosmonauts. Don't know if its been on before but looks quite interesting, hopefully accessing some material previously unseen.

Tom

[Agaricus bisporus]

Should be enough to make hairs stand on the back of you neck - the more I hear of the early Russian space program the more it astonishes me how they got away with it.

Read "Rockets and People", a massive work by Boris Chertok, their electrical genius. Its a stunning inside blow by blow account of the entire Soviet space program.

[tartare]

Agaricus - just downloaded all 4 volumes of Rockets and People onto Kindle - for $1.80 each!!!
Looks fascinating - will start devouring tonight.

[MAINJAFAD]

Rockets and people is also on the NASA website for Free!

"Rockets and People, Volume 3: Hot Days of the Cold War" | NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol3_detail.html#.VDyjbGddWE4)

[nimbev]

I thought that the BBC programme 'Cosmonauts, How Russia Won The Space Race' was excellent - amazing how major steps forward happened with only weeks between events. The following programme about the Afghan cosmonaut was also very interesting, particularly the accounts of the Afghan Air Force prior to the Soviet withdrawl. Both programmes available on BBC IPlayer.

[nimbev]

This programme is repeated on BBC4 tonight (Thursday) at 2230. Well worth a watch.

[chopper2004]

Watching the repeat now and it is fascinating. Though one question comes to mind, did the Russians have any intent to land on the moon?

[MAINJAFAD]

Short answer, a very much Yes, though they started in earnest 2-3 years after the US. The Soyuz spacecraft was to have been the CSM in a similar flight profile to Apollo, with a one man Lander and the whole lot would have been lofted by an N-1 Booster. N-1 booster was cancelled after 4 launch failures due to 1st stage engine faults (it had 30 of them). The biggest issue being turbo-pump failures which were one the verge of being fixed when the program was canned. The biggest issue, however for the soviet effort was the USSR didn't have the cash to fund it to the extent that the USA did, plus there was a lot of in-fighting within the different Soviet design bureaus which got in the way.

Boris Chertok four books are very much worth a read. The 4th book covers the Soviet manned moon flight effort, plus puts it in context with how the US did Apollo. In his view the USA were very communist in carrying out that national effort while the Soviet lunar effort on the other hand were what you would expect from bunch of rival feudal fiefdoms.

Chertok books cover everything that is on this program in a lot more detail, including why Soyuz 1's parachutes failed, What caused Vostok 1's re-entry to go wrong, Etc.

As for this program, loved seeing the footage of R-7's doing failures like the well seen footage of Atlas / Thor / Titan failures, Chertok second book covers all of those shown on this program in detail as well

[camelspyyder]

Cosmonaut Major-General Leonov looked very well, considering he was the guy who got trapped "outside" during the first spacewalk, and then gave himself the bends deflating his space suit so he could get back through the hatch.

What a genuine hero:D:D:D