At the end of last week, American scientists released data according to which the majority of participants in manned flights to the moon died of severe cardiovascular diseases, while other astronauts have this cause of death much less frequently. According to researchers, this is a consequence of the dose of radiation received in space. The news caused a mixed reaction, and the debate about the reliability of NASA's lunar program flared up again. At the request of the editors of Life, the popularizer of astronautics and the press secretary of the Dauria Aerospace company, Vitaly Egorov, spoke about the main misconceptions and stereotypes that constantly accompany many discussions about people on the moon.

1. Lunar landing was filmed in the pavilion

NASA, of course, had pavilions with a mock-up of the lunar module and an imitation of the lunar surface. There was a test site where lunar craters were simulated. But all this was created and used to train astronauts so that unusual conditions were more familiar to them and allowed them to work more efficiently. This is a normal stage in the preparation of any mission. In the same way, Soviet drivers of the lunar rover trained at the training ground in the Crimea and on the volcanoes of Kamchatka. And not to fake pictures from the moon, but to be prepared for what awaits them there. Those images that are officially listed as lunar are actually taken on the Moon and can be analyzed for compliance with satellite images of the lunar surface.

The myth "was filmed in a pavilion" is held by many Russian cosmonauts and space specialists, who have no doubts about the authenticity of the American flights to the moon. Our cosmonauts say: "They flew, but some details of the landing could have been filmed already on Earth and shown just for clarity - how it was." In my opinion, such a position is partly forced, as our specialists protect themselves from the need to explain all sorts of controversial moments of photo and video shooting with a waving flag or the absence of stars in the sky, and the like.

2. The flag is waving, but the stars are not visible

A frequently encountered argument in discussions, which, according to its asserters, should prove a conspiracy. But, firstly, actually flying to the moon and filming a landing on the moon are two different things, and one does not exclude the other. Secondly, you need to know the conditions on the surface a little better and watch videos and photos more carefully. As for the flag, everything is simple there, the astronaut just waves it with his hand. If you watch not five seconds of filming the flag installation, but take a longer recording - they are now all published on the YouTube video service - you can see a direct connection between the "draught" and the astronaut who approaches the flag. He grabbed the flag - the wind rose, let go of the flag - the wind died down. And so several times.

As for the stars that are not in the photo from the Moon, this is also explained simply: they sat down in the afternoon. Although the sky on the moon is black, the cameras were set up for shooting in daytime conditions, because the brightness of the sun on the moon is even higher than on earth. If you look at the shots taken on the International Space Station, then there are also no stars in the black sky, if the shooting was carried out on the sunny side of the Earth.

3. The tapes of the first landing were missing.

This myth has some grounds, although it does not fully correspond to reality. All photographs and videos that were filmed on cameras on the surface of the Moon by the Apollo 11 expedition have been preserved and are now published. The footage of a live television broadcast, which was conducted from the Moon to the NASA receiving station and distributed to various television studios, was rewritten. Since everyone saw the broadcast anyway, and the recordings of these frames were stored in television studios, NASA did not particularly value the magnetic coils with the broadcast in their archives and re-recorded them with a light soul when such a need arose in the 80s.

They realized it only in the 2000s: as it turned out, the recordings on television studios were left with a big loss of quality, and at NASA stations they received a better signal. The broadcast sources were never found, so they tried to improve the quality with the help of specialists from Hollywood. Therefore, now Hollywood officially took part in the preparation of the records of the lunar landing, and this was openly written on the NASA website. However, this does not cast doubt on the fact of the first landing and five subsequent ones, the records of which were no longer lost.

4. After the completion of the lunar program, the Saturn-5 rocket disappeared without a trace

A myth based on the fact that it is no longer possible to resume the production of this rocket, since all the performers and contractors of this system have long disappeared or changed their direction of activity. In addition, the difference in the capabilities of the rocket of the 60s, which put 140 tons into low earth orbit, and modern rockets, whose record is only 28 tons, is very surprising.

Saturn-5 itself has not disappeared, NASA has two samples of the rocket, which are located in the museums of the Space Center. Johnson (Houston) and Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral). Plus, there are several dozen F1 engines that provided outstanding rocket capabilities. Now NASA has a small group that is engaged in reverse engineering (reverse engineering): based on surviving samples, it is developing a new version of the engine using modern technologies. But this work does not have a high priority, since NASA has engines that are superior to the F1 in a number of ways.

The Soviet H1 and Energiya missiles "disappeared" in a similar way. Now, if in Russia there is a conversation about creating a super-heavy rocket, then they are talking about work practically from scratch, and not a return to the Soviet legacy.

The most important contribution of the lunar program remained in the form of the colossal experience of the US space technology developers, who were able to translate it into the Space Shuttle program. If the entire NASA lunar program took place in Hollywood, then America simply would not be physically able to implement the space shuttle program. Let me remind you, if you count with the shuttle itself, the Space Shuttle system launched up to 90 tons into low Earth orbit.

5. Now America does not have its own rocket engines, which means that it did not exist before

The successful sale of Russian RD-180 and RD-181 engines to the United States has led some Russians to believe that America has forgotten how to make rocket engines, if not.

Here, too, it is easy to dispel doubts with two simple facts: the most powerful Delta IV Heavy rocket to date is American, and American RS-68 engines are installed on it.

These engines are oxygen-hydrogen and are inherited from the Space Shuttle program. Their problem is high cost, so it is more profitable for the United States to buy Russian ones.

The most powerful rocket engines of our time - more powerful than the F1 and RD-171 - are solid-propellant SRBs, which are also left over from the shuttle. The SRB is now being installed on the new SLS super-heavy rocket, which is supposed to launch 70 tons into low Earth orbit. It was the SRBs that became the reason why NASA did not resurrect the F1.

For more applied tasks, such as launching satellites or supplying the ISS, both Russian engines and SpaceX's American Merlins are used in the United States.

6. To take off from the moon, you need a rocket and a spaceport, and they were not there

Actually they were. The lunar landing module was not only a means of soft landing, but also a take-off device. The upper part of the module was not only a cabin for astronauts, but also a launch rocket, and the lower part of the landing module acted as a cosmodrome.

To launch from the surface of the Moon and enter the circumlunar orbit, much less energy is required than to launch from the Earth, since there is less gravity, there is no atmospheric drag, a small payload mass, and therefore large rockets can be dispensed with.

7. All lunar soil is missing or carefully hidden by NASA

During six moon landings, astronauts were able to collect and deliver 382 kilograms of lunar samples. Most are now stored at the Lunar Sample Laboratory in Houston. About 300 kilograms are now really inaccessible for research: they are stored in a nitrogen atmosphere so that terrestrial conditions, primarily atmospheric oxygen, do not lead to a change and destruction of the samples. At the same time, about 80 kilograms of samples are available for study by scientists around the world, including Russian ones, and if you wish, you can find scientific publications that compare lunar meteorites, samples from Soviet stations and samples delivered by Apollo astronauts.

In Russia, anyone can see a few grains of lunar soil at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow. There is both Soviet and American lunar soil.

Some soil samples delivered under the Apollo program were indeed stolen or disappeared from the vaults of museums and institutes, but this is an insignificant percentage of the total amount of moon rocks and dust delivered.

For those interested in the topic, I can recommend a photo report by a young Russian cosmonaut Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, who visited the Lunar Sample Laboratory tours and posted the photos on his blog.

8. Cosmic radiation should kill everyone

Today, the press often discusses cosmic radiation along the way. In the context of these conversations, the question is raised of how people flew to the moon if radiation is so dangerous.

To understand the difference in flight conditions, it is worth remembering that a flight to Mars is a year and a half, and a flight to the Moon under the Apollo program is less than two weeks. If you carefully study the results of studies of the effect of cosmic radiation during a flight to Mars, you can find out that in 500 days of flight an astronaut will receive a dose that is approximately one and a half times higher than the permissibleexposure level. If for astronauts this level corresponds to a 3 percent increase in the threat of cancer, then a flight to Mars already gives 5 percent of such a threat. By comparison, smokers increase their cancer risk by 20 percent.

The design of the spacecraft should also be taken into account. The lunar module did not have additional radiation protection, but its skin included an aluminum case, a sealed shell, and multilayer thermal protection, which created an additional shield from cosmic particles. At the same time, only 40 percent of the area of ​​​​the lunar module directly protected the pilots from space conditions. In other areas of the surface, they were additionally covered by a multi-meter service compartment with equipment and rocket fuel and a landing module.

Do not forget about the Soviet and then Russian experiments on the study of cosmic radiation. Now the Phantom and Matryoshka experiments are being implemented on the ISS, and the Phantom flew to the Moon in Zonda-7, which made it possible to assess the degree of human damage by cosmic particle flows. In general, the conclusions are encouraging: if there are no solar flares, then you can fly. If it were not possible, then Roskosmos probably would not have been working on the lunar program at the end of the 2020s and would not have made plans to build a lunar base.

The political leaders of the USSR immediately congratulated the United States on the successful lunar program, and Russian cosmonauts and scientists still express confidence in the reality of landing people on the moon. The conspirators have to explain this somehow in order to remain committed to their idea. And so the idea was born that the USSR was also in a conspiracy. As arguments in favor of a conspiracy, facts from the history of our countries are usually cited, which belonged to the period of detente of international tension: arms limitation, trade cooperation, the Soyuz-Apollo program.

Despite the fact that the Soviet Union no longer exists for a quarter of a century, there is, of course, no documentary evidence of any of its participation in the Lunar conspiracy. Moreover, there was not a single piece of evidence from contemporaries that could confirm the fact of such a conspiracy. Although now, it would seem, nothing is preventing the withdrawal of the Americans to clean water.

10. No one has seen traces of astronauts on the moon, and the "landing site" is forbidden to be viewed and studied.

Earth's most powerful modern telescopes are unable to see traces of the lunar landing. They can see surface details as large as 80-100 meters, which is much larger than the size of the lunar module. The only way to see the lunar modules and astronaut footprints is to send a satellite to the moon or a rover to the surface.

Over the past 15 years, satellites from Europe, India, Japan, China, and the USA have been sent to the Moon. But only the NASA LRO satellite could see more or less qualitatively. Detailing his images - up to 30 centimeters, it allows you to see the lunar modules, scientific equipment on the surface, paths trodden by astronauts, and traces of lunar rovers.

The satellites of India and Japan tried to see the traces of American landings, but the detail of their cameras at 5-10 meters did not allow them to see anything. The only thing that was possible was to identify the so-called halos - a spot of light soil, which arose from the impact of rocket engines of the landing stages. Using stereo imaging, Japanese scientists were able to recreate the landscapes of the landing sites, and they showed full compliance with what is seen in the astronauts' photographs: large craters, mountains, plains, faults. In the 60s, there was no such technique, so it would not have been possible to model the landscape in the pavilion.

In 2007, the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition was announced for the development of a private lunar rover, which must reach the moon and overcome a certain distance. The winner should be paid up to $30 million. As part of the competition, there is an additional $2 million Legacy Award for the team whose lunar rover can photograph one of the Apollo lunar modules or Lunokhods. Fearing that crowds of private robots will rush to the sites of historic landings, NASA has published recommendations not to get too close to the landing sites, so as not to trample on the astronauts' tracks and ruin historical monuments. Currently, only one of the contest teams has announced that they are going to take a look at the Apollo 17 landing site.

In 2015, a group of space engineers appeared in Russia, which undertook to develop a microsatellite capable of reaching the moon and filming the Apollo landing sites, the Soviet Moons and Lunokhods with a quality exceeding NASA LRO. Funding for the first part of the work was sought through crowdfunding. There are no funds yet to continue the work, but the developers do not intend to stop and hope for the support of large private investors or the state.

The moon has never given rest to the Russians. To reach the natural satellite of the Earth, to study it was one of the missions of our compatriots in the last century. And they dealt with it.

another side of the moon

One of the main lunar intrigues until the middle of the 20th century remained the mystery of the far side of the moon. The fact that only half of our satellite is visible from Earth has long tempted people to imagine what is happening on the hidden side. Whatever the human imagination has created. However, all fantasies were ordered to live long on October 7, 1959, when the Soviet automatic interplanetary station Luna 3 took a photograph of the far side of the Moon.

The survey materials transferred to Earth were sent for study to three astronomical institutions of the USSR. Based on the data obtained, the first map of the far side of the Moon was compiled, which included hundreds of surface details. Also released was an Atlas of the Far Side of the Moon and a satellite globe with a hemisphere invisible from Earth. The names of the details of the far side of the Moon photographed by Luna 3 were officially approved by the International Astronomical Union on August 22, 1961.

samples

One of the main merits of the Russians in the study of the moon is the large volume of soil samples taken from the satellite, which is also called regolith. This is a layer on the surface of the Moon, consisting of debris and dust resulting from crushing during the fall of meteorites, mixing and sintering of lunar rocks. The collected materials are studied by geologists, physicists, biologists, biochemists. Each of the specialists looked for his own in the lunar soil, but the main intrigue, of course, was the presence of microorganisms and the simplest particles of biological origin in the soil. Unfortunately, no reliable data have yet been found on the possibility of life on the Moon, but research by scientists, including Russian specialists, continues.

Pennants

It's nice to know that the first state symbols that appeared on another planet were the symbols of the USSR. The automatic interplanetary station "Luna-2" reached the surface of the Moon on September 14, 1959, east of the Sea of ​​Clarity, near the craters Archimedes, Aristides and Autolycus. The station left pennants on the moon. These were metal pentagons with the emblem of the USSR. The next day, Khrushchev handed US President Eisenhower a replica of the pennant.

AMS "Luna-9" February 3, 1966 made a soft landing on the moon. The device left a pennant on the surface of the planet. It was a triangular metal plate with the coat of arms of the USSR in the corner and the inscription along the bottom edge: "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

Communist Turtles

Turtles were the first living creatures to watch the earth rise from the moon, but turtles are not ordinary, but, as the Discovery News columnist called them, "communist" turtles. A pair of Central Asian tortoises flew around the moon on the Soviet Zond-5 spacecraft during an expedition in September 1968. The unmanned spacecraft returned to Earth and splashed down in the Indian Ocean, after which the Russians rescued the "crew" of the ship.

moon rovers

If not everything is obvious with the presence of Americans on the Moon and there are many hypotheses of exposing the famous walk, then no one argues with the fact that the Soviet lunar rovers were on the Earth's satellite.

On November 17, 1970, the Luna-17 station landed safely in the Sea of ​​Rains, and Lunokhod-1 slid down to the lunar soil. During its stay on the surface of the Moon, Lunokhod-1 traveled 10,540 meters, transmitted 211 lunar panoramas and 25,000 photographs to Earth. The maximum speed was 2 km/h. The total duration of the active existence of the Lunokhod was 301 days 06 h 37 min. For 157 sessions with the Earth, 24,820 radio commands were issued. The passability assessment device worked out 537 cycles for determining the physical and mechanical properties of the surface layer of the lunar soil, and its chemical analysis was carried out at 25 points. On September 15, 1971, the temperature inside the sealed container of the lunar rover began to fall, as the resource of the isotope heat source was exhausted. On September 30, the device did not get in touch, and on October 4, all attempts to get in touch with it were stopped. On April 22, 2010, a group of American scientists from the University of California at San Diego, led by Tom Murphy, reported that for the first time since 1971 they were able to get a reflection of a laser beam from the Lunokhod-1 reflector.

"Water"

In 1976, the Soviet "Luna-24" delivered to Earth lunar soil from depths of up to 2 m, in which a high water content was found. Despite the fact that some of the samples were handed over to NASA, the Western scientific community "did not notice" water in them. The presence of water in soil samples was explained by the most banal reason: they say, the containers were leaky and therefore this water was not of lunar, but of terrestrial origin. Like it or not, the very fact that Soviet scientists found water on the Moon was recorded and recognized within the country, and this is already a priority.

Tsiolkovsky's predictions

Tsiolkovsky was self-taught. Ever since his school days, he had serious hearing problems, which is why little Kostya experienced alienation from his peers and more and more went into books that were his best friends. In fact, cut off from the scientific environment, Tsiolkovsky made most of his discoveries on an intuitive level. In 1893, Tsiolkovsky's story "On the Moon" was published in the magazine "Around the World". In it, the scientist anticipated those physical phenomena that people will be able to prove almost a century later. Tsiolkovsky, with the help of thought, seemed to have visited the satellite of the Earth. The story is short, highly recommended reading.

MOSCOW, July 20 - RIA Novosti. Famed cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who personally prepared for participation in the Soviet lunar exploration program, denied years of rumors that American astronauts were not on the Moon, and the footage broadcast on television around the world was allegedly edited in Hollywood.

He spoke about this in an interview with RIA Novosti on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first landing in the history of mankind of US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the surface of an Earth satellite, celebrated on July 20.

So were or weren't the Americans on the moon?

“Only absolutely ignorant people can seriously believe that the Americans were not on the moon. And, unfortunately, this whole ridiculous epic about the allegedly fabricated footage in Hollywood began precisely with the Americans themselves. By the way, the first person who began to distribute these rumors, was imprisoned for slander," Aleksey Leonov noted in this regard.

Where did the rumors come from?

“It all started with the fact that when, at the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the famous American film director Stanley Kubrick, who created his brilliant film Odyssey 2001 based on the book of science fiction writer Arthur Clarke, journalists who met with Kubrick’s wife asked to talk about her husband’s work on the film in Hollywood studios.And she honestly said that there are only two real lunar modules on Earth - one in a museum where no filming has ever been done, and it’s even forbidden to walk with a camera, and the other is in Hollywood, where, to develop the logic of what is happening on the screen and additional filming of the landing of the Americans on the moon was made," the Soviet cosmonaut specified.

Why was studio photography used?

Alexei Leonov explained that in order for the viewer to be able to see the development of what is happening on the movie screen from beginning to end, elements of additional filming are used in any movie.

“It was impossible, for example, to film the real opening by Neil Armstrong of the hatch of the descent ship on the Moon - there was simply no one to film it from the surface! For the same reason, it was impossible to film Armstrong’s descent to the Moon along the ladder from the ship. Kubrick in Hollywood studios to develop the logic of what is happening, and laid the foundation for numerous gossip that the entire landing was allegedly simulated on the set, "explained Alexei Leonov.

Where Truth Begins and Editing Ends

“Real shooting began when Armstrong, who first set foot on the Moon, got a little used to it, installed a highly directional antenna, through which the broadcast to Earth was carried out. its movement on the surface of the moon," the astronaut specified.

Why did the American flag fly in the airless space of the moon?

“They argue that the American flag was flying on the moon, but it shouldn’t be. The flag really shouldn’t be flying - the fabric was used with a rather rigid reinforced mesh, the cloth was twisted into a tube and tucked into a case. The astronauts took with them a nest, which they first inserted into the lunar soil, and then they stuck the flagpole into it, and only then removed the cover. And when the cover was removed, the flag's cloth began to unfold in conditions of reduced gravity, and the residual deformation of the springy reinforced mesh created the impression that the flag was rippling, as if in the wind " , - Alexey Leonov explained the "phenomenon".

“It is simply ridiculous and ridiculous to argue that the entire film was filmed on Earth. The United States had all the necessary systems that tracked the launch of the launch vehicle itself, acceleration, correction of the flight orbit, the descent capsule flying around the Moon and its landing,” - concluded the famous Soviet cosmonaut.

What did the "lunar race" lead to two space superpowers

“In my opinion, this is the best competition in space that mankind has ever carried out. The “moon race” between the USSR and the USA is the achievement of the highest peaks of science and technology,” Alexei Leonov believes.

According to him, after the flight of Yuri Gagarin, US President Kennedy, speaking in Congress, said that the Americans simply thought too late about what triumph could be achieved by launching a man into space, and therefore the Russians triumphantly became the first. Kennedy's message was clear: within ten years, put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth.

“This was a very true step of the great politician - he united and rallied the American nation to achieve this goal. Huge funds for those times were also involved - 25 billion dollars, today, this is, perhaps, all fifty billion. The program included a flyby of the moon, then the flight of Tom Stafford to the point of hovering and selection of a site for landing on Apollo 10. Sending Apollo 11 already provided for the direct landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Michael Collins remained in orbit and waited for the return of his comrades, " - said Alexei Leonov.

18 Apollo-type ships were made to prepare for landing on the moon - the whole program was implemented perfectly, except for Apollo 13 - from the engineering point of view, nothing special happened there, it just failed, or rather, one of the fuel cells exploded , the energy weakened, and therefore it was decided not to land on the surface, but to fly around the Moon and return to Earth.

Alexei Leonov noted that only the first flight around the moon by Frank Bormann, then the landing of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon and the story of Apollo 13 remained in the memory of the Americans. These accomplishments have brought the American nation together and made every individual empathize, walk with fingers crossed, and pray for their heroes. The last flight of the Apollo series was also extremely interesting: American astronauts no longer just walked on the Moon, but traveled on its surface in a special lunar vehicle, making interesting photographs.

In fact, it was the peak of the Cold War, and in this situation, after the success of Yuri Gagarin, the Americans simply had to win the "moon race". The USSR then had its own lunar program, and we also implemented it. By 1968, it had already existed for two years, and even the crews of our cosmonauts were formed for a flight to the Moon.

On censorship of the achievements of mankind

"The launches of the Americans as part of the lunar program were broadcast on television, and only two countries in the world - the USSR and communist China - did not broadcast these historical footage to their peoples. I thought then, and now I think - in vain, we simply robbed our people "The flight to the moon is the property and achievement of all mankind. The Americans watched Gagarin's launch, Leonov's spacewalk - why couldn't the Soviet people see it?!", laments Alexei Leonov.

According to him, a limited group of Soviet space specialists watched these launches through a closed channel.

“We had military unit 32103 on Komsomolsky Prospekt, which provided space broadcasting, since there was no TsUP in Korolev then. The Americans set up a television antenna on the surface of the moon, and everything they did there was transmitted through a television camera to Earth, several repetitions of these television broadcasts were also made.When Armstrong stood on the surface of the moon, and everyone in the USA clapped, we are here in the USSR , Soviet cosmonauts, also crossed their fingers for good luck, and sincerely wished the guys success, "recalls the Soviet cosmonaut.

How was the implementation of the Soviet lunar program

"In 1962, a decree was issued, signed personally by Nikita Khrushchev, on the creation of a spacecraft for flying around the moon and using the Proton launch vehicle with an upper stage for this launch. In 1964, Khrushchev signed a program for the USSR to fly around , and in 1968 - landing on the moon and returning to Earth. And in 1966 there was already a decision on the formation of lunar crews - a group was immediately recruited for landing on the moon, "Alexey Leonov recalled.

The first stage of the flyby of the Earth satellite was to be carried out with the help of the launch of the L-1 lunar module by the Proton launch vehicle, and the second stage - landing and returning back - on the giant and most powerful N-1 rocket, equipped with thirty engines with a total thrust of 4.5 thousand tons with the weight of the rocket itself about 2 thousand tons. However, even after four test launches, this super-heavy rocket did not fly normally, so it had to be abandoned in the end.

Korolev and Glushko: the antipathy of two geniuses

"There were other options, for example, using a 600-ton engine developed by the brilliant designer Valentin Glushko, but Sergei Korolev refused it, since he worked on highly toxic heptyl. Although, in my opinion, this was not the reason - just two leaders , Korolev and Glushko - could not and did not want to work together. Their relationship had its own problems of a purely personal nature: Sergei Korolev, for example, knew that Valentin Glushko had once written a denunciation against him, as a result of which he was sentenced to ten years When Korolyov was released, he found out about this, but Glushko did not know that he knew about it, "said Alexei Leonov.

A small step for a man, but a giant leap for all mankind

NASA's Apollo 11 spacecraft on July 20, 1969, with a crew of three astronauts: Commander Neil Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Aldrin, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, became the first to reach the Moon in the USSR-US space race. The Americans did not pursue research tasks in this expedition, its goal was simple: to land on the Earth's satellite and return successfully.

The ship consisted of a lunar module and a command module that remained in orbit during the mission. Thus, of the three astronauts, only two went to the moon: Armstrong and Aldrin. They had to land on the moon, collect samples of the lunar soil, take pictures on the Earth satellite and install several instruments. However, the main ideological component of the trip was still the hoisting of the American flag on the moon and the holding of a video communication session with the Earth.

The launch of the ship was watched by US President Richard Nixon and German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth. A total of about a million people watched the launch at the cosmodrome and mounted observation platforms, and more than a billion people watched the television broadcast, according to the Americans, around the world.

Apollo 11 launched to the moon on July 16, 1969 at 1332 GMT and entered lunar orbit 76 hours later. The command and lunar modules were undocked about 100 hours after launch. Despite the fact that NASA intended to land on the lunar surface in automatic mode, Armstrong, as the expedition commander, decided to land the lunar module in semi-automatic mode.

The lunar module landed in the Sea of ​​Tranquility on July 20 at 20:17:42 GMT. Armstrong descended to the lunar surface on July 21, 1969 at 02:56:20 GMT. Everyone knows the phrase that he uttered when he stepped on the moon: "This is one small step for a person, but a giant leap for all mankind."

Aldrin also landed on the moon 15 minutes later. The astronauts collected the necessary amount of materials, placed the instruments and installed a television camera. After that, they planted an American flag in the field of view of the camera and held a communication session with President Nixon. The astronauts left a commemorative plaque on the Moon with the words: "Here, people from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon. July 1969 of the new era. We came in peace on behalf of all Humanity."

Aldrin was on the moon for about an hour and a half, Armstrong for two hours and ten minutes. At the 125th hour of the mission and the 22nd hour of stay on the Moon, the lunar module was launched from the surface of the Earth's satellite. The crew splashed down on the blue planet about 195 hours after the start of the mission, soon the astronauts were picked up by the aircraft carrier that came to the rescue.

To the 40th anniversary of the flight of the American spacecraft "Apollo-11"

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"Thatisonesmallstepforaman,onegiantleapfor mankind) - these words were said by Neil Armstrong when the first man stepped on the surface of the moon. This landmark event took place 40 years ago, on July 20, 1969.

1. Twice two questions

As the decades passed, many legends and speculations developed around the topic of human visitation to the Moon. The most famous and sensational of them is that American astronauts did not land on the surface of the Moon, and all television reports about the landing and the Apollo program itself were a grandiose hoax. Some wisecrackers have even reworded Armstrong's phrase about "humanity's giant leap" into "humanity's giant swindle." The "irrefutable argument" in favor of the fact that people were not on the moon is already devoted to extensive literature and dozens, if not hundreds of films shot in different countries and in different languages.

Almost simultaneously with this, at the end of the 1980s, in the (then still) USSR, information was made public about the presence in the 1960s-1970s. Soviet program of manned flights to the moon. It became known that in the USSR it was also planned to first fly around the moon by astronauts, and then land on the surface of our natural satellite.

However, the leadership of the USSR, as well as the United States, saw only political meaning in landing on the moon.

After the flight of Apollo 11, it became clear that the Soviet Union was hopelessly behind the United States in the implementation of the lunar program. According to the leaders of the CPSU, the flight of Soviet cosmonauts to the moon under such conditions would not have had the desired effect in the rest of the world. Therefore, the Soviet lunar program was frozen at a stage already close to manned flight, and it was officially announced that the USSR had never had such a program. That the USSR moved in an alternative way and paid main attention not to political prestige, but to scientific research of the moon with the help of automatic devices, in which our cosmonautics, indeed, has achieved great success. This is the most popular explanation for why Soviet cosmonauts never repeated the achievements of their American rivals.

So, in the historiography (if I may say so) of the lunar problem, two differently solved questions now dominate:

1. Did the Americans land on the moon?

2. Why was the Soviet lunar program not completed?

If you look closely, then both questions are interrelated, and the very formulation of the second is, as it were, the answer to the first. Indeed, if the Soviet lunar program really existed and was already close to being realized, why can't it be assumed that the Americans were able to actually bring their Apollo program to life?

Another question that follows from here. If Soviet space specialists had even the slightest doubt about the authenticity of the fact of the American landing on the moon, would the Soviet leadership, based precisely on the political goals of the lunar program, not have brought it to the end only in order to convict the Americans of the universal lie and inflict the most mortal blow to the international prestige of the United States, while simultaneously raising the authority of the USSR to an unprecedented height?

Although these two questions already contain the answer to the very first one, let's deal with everything in order. Let's start with the official version of the history of the Apollo program.

2. How a German genius took the Yankees into space

The successes of American rocket science are associated primarily with the name of the famous German designer Baron Wernher von Braun, the creator of the first combat ballistic missiles V-2 (V-2). At the end of the war, Brown, along with other German experts in the field of advanced military technology, was taken to the United States.

However, the Americans did not trust Brown to conduct serious research for a long time. While working in the Huntsville, Alabama arsenal on short-range rockets, Brown continued to design advanced launch vehicles (LVs) capable of reaching space velocity. But the contract for the creation of such a rocket and satellite was received by the US Navy.

In July 1955, US President Dwight Eisenhower publicly promised that his country would soon launch the first artificial Earth satellite (AES). However, it was easier said than done. If we have the genius of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev quite quickly created fundamentally new missile systems, then the Americans did not have home-grown masters of this level.

Several unsuccessful attempts by the Navy to launch its invariably exploding rocket prompted the Pentagon to treat the former SS Sturmbannfuehrer, who became a US citizen in 1955, more favorably.

In 1956, Wernher von Braun received a contract to develop the Jupiter-S intercontinental ICBM and satellite.

In 1957, the news of the successful launch of the Soviet satellite sounded like a bolt from the blue for the Americans. It became clear that the United States was significantly behind the USSR in terms of penetration into space. After another failure of the Navy with the launch of its launch vehicle, the main work on the creation of promising launch vehicles and satellites was concentrated in the hands of Brown. This area of ​​activity was withdrawn from the Pentagon. For her, in 1958, a special structure was created - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the US federal government.

Brown headed the John Marshall Space Center, which became NASA's Space Flight Center in 1960. Under his leadership, 2 thousand employees worked (then more), concentrated in 30 departments. All of the department heads were originally German, former employees of Brown's V-2 program. On February 1, 1958, the first successful launch of the Jupiter-S launch vehicle and the launch of the first American satellite Explorer-1 into orbit took place. But the crown of Wernher von Braun's life was his Saturn V rocket and the Apollo program.

3. On the way to the moon

The year 1961 was marked by a new triumph of Soviet science and technology. On April 12, Yuri Gagarin made the first flight on the Vostok spacecraft (SC). In an effort to create the appearance of covering the backlog from the USSR, on May 5, 1961, the Americans launched the Redstone-3 launch vehicle from the Mercury spacecraft along a ballistic trajectory. The first officially recognized American astronaut, Alan Bartlett Shepard (who later walked on the Moon), spent only 15 minutes in space and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean just 300 miles from the launch site at Cape Canaveral. The cosmic speed of his spacecraft never reached. The next quarter-hour suborbital flight of Mercury (astronaut Virgil E. Grissom) took place on July 21, 1961.

As if in mockery, on August 6-7, the second full-fledged orbital flight of the Soviet spacecraft took place. Cosmonaut German Titov on Vostok-2 spent 25 hours and 18 minutes in space, making 17 revolutions around the Earth during this time. The first normal orbital flight for the Americans turned out only on February 20, 1962 (astronaut John H. Glenn) thanks to the new, more powerful Atlas launch vehicle. The spacecraft "Mercury" made only 3 revolutions around the Earth, having spent less than five hours in orbit.

In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy proclaimed a kind of "national project" designed to put an end to the US lag behind the USSR in the space field and to overcome the inferiority complex that arose among the Americans.

He promised that the Americans would land on the moon before the Russians, and that this would happen before the end of the 1960s. From now on, any manned space flight programs in the United States (the next was the Gemini project) were subordinated to one goal - preparing for a landing on the moon. This was the start of the Apollo project. True, Kennedy did not live to see its implementation.

Landing on the moon required the solution of two very difficult technical problems. The first is maneuvering, undocking and docking of spacecraft modules in near-Earth and near-lunar orbits. The second is the creation of a sufficiently powerful launch vehicle capable of giving the payload, consisting of a two-module spacecraft, three astronauts and life support systems (LSS), the second space velocity (11.2 km / s).

In the course of the flights of the Gemini spacecraft around the Earth, there has already been a tendency to overcome the backlog of the United States from the USSR in solving complex problems for spacecraft and man in space. Gemini 3 (crewed by V.I. Grissom and John W. Young) on ​​March 23, 1965, made the first maneuver in space using manual control. In June 1965, astronaut Edward H. White left Gemini 4 and spent 21 minutes in outer space (three months earlier, our Alexei Leonov - 10 minutes). In August 1965, the Gemini 5 crew (L. Gordon Cooper and Charles Conrad) set a new world record for orbital flight duration - 191 hours. For comparison: at that time, the Soviet record for the duration of an orbital flight, set in 1963 by the pilot of Vostok-5, Valery Bykovsky, was 119 hours.

And in December 1965, the Gemini 7 crew (Frank Borman and James A. Lovell) completed 206 orbits in 330 and a half hours! During this flight, Gemini-6A (Walter M. Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford) approached at a distance of less than two meters (!), and in this position both spacecraft made several revolutions around the Earth. Finally, in March 1966, the Gemini 8 crew (Neil A. Armstrong and David R. Scott) made the first orbital docking with the unmanned Agena module.

The first spacecraft of the Apollo series were unmanned. On them, the elements of the flight to the moon were worked out in automatic mode. The first test of the new powerful Saturn-5 launch vehicle was carried out in November 1967 in a block with the Apollo-4 spacecraft. The third stage of the launch vehicle gave the module a speed of about 11 km / s and put it into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 18 thousand km, after which the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere. On Apollo 5 in February 1968, various modes of operation of the lunar module were simulated in an unmanned satellite orbit.

"Saturn-5" is still the most powerful launch vehicle in history.

The launch weight of the launch vehicle was 3,000 tons, of which 2,000 tons was the weight of the first stage fuel. The weight of the second stage is 500 tons. Two stages brought the third with a two-module spacecraft into the satellite orbit. The third stage gave the spacecraft, consisting of an orbital compartment with a sustainer engine and a lunar cabin, divided into landing and takeoff stages, the second space velocity. Saturn-5 was capable of launching a payload weighing up to 150 tons (including the weight of the third stage with full tanks) into near-Earth orbit, and 50 tons into a flight path to the Moon. At the cosmodrome, this entire structure rose to a height of 110 m.

The first manned flight under the Apollo program took place in October 1968. Apollo 7 (Walter M. Schirra - the first man to fly into space three times, Donn F. Eisele, R. Walter Cunningham) made 163 revolutions around the Earth lasting 260 hours, which exceeded the calculated one when flying to the Moon and back. On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 (Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, for whom this was the third space flight, and William A. Anders) set off on the first manned flight to the Moon in history. In fact, at first it was planned to work out by the crew all the elements of a flight to the Moon in satellite orbit, but the lunar descent vehicle (lunar cabin) was not yet ready. Therefore, it was decided to first fly around the moon on the orbital module. Apollo 8 made 10 orbits around the moon.

According to some reports, it was this flight that became decisive in the freezing of the Soviet leadership of its own lunar program: now our lagging behind the Americans has become obvious.

The crew of Apollo 9 (James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, Russell L. Schweikart) in March 1969 performed all the maneuvers associated with the undocking and docking of modules, the transition of astronauts from one compartment to another through a sealed joint no spacewalk. And Apollo 10 (Thomas P. Stafford and John W. Young - for both it was the third flight into space, Eugene A. Cernan) in May 1969 did all the same, but already in lunar orbit! The orbital (command) compartment made 31 revolutions around the Moon. The lunar cabin, having undocked, performed two independent revolutions around the Moon, descending to a height of 15 km above the surface of the satellite! In general, all stages of the flight to the moon were completed, except, in fact, landing on it.

4. The first people on the moon

Apollo 11 (commander - Neil Alden Armstrong, lunar module pilot - Edwin Eugene Aldrin, orbital module pilot - Michael Collins; for all three it was the second flight into space) launched from Cape Canaveral on July 16, 1969. After checking the onboard systems, during one and a half turns in near-Earth orbit, the third stage was turned on and the spacecraft entered the flight path to the Moon. This journey took about three days.

The design of the Apollo required one major maneuver during the flight. The orbital module, docked with the lunar cabin with its tail section, where the sustainer engine was located, was undocked, made a 180-degree turn and docked to the lunar cabin with its nose section. After that, the spent third stage was separated from the spacecraft rebuilt in this way. The other six flights to the Moon followed the same pattern.

When approaching the Moon, the astronauts turned on the main engine of the orbital (command) module for braking and transfer to a lunar orbit. Then Armstrong and Aldrin moved to the lunar module, which was soon undocked from the orbital compartment and entered an independent orbit of the artificial satellite of the moon, choosing a landing site. On July 20, 1969, at 15:17 Eastern US time (23-17 Moscow time), the Apollo 11 lunar cabin made a soft landing on the Moon in the southwestern part of the Sea of ​​Tranquility.

Six and a half hours later, after putting on spacesuits and depressurizing the lunar compartment, Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the surface of the moon. It was then that he said his famous phrase.

Live television broadcast from the surface of the moon was carried out to hundreds of countries of the world. It was watched by 600 million people (out of a then world population of 3.5 billion) in six parts of the world, including Antarctica, as well as the socialist countries of Eastern Europe.

The USSR ignored this event.

“The lunar surface at the time of landing was brightly lit and resembled a desert on a hot day. Because the sky is black, one could imagine being on a sand-strewn sports field at night, under the spotlights. Neither stars nor planets, with the exception of the Earth, were visible, ”Armstrong described his impressions. About the same thing he said to the TV camera and shortly after reaching the surface: “Like a high-mountainous desert in the United States. Unique beauty! “Great loneliness!” echoed Aldrin, who joined Armstrong 20 minutes later.

“The ground on the surface is soft and loose,” Armstrong reported of his impressions, “I easily raise dust with the toe of my shoe. I only sink an eighth of an inch into the ground, but I can see my footprints.” “The grayish-brown soil of the Moon,” wrote the November (1969) issue of the magazine “America”, published in the USSR, “turned out to be slippery, it stuck to the soles of the astronauts. When Aldrin inserted the pole into the ground, it seemed to him that the pole entered something damp. Subsequently, these "terrestrial" comparisons began to be used by skeptics to confirm the idea that the astronauts were not on the moon.

Returning to the lunar cabin, the astronauts pumped up oxygen, took off their spacesuits and, after resting, began to prepare for takeoff. The spent landing stage was undocked, and now the lunar module consisted of one takeoff stage. The total time the astronauts spent on the Moon was 21 hours and 37 minutes, of which the astronauts spent just over two hours outside the lunar cabin.

In orbit, the lunar compartment joined the main one, piloted by Michael Collins. He was destined for the most unenviable, but also the safest role in the lunar expedition - circling in orbit, waiting for his colleagues. Moving into the orbital compartment, the astronauts battened down the transfer hatch and undocked what was left of the lunar cabin. Now the spacecraft "Apollo 11" was one main block, which headed for Earth. The return trip was shorter than the trip to the Moon and was only two and a half days - falling to Earth is easier and faster than flying away from it.

The second moon landing took place on November 19, 1969. Apollo 12 crew members Charles Peter Conrad (the third flight into space; he made four of them in total) and Alan Laverne Bean stayed on the surface of the Moon for 31 hours and a half, of which 7.5 hours outside the spacecraft for two exits. In addition to installing scientific instruments, the astronauts dismantled a number of instruments for delivery to Earth from the American automatic spacecraft (ASA) Surveyor-3, which landed on the surface of the Moon in 1967.

The Apollo 13 flight in April 1970 was unsuccessful. In flight, a serious accident occurred, there was a threat of failure of the LSS. Having forcedly canceled the landing on the Moon, the Apollo 13 crew flew around our natural satellite and returned to Earth in the same elliptical orbit. The commander of the ship, James Arthur Lovell, became the first person to fly to the moon twice (although he was never destined to visit its surface).

This seems to be the only flight to the moon that Hollywood has responded to with a feature film. Successful flights did not attract his attention.

The near-disaster with Apollo 13 made it necessary to pay increased attention to the reliability of all spacecraft onboard systems. The next flight under the lunar program took place only in 1971.

On February 5, 1971, American astronaut veteran Alan Bartlett Shepard and newcomer Edgar Dean Mitchell landed on the moon near the Fra Mauro crater. They went to the lunar surface twice (more than four hours each time), and the total time spent by the Apollo 14 module on the Moon was 33 hours and 24 minutes.

On July 30, 1971, the Apollo 15 module landed on the lunar surface with David Randolph Scott (the third flight into space) and James Benson Irwin. For the first time, astronauts used a mechanical vehicle on the Moon - the "lunar car" - a platform with an electric motor with a power of only 0.25 horsepower. The astronauts made three excursions with a total duration of 18 hours and 35 minutes and traveled 27 kilometers on the Moon. The total time spent on the moon was 66 hours 55 minutes. Before starting from the moon, the astronauts left a television camera on its surface, which worked in automatic mode. She transmitted to the screens of terrestrial television the moment of takeoff of the lunar cabin.

The Lunar Vehicle was used by members of the next two expeditions. On April 21, 1972, Apollo 16 commander John Watts Young and lunar module pilot Charles Moss Duke landed at Descartes Crater. For Young, this was the second flight to the moon, but the first landing on it (in total, Young made six flights into space). Almost three days SC spent on the Moon. During this time, three excursions were made with a total duration of 20 hours and 14 minutes.

The last people to have walked on the moon to date, December 11-14, 1972, were Eugene Andrew Cernan (for whom, like Young, this was the second flight to the moon and the first landing on it) and Harrison Hagan Schmitt. The Apollo 17 crew set a number of records: they spent 75 hours on the Moon, of which 22 hours were outside spacecraft, traveled 36 km on the surface of the night star and brought back 110 kg of lunar rock samples.

By this point, the total cost of the Apollo program had exceeded $25 billion ($135 billion in 2005 prices), prompting NASA to curtail its further implementation. Scheduled flights on Apollo 18, -19 and -20 were cancelled. Of the three remaining Saturn-5 launch vehicles, one launched the only American Skylab orbital station into orbit in 1973, and the other two became museum exhibits.

The liquidation of the Apollo program and the cancellation of some other ambitious projects (in particular, a manned flight to Mars) were a disappointment for Wernher von Braun, who became NASA's deputy director of space flight planning in 1970, and may have hastened his death. Brown retired from NASA in 1972 and died five years later.

Having initially stimulated the start of the lunar programs of the USA and the USSR, the Cold War then directed the development of space technologies into the narrow channel of the arms race.

For the United States, the Space Shuttle program of reusable use became a priority, for the USSR - long-term orbital stations. It seemed that the world was heading irresistibly toward "star wars" in near-Earth space. The era of cosmic romance and the conquest of spaces was fading into the past...

5. Where does the doubt come from?

After several years, doubts began to be expressed: did the Americans really land on the moon? Now there is already a fairly large layer of literature and a rich film library proving that the Apollo program was a grandiose hoax. At the same time, there are two points of view among skeptics. According to one, the Apollo program did not carry out any space flights at all. The astronauts remained on Earth all the time, and the “moon shots” were filmed in a special secret laboratory created by NASA specialists somewhere in the desert. More moderate skeptics recognize the possibility of real lunar flybys by the Americans, but they consider the landing moments themselves to be fake and film editing.

Adherents of this sensational hypothesis have developed a detailed argument. The strongest argument, in their opinion, is that in the footage of the landing of astronauts on the moon, the lunar surface does not look like (again, in their understanding) it should look like. So, they believe that stars should be visible in the pictures, since there is no atmosphere on the moon. They also pay attention to the fact that in some pictures, supposedly, the position of the shadows indicates a very close, within a few meters, location of the light source. They also note an excessively close and, as it were, cropped horizon line.

The next group of arguments is related to the "wrong" behavior of material bodies. So, the US flag set by the astronauts waved as if under gusts of wind, while there was a vacuum on the Moon. Pay attention to the strange movement of astronauts in spacesuits. They argue that under conditions of gravity six times less than the earth's astronauts had to move huge (almost a dozen meters) jumps. And they assure that the strange gait of the astronauts just imitated, under the conditions of terrestrial gravity, “hopping” movement on the Moon with the help of ... spring mechanisms in spacesuits.

They suggest that almost all the astronauts who flew, according to the official version, to the Moon subsequently refused to talk about their flights, give interviews, or write memoirs. Many went crazy, died mysterious deaths, and so on. For skeptics, this is proof that the astronauts experienced terrible stress associated with the need to hide some terrible secret.

It is curious that for ufologists, the strange behavior of many astronauts of the “lunar detachment” serves to prove something completely different, namely, that on the Moon they allegedly made contact with an extraterrestrial civilization!

Finally, the last group of arguments is based on the thesis that the technologies of the late 1960s and early 1970s did not allow three people to make a manned flight to the Moon and return to Earth. They point to the insufficient power of the then launch vehicles, and most importantly (an irresistible argument in our time!) - to the imperfection of computers! And here the skeptics contradict themselves. Thus, they are forced to admit that in those days there were no opportunities for computer-graphic simulation of the course of the lunar expedition!

Supporters of the authenticity of the landings of man on the moon have an equally detailed system of counterarguments. In addition to pointing out the internal contradictions of the skeptical theory, as well as the fact that its arguments can be used to prove several mutually exclusive points of view at once, which is logically considered an automatic refutation of all of them, they provide a physical explanation for the noted "oddities".

The first is the lunar sky, where no stars are visible. Try looking up at a clear sky at night from the bright light of a street lamp. Can you see even one star? But they are there: as soon as you move into the shadow of the lantern, the stars will show through. Looking at the lunar world in the brightest (in a vacuum!) light of the Sun through powerful light filters, both the astronauts and the "eye" of the television camera, of course, could only capture the brightest objects - the lunar surface, the lunar cabin and people in spacesuits.

The moon is almost four times smaller than the Earth, so the curvature of the surface there is greater, and the horizon line is closer than we are used to. The effect of proximity is enhanced by the absence of air - objects on the horizon of the Moon are visible as clearly as those located near the observer.

Fluctuations of the foil flag occurred, of course, not under the influence of the wind, but according to the principle of a pendulum - the shaft was stuck with force into the lunar soil. In the future, he received more impulses for oscillations from the steps of the astronauts. The seismograph they installed immediately caught the ground shaking caused by the movement of people. These oscillations, like any others, had a wave nature and were accordingly transmitted to the flag.

When we see astronauts in spacesuits on TV screens, we are always amazed at their clumsiness in such a bulky design. And on the Moon, despite a sixfold lower gravity, they would not be able to fly with all their desire, which for some reason was expected of them. They tried to move by jumping, but then they found that the earth step (in spacesuits) is also acceptable on the Moon. On the screens, Armstrong easily lifted a heavy (on Earth) toolbox and said with childish delight: “This is where you can throw any thing far!” However, skeptics claim that the scene was feigned, and that the box from which the astronauts then took out scientific equipment was ... empty at that moment.

The hoax would have to be too grandiose and long-term, and more than one thousand scientists would have to devote more than one thousand scientists to the secret!

It is unlikely that even a totalitarian state is capable of exercising such strict control over such a mass of people and preventing information leakage. The crew members of Apollo 11 installed a laser reflector on the Moon, which was then used for laser ranging from the Earth and determining the exact distance to the Moon. Was the location session also fabricated? Or were the reflector and other devices that transmitted signals to Earth until the 1980s all installed by machines?

The astronauts of all six expeditions that landed (according to the official version) on the Moon brought to Earth a total of 380 kg of samples of lunar rocks and lunar dust (for comparison: Soviet and American AKA - only 330 grams, which proves a much higher efficiency of manned flights on compared with AKA for studies of celestial bodies). Were they all collected on Earth, and then passed off as lunar ones? Even those whose age is 4.6 billion years, what has no recognized analogues on Earth? However, skeptics say (and they are partly right) that there are no reliable methods for accurately determining the age of such ancient rocks. And all these centners of lunar soil were allegedly brought to Earth by machine guns. Then why is their weight three orders of magnitude higher than that brought by all other AKAs combined? And if they are terrestrial, then why is their composition identical to the lunar soil delivered by automata to Earth or analyzed by our Lunokhods on the Moon itself?

It is also noteworthy that skeptics concentrate their efforts mainly on refuting the authenticity of the first landing of a man on the moon. Whereas, in order to confirm their theory, they need to separately refute the authenticity of each of the six officially occurring landings. What they don't do

As for the imperfection of the then technologies, the “deadly” of this argument reflects the inferiority of the consciousness of modern civilized humanity, which has put itself in a fatal dependence on computers.

Just at the turn of the 1960-1970s. civilization began to drastically change the paradigm of its development. The attitude to conquer space was replaced by the attitude to the production and use of information, moreover, for utilitarian, consumer purposes. This caused a surge in the development of computer technology, but at the same time put an end to the external expansion of mankind. Along the way, in the same years, the general attitude towards scientific progress began to change - from enthusiastic it first became restrained, and then negative began to prevail. This change in public sentiment was well reflected (and perhaps, to a certain extent, shaped) by Hollywood cinema, one of the textbook images of which was a scientist whose experiments and discoveries become a terrible threat to people's safety.

Most modern people, brought up in the categories of linear progress, find it difficult to imagine that even 40-50 years ago our civilization was in some respects higher (I would even say higher) than it is now, more idealistic. Including in the field of technologies related to penetration into extraterrestrial space. This was facilitated by the competition of alternative socio-economic systems. The virus of self-satisfied all-consuming consumerism has not yet completely killed the romance and heroism of struggle and expansion.

Therefore, all references to the impossibility for the Americans to build a lunar spacecraft in the 1960s are simply untenable. In those years, the United States really overtook the USSR in many areas of space research. So, another triumph of the overseas power was the AKA Voyager program. In 1977, two vehicles of this series were launched to the distant planets of the solar system. The first flew near Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, the second explored all four giant planets. Thousands of stunning images were transmitted to Earth, which bypassed the pages of all popular science publications. The result was sensational scientific discoveries, in particular, dozens of new satellites of the outer planets, the rings of Jupiter and Neptune, and others. Is this also a hoax?! By the way, communication with both ASCs, which are now at a distance of 90 astronomical units (14.85 billion km) from the Earth and are already exploring interstellar space, is still maintained.

So there is no reason to deny the ability of the civilization of the second half of the last century, including the United States, to make a series of manned flights to the moon. Moreover, a similar program was carried out in the USSR.

Its presence and the degree of its development serve as the most important proof of the authenticity of the event that took place 40 years ago.

6. Why did our astronauts never go to the moon?

One of the answers to the question posed is that the Soviet leadership, unlike the American one, did not concentrate its main efforts on this direction. The development of cosmonautics in the USSR after the successful launches of satellites and the first manned flights became "multi-vector". The functions of satellite systems were expanded, spacecraft for near-Earth flights were improved, ASCs were launched to Venus and Mars. It seemed that the first successes in themselves created a fairly solid and long-term backlog of Soviet leadership in this area.

The second reason is that our specialists failed to solve many technical problems that arose during the implementation of the lunar program. Thus, Soviet designers were unable to create a sufficiently powerful launch vehicle, an analogue of Saturn-5. The prototype of such a missile is the RN N-1 (on the picture)- suffered a series of disasters. After that, work on it, in connection with the already completed flights of Americans to the moon, was curtailed.

The third reason was that, paradoxically, it was in the USSR, unlike the United States, that there was real competition between the options for lunar programs between the joint design bureaus (OKB). The political leadership of the USSR was faced with the need to choose a priority project, and due to its scientific and technical incompetence, it could not always make a good choice. Parallel support of two or more programs led to the dispersion of human and financial resources.

In other words, in the USSR, unlike the USA, the lunar program was not unified.

It consisted of various, often multifunctional projects that never merged into one. The programs for flying around the moon, landing on the moon, and creating a heavy launch vehicle were implemented largely separately.

Finally, the leadership of the USSR considered the landing of a man on the moon exclusively in a political context. For some reason, the lag behind the United States in the implementation of a manned flight to the moon was for some reason assessed by him as a worse admission of defeat than an “excuse” that the USSR did not have a lunar program at all. Few people believed in the latter even then, and the absence of a hint of attempts to at least repeat the achievement of the Americans was perceived both in our society and throughout the world as a sign of a hopeless lag behind the United States in the field of space technology.

The project LK-1 ("Lunar ship-1"), which provided for a flight around the moon with one astronaut on board the spacecraft, was signed by the head of OKB-52 Vladimir Nikolaevich Chelomey on August 3, 1964. It was guided by the UR500K launch vehicle developed in the same design bureau (a prototype of the subsequent Proton launch vehicle, successfully tested for the first time on July 16, 1965). But in December 1965, the Politburo decided to concentrate all the practical work on the lunar program in Sergei Korolev's OKB-1. There were presented two projects.

The L-1 project provided for a crew of two to fly around the moon. Another (L-3), signed by Korolev back in December 1964, is a flight to the Moon of a crew of two people, with one astronaut landing on the surface of the Moon. Initially, the term for its implementation was appointed by Korolev for 1967-1968.

In 1966, the Chief Designer dies unexpectedly during an unsuccessful operation. Vasily Pavlovich Mishin becomes the head of OKB-1. The history of the leadership and scientific and technical support of Soviet cosmonautics, the role of individuals in this is a special topic, its analysis would take us too far.

The first successful launch of the Proton-L-1 complex was carried out from Baikonur on March 10, 1967. A model of the module was launched into the orbit of the satellite, which received the official designation "Cosmos-146". By this time, the Americans had already conducted the first Apollo test in automatic mode for almost a year.

On March 2, 1968, the prototype L-1 under the official name "Zond-4" flew around the Moon, but the descent in the earth's atmosphere was unsuccessful. The subsequent two launch attempts were unsuccessful due to failures in the operation of the launch vehicle engines. Only on September 15, 1968, L-1 was launched on the flight path to the Moon under the name "Zond-5". However, the descent took place in an unplanned area. The atmospheric descent systems also failed Zond-6 upon its return in November 1968. Recall that already in October 1968, the Americans switched from automatic to manned flights under the Apollo program. And in December of the same year, the first triumphant flyby of the moon was made by Apollo 8.

In January 1969, the RN started to feel down again at the start. Only in August 1969 did the successful unmanned flight of Zonda-7 take place with a return to Earth in a given area. By this time, the Americans had already visited the moon ...

In October 1970, the Zonda-8 flight took place. Almost all technical problems have been solved. The next two devices of this series were already prepared for manned flights, but ... the program was ordered to be curtailed.

The L-3 project, intended for landing on the moon, had significant differences from the American one. The flight principle was the same. However, the more powerful LK engine did not require the cabin to be divided into landing and takeoff stages. Another difference was that the astronaut's transition between LOK and LK had to be carried out through open space. This was due to the fact that by that time, domestic cosmonautics had not yet solved the technical problems associated with the hermetic docking of two spacecraft. The first successful experience of this kind was made by ours only in 1971 when launching the Soyuz-11 spacecraft to the Salyut-1 orbital station. And already in March 1969, the Americans on Apollo 9 performed the first hermetic docking and undocking in history and the transition from one space module to another without a spacewalk. The need to create a lock chamber in the Soviet LOK and the presence of a pilot in a spacesuit there sharply limited the useful volume and payload of the entire lunar complex. Therefore, only two people were planned for the expedition, and not three, as with the Americans.

Tests of individual elements of the flight to the moon were initially carried out within the framework of the Soyuz and Cosmos projects. On September 30, 1967, the first docking of the Kosmos-186 and -187 unmanned vehicles in orbit was performed. In January 1969, Vladimir Shatalov on the Soyuz-4, Boris Volynov, Alexei Eliseev and Yevgeny Khrunov on the Soyuz-5 made the first docking of manned vehicles and the transition from one to another through outer space. The development of undocking, braking, acceleration and docking of the LK in near-Earth orbit continued even after the decision to cancel the manned flight was made in the early 1970s.

The main obstacle to the lunar project was the difficulty in creating the H-1 launch vehicle.

Her preliminary design was signed by Korolev back in 1962, and the Chief Designer made a note on the sketch: “We dreamed about this back in 1956-57.” With the creation of a heavy launch vehicle, hopes were associated not only with a flight to the Moon, but also with long-distance interplanetary flights.

The design of the H-1 launch vehicle was a five-stage (!) initial weight of 2750 tons. According to the project, the first three stages were supposed to bring a load with a total weight of 96 tons to the flight path to the Moon, which included, in addition to the lunar ship, two stages for maneuvering near the Moon, descending to its surface, lifting from it and flying away to Earth. The weight of the lunar ship itself, which consisted of the orbital compartment and the lunar cabin, did not exceed 16 tons.

The N-1 rocket, the first test of which took place in January 1969 (after the first flyby of the Moon by the Americans), was plagued from beginning to end by fatal failures caused by engine failure. Not a single launch of the H-1 was successful. After the catastrophe during the fourth launch in November 1972, further work on the H-1 was stopped, although the causes of the accidents were identified and completely subject to elimination.

Back in 1966, Chelomey proposed an alternative project for a lunar expedition based on the creation of the UR700 launch vehicle (a further development of the UR500, that is, the Proton, which was never carried out). The flight pattern for this program resembled the original American project (which they later abandoned). It provided for a single-module lunar ship, without division into orbital and takeoff and landing compartments, with two astronauts on board. However, OKB-52 gave the green light only to the theoretical development of this project.

If it were not for the hasty political decision of the Soviet leadership, it can be argued that, despite all the technical problems, our cosmonauts could quite realistically have carried out the first flight around the moon in 1970-1971, and the first landing on the moon in 1973-1974. .

But at this time, after the successful flights of the Americans, the leaders of the CPSU cooled off towards the lunar program. This indicates a drastic change in their mentality. Is it possible to imagine that if the United States managed to get ahead of us in the development of the first satellite or the launch of the first cosmonaut, the Soviet space program would have been curtailed at an early stage? Of course not! In the late 50s - early 60s. this would be impossible!

But in the 70s, the leaders of the CPSU had other priorities. The need to pay special attention to the military component served only as a pretext for curtailing the lunar program (especially since the beginning of the 70s is characterized by a détente of international tension). From now on, the prestige of Soviet cosmonautics was based only on constantly updated records of flight duration. In 1974, as a result of corporate intrigues, Mishin was fired from the post of head of OKB-1. He was replaced by Valentin Glushko, who not only stopped all work on the H-1, even theoretical ones, but also ordered the destruction of copies of this launch vehicle ready for testing.

The question posed in the title of this section is quite appropriate to supplement with another one: why weren't our astronauts on Mars? More precisely, near Mars.

The fact is that the H-1 project was calculated as a multi-purpose one. This launch vehicle (which was planned only as the first in a family of heavy carriers) was developed in the future not only for a lunar ship, but also for a “heavy interplanetary ship” (TMK). This project provided for the launch of spacecraft into a heliocentric orbit, which made it possible to fly several thousand kilometers from Mars and return to Earth.

The development of the LSS of such a ship was carried out on Earth. Volunteer testers Manovtsev, Ulybyshev and Bozhko in 1967-1968. spent a whole year in a sealed chamber with an autonomous LSS. Similar experiments of much shorter duration began in the United States only in 1970. Subsequently, the many months spent by a number of Soviet crews on the Salyuts formed suspicions that the leadership of the USSR was preparing to carry out the "Martian program". Alas, it was only speculation. Such a program did not exist in reality. Work on the TMK was terminated at the same time as work on the H-1.

In principle, a manned flight around Mars with a return to Earth would have been quite realistic for the USSR already in the early to mid-1980s.

Of course, provided that all elements of the lunar program suitable for use in flight to Mars continued to develop and work on them did not stop in the 70s. The morale of such a flight would be comparable to the landing of the Americans on the moon, if not more. Alas, the later Soviet leadership once again missed a historic chance for a great country...

7. Is there a future for lunar expeditions?

This requires, first of all, a radical change in the mentality of modern civilization. Despite the occasional promises by the leaders of the United States or the leaders of our cosmonautics to organize a manned flight to Mars, it is clear that they are no longer perceived by society with such enthusiasm as 40-50 years ago the promises of the first flights into space and to the moon. George W. Bush announced the goal of returning Americans to the moon by 2020 and the subsequent flight to Mars. By that time, several presidents will already be replaced, and Bush, in case of non-fulfillment of his "destiny", as they say, bribes will be smooth.

In our time, space research and the conquest of world spaces have decisively shifted from priorities to the periphery of public interest in literally all countries of the world.

This is clearly seen in the proportion of messages of this kind in the general media stream. If in Soviet times almost every citizen of the USSR knew whether our cosmonauts were now in orbit and who they were, now only a small minority knows for sure whether cosmonauts are currently on board the International Space Station. However, most probably do not even know what it is.

Meanwhile, the effectiveness of manned flights for scientific research was proved by the same Apollo expeditions. During the three days of their stay on the Moon, two astronauts managed to do the volume of scientific work, which exceeded by orders of magnitude those that were carried out by both of our lunar rovers in 15 months! The Apollo program was essential to scientific and technological progress. Many of her achievements were then used in a variety of projects. Testing the latest equipment in the conditions of deep space flights is a completely unique opportunity, fraught with a sharp leap forward in all scientific and technical fields. The multibillion-dollar costs of the Apollo program eventually paid off and made a profit thanks to the introduction of new technologies.

However, despite the projects of long-term manned stations on the Moon that appear from time to time, the governments of the leading powers of the world, either individually or together, are in no hurry to fork out for such programs. The point here is not only in stinginess, but also in the lack of ambition. Extraterrestrial spaces have ceased to excite and attract people. Mankind clearly needs additional incentives to activate the cosmic vector of its development.

Special for the Centenary

The moon is a good place. Definitely deserves a short visit.
Neil Armstrong

Almost half a century has passed since the flights of the Apollo spacecraft, but the debate about whether the Americans were on the moon does not subside, but becomes more and more fierce. The piquancy of the situation is that the supporters of the "lunar conspiracy" theory are trying to challenge not real historical events, but their own, vague and error-ridden idea of ​​them.

Lunar epic

Facts first. On May 25, 1961, six weeks after Yuri Gagarin's triumphant flight, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech to the Senate and House of Representatives in which he promised that before the end of the decade, an American would land on the moon. Having suffered a defeat at the first stage of the space "race", the United States set out not only to catch up, but also to overtake the Soviet Union.

The main reason for the backlog at that time was that the Americans underestimated the importance of heavy ballistic missiles. Like their Soviet colleagues, American specialists studied the experience of German engineers who built A-4 (V-2) missiles during the war, but did not give these projects serious development, believing that long-range bombers would be enough in a global war. Of course, the Wernher von Braun team, taken out of Germany, continued to create ballistic missiles in the interests of the army, but they were unsuitable for space flights. When the Redstone rocket, the successor to the German A-4s, was modified to launch the first American spacecraft, the Mercury, it could only lift it to suborbital altitude.

Nevertheless, resources were found in the United States, so American designers quickly created the necessary “line” of carriers: from Titan-2, which launched the two-seat Gemini maneuvering ship, to Saturn-5, capable of sending the three-seat Apollo spacecraft » to the moon.

redstone

Saturn-1B

Of course, before sending expeditions, it was necessary to carry out colossal work. Spacecraft of the Lunar Orbiter series carried out detailed mapping of the nearest celestial body - with their help, it was possible to identify and study suitable landing sites. The Surveyor series landers made soft landings and transmitted beautiful images of the surrounding area.

The Lunar Orbiter spacecraft carefully mapped the moon, determining the places of future landings of astronauts

The Surveyor spacecraft studied the Moon directly on its surface; parts of the Surveyor-3 apparatus were taken and delivered to Earth by the crew of Apollo 12

In parallel, the Gemini program developed. After unmanned launches, on March 23, 1965, the Gemini 3 spacecraft was launched, which maneuvered, changing the speed and inclination of the orbit, which at that time was an unprecedented achievement. Soon the Gemini 4 flew, on which Edward White made the first spacewalk for Americans. The ship worked in orbit for four days, testing orientation systems for the Apollo program. On Gemini 5, which launched on August 21, 1965, electrochemical generators and a radar designed for docking were tested. In addition, the crew set a record for the duration of their stay in space - almost eight days (the Soviet cosmonauts managed to break it only in June 1970). By the way, during the flight of "Gemini-5" the Americans for the first time encountered the negative consequences of weightlessness - the weakening of the musculoskeletal system. Therefore, measures were developed to prevent such effects: a special diet, drug therapy and a series of physical exercises.

In December 1965, the Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 ships approached each other, simulating a docking. Moreover, the crew of the second ship spent more than thirteen days in orbit (that is, the total time of the lunar expedition), proving that the measures taken to maintain physical fitness are quite effective during such a long flight. On the Gemini-8, Gemini-9 and Gemini-10 ships, they practiced the docking procedure (by the way, Neil Armstrong was the commander of the Gemini-8). On Gemini 11 in September 1966, they tested the possibility of an emergency launch from the Moon, as well as a flight through the Earth's radiation belts (the ship rose to a record height of 1369 km). On Gemini 12, the astronauts tried out a series of manipulations in outer space.

During the flight of the Gemini 12, astronaut Buzz Aldrin proved the possibility of complex manipulations in outer space.

At the same time, the designers were preparing for testing the "intermediate" two-stage Saturn-1 rocket. During her first launch on October 27, 1961, she surpassed in thrust the Vostok rocket, on which Soviet cosmonauts flew. It was assumed that the same rocket would launch the first Apollo 1 spacecraft into space, but on January 27, 1967, a fire broke out at the launch complex, in which the crew of the ship died, and many plans had to be revised.

In November 1967, tests began on the huge three-stage Saturn-5 rocket. During the first flight, she lifted the command and service module of Apollo 4 into orbit with a mock-up of the lunar module. In January 1968, the Apollo 5 lunar module was tested in orbit, and the unmanned Apollo 6 went there in April. The last launch due to a failure of the second stage almost ended in disaster, but the rocket pulled the ship out, demonstrating good "survivability".

On October 11, 1968, the Saturn-1B rocket launched the command and service module of the Apollo 7 spacecraft with the crew into orbit. For ten days, the astronauts tested the ship, carrying out complex maneuvers. Theoretically, "Apollo" was ready for the expedition, but the lunar module was still "raw". And then a mission was invented that was not originally planned at all - a flight around the moon.

The flight of the Apollo 8 spacecraft was not planned by NASA: it was an improvisation, but it was carried out brilliantly, securing another historic priority for American space exploration.

On December 21, 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft, without a lunar module, but with a crew of three astronauts, set off for a nearby celestial body. The flight went relatively smoothly, but before the historic landing on the moon, two more launches were needed: the Apollo 9 crew worked out the procedure for docking and undocking the spacecraft modules in near-Earth orbit, then the Apollo 10 crew did the same, but already close to the Moon . On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin set foot on the moon, proclaiming US leadership in space exploration.

The crew of the Apollo 10 spacecraft held a "dress rehearsal", completing all the operations necessary for landing on the moon, but without landing itself

The lunar module of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, named "Eagle" ("Eagle") goes to land

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's moon landing was broadcast via the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in Australia; the original records of the historical event were also preserved and recently discovered there

Then new successful missions followed: Apollo 12, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, Apollo 17. As a result, twelve astronauts visited the Moon, conducted reconnaissance of the area, installed scientific equipment, collected soil samples, and tested rovers. Only the crew of Apollo 13 was unlucky: on the way to the Moon, a tank of liquid oxygen exploded, and NASA specialists had to work hard to return the astronauts to Earth.

Theory of falsification

Devices for creating an artificial sodium comet were installed on the Luna-1 spacecraft

It would seem that the reality of expeditions to the moon should not be in doubt. NASA regularly published press releases and bulletins, specialists and astronauts gave numerous interviews, many countries and the world scientific community participated in the technical support, tens of thousands of people watched huge rockets take off, and millions watched live TV broadcasts from space. Lunar soil was brought to Earth, which many selenologists were able to study. International scientific conferences were held to understand the data that came from the instruments left on the moon.

But even in that eventful time, there were people who questioned the facts of landing astronauts on the moon. The skepticism towards space achievements appeared as early as 1959, and the probable reason for this was the policy of secrecy pursued by the Soviet Union: for decades it even concealed the location of its cosmodrome!

Therefore, when Soviet scientists announced that they had launched the Luna-1 research apparatus, some Western experts spoke in the spirit that the communists were simply fooling the world community. Experts foresaw the questions and placed a device for evaporating sodium on Luna-1, with the help of which an artificial comet was created, with a brightness equal to the sixth magnitude.

Conspiracy theorists even dispute the reality of Yuri Gagarin's flight

Claims also arose later: for example, some Western journalists questioned the reality of Yuri Gagarin's flight, because the Soviet Union refused to provide any documentary evidence. There was no camera on board the Vostok ship, the appearance of the ship itself and the launch vehicle remained classified.

But the US authorities have never expressed doubts about the reliability of what happened: even during the flight of the first satellites, the National Security Agency (NSA) deployed two observation stations in Alaska and Hawaii and installed radio equipment there capable of intercepting telemetry that came from Soviet devices. During Gagarin's flight, the stations were able to receive a television signal with the image of the astronaut transmitted by the onboard camera. Within an hour, printouts of individual frames from this broadcast were in the hands of government officials, and President John F. Kennedy congratulated the Soviet people on their outstanding achievement.

Soviet military specialists working at the Scientific and Measuring Station No. 10 (NIP-10), located in the village of Shkolnoye near Simferopol, intercepted data from the Apollo spacecraft during the entire flight to the moon and back

The Soviet intelligence did the same. At the NIP-10 station, located in the village of Shkolnoye (Simferopol, Crimea), a set of equipment was assembled that allows intercepting all information from the Apollos, including live TV broadcasts from the Moon. The head of the interception project, Aleksey Mikhailovich Gorin, gave an exclusive interview to the author of this article, in which, in particular, he said: “For pointing and controlling a very narrow beam, a standard drive system in azimuth and elevation was used. Based on information about the place (Cape Canaveral) and the launch time, the flight path of the spacecraft was calculated in all areas.

It should be noted that during about three days of flight, only occasionally did the beam pointing deviate from the calculated trajectory, which was easily corrected manually. We started with Apollo 10, which made a test flight around the moon without landing. This was followed by flights with the landing of the Apollo from the 11th to the 15th ... They took quite clear images of the spacecraft on the Moon, the exit of both astronauts from it and travel on the surface of the Moon. Video from the Moon, speech and telemetry were recorded on appropriate tape recorders and transferred to Moscow for processing and translation.

In addition to data interception, Soviet intelligence also collected any information on the Saturn-Apollo program, as it could be used for the USSR's own lunar plans. For example, scouts monitored missile launches from the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, when preparations began for the joint flight of the Soyuz-19 and Apollo CSM-111 spacecraft (ASTP mission), which took place in July 1975, Soviet specialists were admitted to official information on the ship and rocket. And, as you know, no claims were made against the American side.

The claims came from the Americans themselves. In 1970, that is, even before the completion of the lunar program, a pamphlet by a certain James Cryney "Has a man landed on the moon?" (Did man land on the Moon?). The public ignored the pamphlet, although it was perhaps the first to formulate the main thesis of the "conspiracy theory": an expedition to the nearest celestial body is technically impossible.

Technical writer Bill Kaysing can rightfully be called the founder of the "lunar conspiracy" theory.

The topic began to gain popularity a little later, after the release of Bill Kaysing's self-published book We Never Went to the Moon (1976), which outlined the now "traditional" arguments in favor of conspiracy theory. For example, the author seriously claimed that all the deaths of the participants in the Saturn-Apollo program were associated with the elimination of unwanted witnesses. It must be said that Kaysing is the only one of the authors of books on this topic who was directly related to the space program: from 1956 to 1963 he worked as a technical writer for the Rocketdyne company, which was just designing the super-powerful F-1 engine for the rocket " Saturn-5".

However, after being fired "of his own free will," Kaysing became a beggar, grabbed any job, and probably did not have warm feelings for his former employers. In a book that was reprinted in 1981 and 2002, he claimed that the Saturn V rocket was a "technical fake" and could never send astronauts on an interplanetary flight, so in reality the Apollos flew around the Earth, and television broadcasts were using unmanned aerial vehicles.

Ralph Rene made a name for himself by accusing the US government of rigging the moon landings and orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The creation of Bill Kaysing was also initially ignored. The fame was brought to him by the American conspiracy theorist Ralph Rene, who pretended to be a scientist, physicist, inventor, engineer and science journalist, but in reality did not graduate from any higher educational institution. Like his predecessors, Rene published the book How NASA Showed America the Moon (NASA Mooned America!, 1992) at his own expense, but at the same time he could already refer to other people's "studies", that is, he looked not like a lone psycho, but like a skeptic in searching for truth.

Probably, the book, the lion's share of which is devoted to the analysis of certain photographs taken by astronauts, would also have gone unnoticed if the era of TV shows had not come, when it became fashionable to invite all kinds of freaks and outcasts to the studio. Ralph Rene managed to make the most of the sudden interest of the public, since he had a well-spoken tongue and did not hesitate to make absurd accusations (for example, he claimed that NASA deliberately damaged his computer and destroyed important files). His book was repeatedly reprinted, and each time increasing in volume.

Among the documentaries devoted to the theory of the “lunar conspiracy”, outright hoaxes come across: for example, the pseudo-documentary French film “The Dark Side of the Moon” (Opération lune, 2002)

The theme itself was also asking for a film adaptation, and soon there were films with a claim to documentary: “Was it just a paper moon?” (Was It Only a Paper Moon?, 1997), What Happened on the Moon? (What Happened on the Moon?, 2000), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, 2001, Astronauts Gone Wild: Investigation Into the Authenticity of the Moon Landings, 2004) and the like. By the way, the author of the last two films, film director Bart Sibrel, twice molested Buzz Aldrin with aggressive demands to confess to deception and in the end received a blow in the face from an elderly astronaut. A video of this incident can be found on YouTube. The police, by the way, refused to start a case against Aldrin. Apparently, she thought that the video was faked.

In the 1970s, NASA tried to cooperate with the authors of the "lunar conspiracy" theory and even issued a press release debriefing Bill Kaysing's claims. However, it soon became clear that they did not want a dialogue, but they were happy to use any mention of their fabrications for self-promotion: for example, Kaysing sued astronaut Jim Lovell in 1996 for calling him a “fool” in an interview.

However, what else to call people who believed in the authenticity of the film "The Dark Side of the Moon" (Opération lune, 2002), where the famous director Stanley Kubrick was directly accused of filming all the astronaut landings on the moon in the Hollywood pavilion? Even in the film itself, there are indications that it is fiction in the mockumentary genre, but this did not stop conspiracy theorists from accepting the version with a bang and quoting it even after the creators of the hoax openly admitted to hooliganism. By the way, another “evidence” of the same degree of reliability recently appeared: this time, an interview surfaced with a person similar to Stanley Kubrick, where he allegedly took responsibility for falsifying the materials of lunar missions. The new fake was exposed quickly - it was made too clumsily.

Hiding operation

In 2007, science journalist and popularizer Richard Hoagland co-authored the book Dark Mission with Michael Bara. The Secret History of NASA (Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA), which immediately became a bestseller. In this hefty volume, Hoagland summarized his research on the “cover-up operation” - it is supposedly carried out by US government agencies, hiding from the world community the fact of contact with a more developed civilization that mastered the solar system long before mankind.

Within the framework of the new theory, the “lunar conspiracy” is considered as a product of the activities of NASA itself, which deliberately provokes an illiterate discussion of the falsification of the moon landings so that qualified researchers disdain to deal with this topic for fear of being branded as “outcasts”. Under his theory, Hoagland deftly adjusted all modern conspiracy theories, from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to "flying saucers" and the Martian "sphinx". For his vigorous activity to expose the "cover-up operation", the journalist was even awarded the Ig Nobel Prize, which he received in October 1997.

Believers and non-believers

Supporters of the "lunar conspiracy" theory, or, more simply, "anti-Apollo" are very fond of accusing their opponents of illiteracy, ignorance, or even blind faith. A strange move, given that it is the “anti-Apollo” people who believe in a theory that is not supported by any significant evidence. There is a golden rule in science and jurisprudence: an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. The attempt to accuse the space agencies and the world's scientific community of falsifying materials that are of great importance to our understanding of the universe must be accompanied by something more significant than a couple of self-published books produced by a resentful writer and narcissistic pseudoscientist.

All the many hours of footage of the Apollo lunar expeditions have long been digitized and are available for study.

If we imagine for a moment that in the United States there was a secret parallel space program using unmanned vehicles, then we need to explain where all the participants in this program have gone: the designers of the “parallel” technology, its testers and operators, as well as the filmmakers who prepared kilometers of films of lunar missions. We are talking about thousands (or even tens of thousands) of people who needed to be attracted to the “lunar conspiracy”. Where are they and where are their confessions? Suppose they all, including foreigners, swore to remain silent. But there should be piles of documents, contracts, orders with contractors, relevant structures and landfills. However, apart from nit-picking some NASA public materials, which are indeed often retouched or presented in a deliberately simplified interpretation, there is nothing. Nothing at all.

However, the “anti-Apollonists” never think about such “little things” and insistently (often in an aggressive form) demand more and more evidence from the opposite side. The paradox is that if, by asking "tricky" questions, they themselves tried to find answers to them, then this would not be a big deal. Let's take a look at some of the more common claims.

During the preparation and implementation of the joint flight of the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft, Soviet specialists were admitted to the official information of the American space program

For example, "anti-Apollo" people ask: why was the Saturn-Apollo program interrupted, and its technologies were lost and cannot be used today? The answer is obvious to anyone who has even a general idea of ​​what was going on in the early 1970s. It was then that one of the most powerful political and economic crises in US history occurred: the dollar lost its gold content and was devalued twice; the protracted Vietnam War was draining resources; youth embraced the anti-war movement; Richard Nixon is on the verge of impeachment in connection with the Watergate scandal.

At the same time, the total costs of the Saturn-Apollo program amounted to $ 24 billion (in terms of current prices, we can talk about 100 billion), and each new launch cost 300 million (1.3 billion in modern prices) - it is clear that further funding has become exorbitant for the waning American budget. The Soviet Union experienced something similar in the late 1980s, which led to the inglorious closure of the Energiya-Buran program, the technology of which was also largely lost.

In 2013, an expedition led by Jeff Bezos, founder of the Internet company Amazon, lifted fragments of one of the F-1 engines of the Saturn V rocket that delivered Apollo 11 into orbit from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Nevertheless, despite the problems, the Americans tried to squeeze a little more out of the lunar program: the Saturn-5 rocket launched the Skylab heavy orbital station (three expeditions visited it in 1973-1974), a joint Soviet-American flight took place " Soyuz-Apollo (ASTP). In addition, the Space Shuttle program, which replaced the Apollos, used the Saturn launch facilities, and some technological solutions obtained during their operation are used today in the design of the promising American SLS carrier.

Work crate containing moonstones in the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility

Another popular question: where did the lunar soil brought by the astronauts go? Why is it not being studied? Answer: it has not gone away, but is stored where it was planned - in the two-story building of the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, which was built in Houston (Texas). Applications for soil studies should also be submitted there, but only organizations with the necessary equipment can receive them. Each year, a special commission reviews applications and grants between forty and fifty of them; on average, up to 400 samples are sent out. In addition, 98 samples with a total weight of 12.46 kg are exhibited in museums around the world, and dozens of scientific publications have been published on each of them.

Pictures of the landing sites of the Apollo 11, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 spacecraft taken by the main optical camera LRO: the lunar modules, scientific equipment and the "paths" left by the astronauts are clearly visible

Another question in the same vein: why is there no independent evidence of visiting the moon? Answer: they are. If we discard the Soviet evidence, which is still far from complete, and the excellent satellite photographs of the landing sites on the moon, which were made by the American LRO apparatus and which the "anti-Apollonists" also consider a "fake", then the materials presented by the Indians (the Chandrayaan-1 apparatus) are quite enough for analysis. ), the Japanese (Kaguya) and the Chinese (Chang'e-2): all three agencies officially confirmed that they had found footprints left by the Apollo spacecraft.

"Moon Deception" in Russia

By the end of the 1990s, the “lunar conspiracy” theory also came to Russia, where it gained ardent supporters. Its wide popularity, obviously, is facilitated by the sad fact that very few historical books on the American space program are published in Russian, so an inexperienced reader may get the impression that there is nothing to study there.

The most ardent and talkative adherent of the theory was Yuri Mukhin, a former engineer-inventor and publicist with radical pro-Stalinist convictions, who was noticed in historical revisionism. He, in particular, published the book "The Selling Girl of Genetics", in which he refutes the achievements of genetics in order to prove that repressions against domestic representatives of this science were justified. Mukhin's style repels with deliberate rudeness, and he builds his conclusions on the basis of rather primitive distortions.

Cameraman Yuri Elkhov, who participated in the filming of such famous children's films as "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (1975) and "About Little Red Riding Hood" (1977), undertook to analyze the film shots taken by the astronauts and came to the conclusion that they were fabricated. True, he used his own studio and equipment for testing, which has nothing to do with NASA equipment of the late 1960s. As a result of the "investigation", Elkhov wrote the book "Sham Moon", which was never published on paper due to lack of funds.

Perhaps the most competent of the Russian "anti-Apollo" remains Alexander Popov - Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, a specialist in lasers. In 2009, he published the book "Americans on the Moon - a great breakthrough or a space scam?", In which he gives almost all the arguments of the "conspiracy" theory, supplementing them with his own interpretations. For many years he has been running a special website dedicated to the topic, and at present he has agreed that not only the Apollo flights, but also the Mercury and Gemini ships are falsified. Thus, Popov claims that the Americans made the first flight into orbit only in April 1981 - on the Columbia shuttle. Apparently, the respected physicist does not understand that without huge previous experience it is simply impossible to launch such a complex reusable aerospace system as the Space Shuttle the first time.

* * *

The list of questions and answers can be continued indefinitely, but this makes no sense: the views of the "anti-Apollo" are not based on real facts that can be interpreted in one way or another, but on illiterate ideas about them. Unfortunately, ignorance is tenacious, and even the hook of Buzz Aldrin is not able to change the situation. It remains to hope for time and new flights to the moon, which will inevitably put everything in its place.