Friday, June 10, 2022

INTO ORBIT

One of my earliest impressions of the space race, was that it was clearly a competition, between Russia and America. The American front was loud and brash, colourful and well documented, but Russian activity almost seemed private and covert. in reality, this was very much the case, but as a child, I was completely unaware of the rigours of the Cold War and even if I had been aware of it, it would not be on my radar. I just wanted to see rockets and spaceships and space stations whirling overhead.

Most space exploration coverage was focussed on the Apollo programme, referring often to the Gemini and Mercury missions. Apart from Sputnik and to a lesser degree, Gagarin's Vostok, which due to the ground breaking nature of their achievements were still in the news, there was little coverage of soviet space vehicles.
Clearly, with hindsight it was obvious that the Kremlin were loath to release clear footage or information of any satellites, launch vehicles or details about their cosmonauts, so a lot of books or magazines resorted to speculation or extrapolation. What was shown, in terms of satellites and vehicles was invariably very industrial and dull looking to my young eyes, whereas NASA used the marketing machine to great effect, promoting the 'hero' image of their astronauts and the spectacle of rocket launches.

It was especially noticeable for me when Brooke Bond launched their series of Tea cards in 1971, which covered the space programme from Sputnik onwards. Some of the illustrations of the Soviet vehicles were quite ill-defined and others bore no resemblance at all to the actual vehicles.
 




Actual photographs of soviet space vehicles were few and far between during the sixties and it would only be many years later, following Glasnost and Gorbachev's move to lift the Iron Curtain, that books began to show the actual vehicles and the full extent of the soviet plans.

As the American space programme was much more open, with a tender process involved for the development of engineering projects, involving lots of private companies submitting bids for contracts to build parts for the new Apollo programme, designs and information for the vehicles and satellites was much more widely available.

The American Science Service series by Nelson Doubleday was an educational series of small booklets which included a set of colour stickers for schoolkids to add to the text in the book. Some of the depictions of satellites from the volume of the same name, show an almost science fantasy theme with swirling backgrounds and coloured starfields. 
Soviet depictions of hardware were almost always black and white and poorly rendered. Compare this photograph of the Luna 9 mock up from Brian Harvey's book, Russian and Soviet Space Exploration - which was written in 2007 and takes advantage of the transparency of information, At the time of the Luna programme, information was closely guarded.
An exception to the usual shroud of secrecy had occurred in 1959 after the first man made probe crash landed on the surface of the moon. Once more, this was a russian vehicle and the soviets were justifiably proud. In order to get the most mileage from the achievement and to boast to the world about soviet technological prowess, they sent a model of the probe on a world tour.
When the CIA and FBI got wind of the proposed tour, a plan was devised to get a closer look at the model. As it toured the U.S, it was confirmed to be an actual functioning version of the Luna probe, rather than a model, which the russians declared had been 'deactivated' by removing certain key components. Whilst the exhibit was in transit, it was closely guarded, but during the Mexican leg of the tour, the railway truck moving the probe across the state was due to be held overnight at a depot. The CIA contrived to have the guards and the driver 'entertained' for a few hours whilst the probe was securely stored in a freight depot. Under cover of darkness, a team of agents and technicians broke into the truck, unsealed the packing crate and successfully dismantled the probe, to take photographs of everything, including the launch vehicle nose cone, which was identical to the Soviet ICBM's currently threatening the USA. 

On closer inspection, it was found that both the cone and the probe were fully functional, but certain parts of the probe had been sealed with a special tamper proof cover. The CIA removed this and managed to quickly fabricate a new one overnight. Once everything had been photographed, drawn, examined and recorded, the probe was boxed up again and left for the driver to continue his tour as morning broke. In this way, the american space agency were able to redress the huge advance that Soviet space technology was making and ultimately, win the race to the moon.


https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/28/1016867/lunik-cia-heist-steal-russian-satellite-space-us-ussr/