Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS report, dated 1 August 1990, translates an interview with Major General of Aviation Aleksey Leonov published in the Moscow journal Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika. Leonov describes the Soviet manned lunar program, how the cosmonauts trained for it, and the test failures that ended it. He also criticizes Soviet secrecy and argues that the Buran shuttle is needed. Asked about UFO claims, he says Aldrin's remark 'they're watching us' referred to Earth, not extraterrestrials.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 Document 8 of 17 Page 2 craft which his collective was working to create. At that time we thought that the lunar program was designed for many years. We argued about projects for creating lunar settlements and flights to planets of the solar system. All this was so, but life showed that our dreams outstripped real events. 6. The booster intended for accomplishing the lunar flyby program had been made and had given a good account of itself, but the first launch of the Zond--that was the name of the L-1 craft in the automatic version--was unsuccessful. Why? A booster module (the D unit) was placed on the Proton to reach parabolic velocity, but the switching of commands was confused in it and it decelerated instead of accelerating. The craft had to be liquidated. This was the first alarm signal. The next launch went normally, but later there again was a booster malfunction. After functioning for several seconds, it fell not far from the launch site. It turned out that a rubber plug had fallen into the manifold ahead of the turbopump assembly. Having gotten stuck in the line, it cut off the fuel feed. Subsequently serious troubles leading to flight disruptions were repeated every other time. 7. It was learned in 1968 that we would not perform this mission before the Americans. One reason was the absence of proper financing and an incorrect distribution of assets. 8. [Kuznetsov] You said that main efforts were aimed at realizing the L-1 program. How did the cosmonauts prepare for it? 9. [Leonov] A total of some 20 persons prepared for the lunar program. The first crews consisting of Leonov and Makarov and of Bykovskiy and Rukavishnikov were made up from them. Believing in the feasibility of the set goals, the entire group began work actively, since each one thought that with a successful flyby of the Moon he automatically would go over to the next stage for the L-3. Therefore training also proceeded with promise. We mastered many simulators, including a dynamic simulator created on the basis of a helicopter, and went through test pilot school at the Flying Research Institute. Realizing that the lunar landing was the most difficult element, we learned the ability to choose a site in a short time, land the craft with limited fuel reserves, and instantaneously evaluate vertical velocity. 10. The landing approach on the return from the Moon was to have been from the direction of the Antarctic. We even flew in Somalia in order to have a good knowledge of constellations near the Southern Cross. The craft had a star-tracker and sextant for autonomous navigation, and the cosmonauts devoted much time to studying these instruments. In the final account everyone learned to work with full
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 6 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.