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 understanding of the dynamics of a lunar flyby. 11. To practice a landing on Earth at parabolic velocity, specialists developed a precise, detailed methodology with two entries. We had to learn to choose the angle of entry after the last correction using the star-tracker and sextant. It depended on the magnitude and direction of the deceleration pulse. It was possible to 'bury'' oneself in the atmosphere with a large angle and to 'slip through'' it with a small angle. The optimum version was an entry with a 'pop-up'': enter, exit the atmosphere after extinguishing great speed, and reenter, already knowing the angle of incidence at which the craft had to be held in order to get to the calculated landing point. The 'manual pulse input'' instrument highlighted the number of pulses after passage of the first sector. From them we figured the distance to the calculated landing point, then converted distance into angle of incidence. All these operations were rehearsed on the 'Volchok'' dynamic simulator. As a result we learned to make a 'landing'' with an accuracy to on kilometer. After taking tests on craft design and flight program, the cosmonauts were ready to fly around the Moon. 12. The flight would be difficult even from a purely everyday aspect, since the L-1 did not have an orbital module as did the Soyuz, and two persons had to be in the descent module for a week. We followed the last unmanned flight with hope, but when the frontal shield was fired off, the command also was sent to fire the parachute system. The craft was flattened after falling to Earth. It was curious that part of the film which it delivered was preserved. This allowed us to be first to obtain beautiful, exceptionally precise photographs of Earth from the direction of the Moon. 13. The Americans flew around the Moon in Apollo 8 in December 1968 and our leaders shivered: 'Do we have to do this now?' General Designer Mishin nevertheless got to conduct one more test flight in an automatic version, and again a failure: a disturbance of the flight configuration led to depressurization of the body. We will add to this that all three launches of the N-1 booster rocket during flight-design tests were unsuccessful. After soberly assessing the situation, the government shut down the program connected with a manned lunar landing. 14. [Kuznetsov] Aleksey Arkhipovich, did our plan differ from the American plan? 15. [Leonov] Our lunar lander was similar to the American one, and the flight schemes, as Kondratyuk had foreseen them, did not differ at all. The craft had to enter a base circumlunar orbit, and a capsule would separate from it which would make a soft landing on the
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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.