Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS report, dated 1 August 1990, translates an interview with cosmonaut Maj. Gen. Aleksey Leonov from the Soviet journal Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika. Leonov describes the Soviet manned lunar program, its L-1 and N-1 failures and crew training, and criticizes Soviet secrecy and economic policy. Asked whether Apollo 11 astronauts saw extraterrestrials, he says UFO watchers took a remark out of context, since "they" meant Earth.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1990 ## Document 2 of 8 Page 2 for the creation of lunar settlements and for flights to the planets of the solar system were being debated. There was all of that; but reality demonstrated that our dreams were getting far ahead of workable events. 5. The booster that was to be used to effect the program of circumlunar flight had been built and had proved itself admirably. However, the first launch of Zond--that's what the unmanned version of the L-1 was called--was unsuccessful. Why? In order to attain escape velocity, a boost module (the D module) had been installed on the Proton, but the command switching was mixed up, and instead of an acceleration we got a deceleration. The vehicle had to be destroyed. This was the first danger signal. The next launch went well, but then there was another malfunction in the booster. After working for several seconds, it dropped a short distance from the launch site. It turned out that a rubber plug had gotten into the manifold just ahead of the turbopump assembly. Becoming stuck in a duct in the pump, it cut off the fuel supply. After that, major malfunctions resulting in aborted flights occurred every other flight. 6. In 1968, it became clear that we wouldn't accomplish the task before the Americans did. One reason was the lack of proper financing and the improper allocation of funds. 7. You said that the main efforts were devoted to implementation of the L-1 program? How were the cosmonauts trained for that? 8. In all, nearly 20 people were training for the lunar program. The first crews-Leonov and Makarov, Bykovskiy and Rukavishnikov-were formed from among them. The entire group, believing that the goals that were set were achievable, worked diligently, for each one thought that, if the circumlunar flight were successful, he would automatically move on to the next phase with the L-3. Therefore, the training looked toward the future. We mastered many simulators, including a dynamic simulator that was built from a helicopter, and went through the test-pilot course at the Flight Research Institute. Realizing that the most difficult task would be the landing on the Moon, we learned how to quickly pick out an area and set down the craft with limited fuel reserves and how to instantly estimate vertical velocity. 9. Upon returning from the Moon, the landing approach was supposed to be from the direction of Antarctica. In order to learn the constellations in the vicinity of the Southern Cross well, we even flew to Somalia. For independent navigation, the vehicle was outfitted with an astrotracker and sextant, and the cosmonauts devoted much time to the study of those instruments. In the final analysis, everyone learned to work with a complete understanding of
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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.