7-592: LK-700 was a Soviet direct ascent lunar lander program proposed in 1964. It was developed by Vladimir Chelomey as an alternative to the N1-L3 program. It was also a further development of the LK-1 lunar flyby spacecraft. It would have been launched using the proposed UR-700 rocket (related to the Proton rocket ) with a crew of three cosmonauts on a direct flight to the lunar surface and back. The direct landing approach would allow
14-588: A somewhat smaller launch vehicle, either the Saturn C-4 or C-5 . These were Earth Orbit Rendezvous , which would have involved at least two launches to assemble the direct-landing and return vehicle in orbit; and Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR), which carried a smaller two-man lunar lander spacecraft for flight between lunar orbit and the surface. LOR was the strategy used successfully in Apollo. The Soviet Union also considered several direct ascent strategies, though in
21-566: The Moon or another planetary surface directly, without first assembling the vehicle in Earth orbit , or carrying a separate landing vehicle into orbit around the target body. It was proposed as the first method to achieve a crewed lunar landing in the United States Apollo program , but was rejected because it would have required developing a prohibitively large launch vehicle . The Apollo program
28-453: The Soviets to land anywhere on the moon's nearside. The program was canceled in 1974. Uncrewed flights would be followed by crewed flights. The proposed schedule was: Following initial LK-700 landings, the more ambitious Lunar Expeditionary Complex (LKE) would be delivered to the surface in three UR-700 launches: Direct ascent Direct ascent is a method of landing a spacecraft on
35-490: The end they settled on an approach similar to NASA's: two men in a Soyuz spacecraft with a one-man LK lander. The Soviets attempted to launch the N1 rocket on 21 February and 3 July 1969, both of which failed, before NASA's Apollo 11 lifted off and made the first crewed lunar landing on 20 July 1969. The Soviets would make two more attempts to launch the N1, in 1972 and 1974, but neither
42-526: Was initially planned based on the assumption that direct ascent would be used. This would have required developing an enormous launch vehicle , either the Saturn C-8 or Nova rocket , to launch the three-man Apollo spacecraft , with an attached landing module, directly to the Moon, where it would land tail-first and then launch off the Moon for the return to Earth. The other two options that NASA considered required
49-538: Was successful. The Soviet engineering firm OKB-52 continued to develop the UR-700 modular booster for the direct ascent LK-700 ship. Science fiction movies such as Rocketship X-M and Destination Moon have frequently depicted direct ascent missions, although the first was a two-stage vehicle which accidentally, and successfully landed on Mars, but failed to successfully return to Earth (crashed in Nova Scotia), and
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