"Apollo program in secret Soviet documents"

In 2019, the whole world celebrated the anniversary of the first landing on the moon of the Apollo-11 expedition [ 1 ]. Several translation books have been published in Russia dedicated to the American lunar program, and the AST publishing house has published the popular science book “Moon. History, people, technology. Book One »Russian author Pavel Shubin. Now Pavel not only works on the second volume, but also prepared for enthusiasts the Apollo program-collector in secret Soviet documents, summarizing the recently declassified archival data. About what materials can be read in the collection, why funding for the publication has to be searched with the help of crowdfunding, and the correspondent of the TRV-hunger Alexander Khokhlov talked about future plans with Pavel Shubin , mathematician, and the historian of astronautics.

- Pavel, “Trinity Option is science” wrote about your book “Moon. History, people, technology ”[ 2 ]. Initially, you raised funds to work on it with crowdfunding, the so -called folk financing, but then the book was published in AST Publishing House. Does this mean that historical books on astronautics have become in demand?

- Historical books on astronautics have always been in demand. The question is in the level of interest - how many readers she has. Moreover, I think crowdfunding shows this even a little better than the interest of publishers. If a person is ready to invest money in a book that is not even on paper or in a layout, then he is really interesting to him.

I suspect the publishers are not sure of this yet. Or do not want to contact the expensive books in production. AST decided to sign the contract only when the entire layout of the book was completely ready. And since the layout in their cost is not taken into account, this is, perhaps, the cheapest gift edition (matte photo paper, color printing, laying Liesse) in the market.

The agreement on the following volumes of the book is not yet concluded. Perhaps AST wants to look at sales.

- As far as I know, three more volumes are planned about the studies of the moon. What will they be about and what is the degree of their readiness?

-If the first volume tells about research from 1953 to 1965, then the second will have to cover the interval from 1966 to 1976, that is, the period of the main study of the moon in the twentieth century-from the first landing of the Luna-9 to the Earth’s satellite to the Luna-24 flight (the last landing station of the last century). A lot of work has been done on this volume: models of the Luna-13 and Surveyor-3 stations have been created; The relief of the landings of the Luna-9 stations, Luna-13, Surveyor-3 was reconstructed; A huge array of information was ordered and processed. But alas, you will need to do even more. In my assessment, the second volume will become my most difficult book. It will definitely be more difficult for both Venus and subsequent volumes of the “Moon”.

At the same time, the book is expected to be the most interesting. I managed to “raise” a lot of new and very interesting information. Both about current stations and about projects remaining on paper. For example, the projects of the E-8 and E-8–5 stations (a series of AMS for the fence of soil samples from the Moon-16 to the Luna-24) are known. Now I can describe the projects of the E-8–2 and E-8–3, develop the history of the E-7 photo reconnaissance, the Zodiac project, describe how they planned to illuminate the piloted flights of our ships 7k-L1 to the moon (the unmanned ones went under the probe index).

The idea of ​​the third volume arose relatively accidentally. I not only received data on the real projects of the USSR, but also saw information about various plans that were canceled by overhaul of industry to orbital stations. Until a certain point, orbital stations were considered very superficially. In the reports of TsNIIMASH, the development of astronautics was associated primarily with the development of lunar bases. Everything changed only in the first half of the 1970s. So I decided to devote the third volume to the canceled projects of the USSR and the United States related to the moon. It is also planned to describe in it what was supposed to do on the Moon Road-3 moon, and give information to readers about the project of the Soviet lunar satellite of the 1980s.

Well, in the fourth volume, I plan to talk about modern research. The projects of Japan, Europe, the USA, China, Israel, and India on the study of the moon will be described. As well as those that are still in the implementation stage. This book will be released in a few years. Perhaps during this time Russia will launch the Moon-25.

- Not all technical materials (drawings/diagrams) are conveniently published in books of the standard format. Tell us about the already published applications.

- When working in the archives, a very large amount of documents always accumulate. Much more than you can put in a printed publication. And this is understandable. It is believed that a normal popular science book can be written only if you know an order of magnitude more than it will enter. Sometimes I really feel sorry for the documents that remain unpublished. For various reasons.

For example, the first additional edition was the album on the lunar rocket H1 L3. Its basis was several reports with a large number of photos and schemes. How much can you publish in the book? One or two photos. And if there are more than a dozen of them and the overwhelming number before that have not been published? The same thing with schemes. But this is our story. And in the history of astronautics this is an important part. So this album appeared.

The second project is associated with the Luna-9 station, the first station in the world to make a soft landing on the moon and transmitted the panorama of its surface. This is one of the important milestones in the study of the moon. And so I find in the archive a detailed report, released immediately after the flight, which describes both the station itself and the history of its development in great detail. Nothing of the kind has been published yet. I order a copy. Report on 225 pages, and the total price is very decent. Processed information, of course, goes to the popular science book. But what to do with the report? The information is unique and new. I supply additional materials and again publish. Maybe the data is interesting primarily to specialists, but such reports need to be given a second life.

-Another collection-application “Apollo program in secret Soviet documents”-what is it about, what materials will be published for the first time?

- Almost everything. In my opinion, it is stupid enough to publish what has already been published. Exceptions relate only to some materials, fragments of which are included in the first volume of the “Moon”. However, the question is facilitated by the fact that such documents have not yet been published and there are no analogues. According to this collection, one can understand how Soviet experts evaluated the American program and how the attitude has changed to it over time. Of course, I hardly found all the Soviet documents, but those that I found, in my opinion, are quite interesting.

- Why did you decide again to collect money for a book through crowdfunding [ 3 ]?

- I have no other options. When I gathered for the first edition of Venus, I thought that I would try to publish the following books from revenue for the first. Alas. So far, serious popular science books have not reached self-sufficiency. They take too much effort, both in man-hours and rubles. And these forces need to be taken somewhere.

Previously raised funds were enough for me to create the first volume and part of the materials for the second. Craudfunding is so far the only way I see. With all its pros and cons. The collection of money for the release of a book on Apollo is designed to complete two tasks. Firstly, introduce new declassified documents into circulation. I am sure that they will be interesting to both specialists and amateurs. And secondly, try to let the funds received in excess of the right amount into work on the second volume of the “Moon”.

- Tell us about the modern specifics of working with archival data, what is available now and what is not?

- Now it is difficult to evaluate how many secret documents are in a particular fund. Since in the inventories, for obvious reasons, only declassified materials. But not all open documents can be obtained. For example, the Fund-registered organization may impose a restriction on the fund. And this data can only be obtained with the consent of this organization. For this reason, for example, the Fund of the Rocket and Space Corporation "Energy" is not available.

Also, even after removing the “secret” stamp, they can put the stamp “for official use”. This means that the document is declassified and is in the inventories, but it can only be obtained after the organization’s consent that has created it. There are not so many such documents, but among them there are really interesting ones. For example, about the military use of lunar bases.

Well, the archival business can be corny dilapidated. Then they will not be issued until they carry out restoration. Actually, this can be the biggest problem, since there are a lot of things, and the budget of the archives for restoration is not so much.

-Is something similar in the USA-about the space programs of the USSR?

- The CIA posted its documents on the Soviet program several times. The last time relatively recently - in 2017. Under the anniversary of the satellite. Unfortunately, many interesting points are specially smeared there. By the way, I translated a couple of reports and published in the collection on Luna-9.

- Pavel, a little about creative prospects. At first you wrote about the research of Venus [ 4 ], now you are working on books about lunar programs. And what's next? Mars, Jupiter?

- When I presented Venus, I mentioned that books about the moon and Mars were planned. Work on books on the moon will take more than one year. Then you will need to go to Mars. Although Jupiter, to be honest, I like it more. But there is also the Sun, as well as Mercury and other planets.

In addition, at the very beginning of work, I had ideas to write books under the conventional names “Ocean” and “Climate”. I seriously studied both domestic deep -sea research and the climate of the Earth. Including the stories of the greenhouse effect, nuclear winter, etc. In the latter, I still figured it out well when I worked on Venus. But now I doubt that I can prepare books about it. All this would require more specialized work, and the astronautics tells all new projects. For example, from the first volume of the “Moon” it was necessary to remove quite a lot of material associated with the history of the study of the moon until the middle of the twentieth century and the first satellites of the Earth. In theory, all this can be issued in separate books. Fortunately, the first companions have new interesting archival materials. But again, the question is in terms and funds.

There is also material dedicated to the death of the astronaut Vladimir Komarov on April 24, 1967. He is in a high degree of readiness. In addition to popular science books, again there are new archival materials that were planned as a addition. For example, for the preparation of the crews of the Soyuz-1 and Soyuz-2 ships. Initially, I wanted to launch this project this year, but I thought that it would be more logical to publish Apollo in the anniversary year. So the plans for 2020 are large.

Pavel Shubin
Talked by Alexander Khokhlov