LATEST REVELATIONS PAINT FRESH PICTURE OF SOVIET INTENT
The declassification process of US intelligence documents relating to the Soviet space program remains in its infancy. Indeed, I understand at one US government agency, which is engaged in the work of military intelligence, over 1,500 such documents relating to the lunar effort have been identified, but none have yet been subjected to any declassification protocols. Additionally, based on telephone conversations with persons at the National Security Agency (NSA), I have been informed that a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request of mine has garnered several thousand pages worth of documents, which their analysts will begin processing in the first quarter of 2007.
In addition, eight previously unknown US-intelligence document families that deal with aspects of the USSR's manned lunar projects have recently been uncovered at other US agencies. What this means is that there is an entire swath of materials (perhaps totaling in excess of many tens of thousands of pages) on the Soviet manned lunar effort that are not yet in the hands of space historians. And with that amount of material, there is no doubt that current viewpoints of what is currently being promulgated as "the official history" will be substantively altered once these documents are finally released to the public.
With these facts as a backdrop, I believe that sandwiched between the basic tenets of the Americans walking the lunar surface on six separate missions (and with three others that flew about the satellite), and with no Russians experiencing the near-Moon environs at all, are an accumulating number of misrepresentations and misnomers about the race in regards to its execution, its technological basis, and its intent-especially to specific missions.
Additionally, I think we can now couple also some recent information releases directly sourced to participants in the USSR manned lunar project that will support this view, which will appear in not only this part, but also in subsequent parts of this article serial. A number of these have generated a significant interest for me, and I think they will also for Globalsecurity.org's readership.
Victor Gorbatko's Comments in Australia [Sub header]
For example, in April 2005 former cosmonaut Victor Gorbatko visited Australia for the Pacific Explorer 2005 World Stamp Expo at the Sydney Convention Center where he spoke about his space experiences. According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by journalist Richard Macey, the former lunar landing trainee revealed some unprecedented information.
"Mr. Gorbatko said he was.chosen to join a group of cosmonauts in training to beat the Americans to the first Moon landing.America won the Moon race because the rocket needed to launch the Soviet lunar lander was not ready. 'We couldn't be first because we started to prepare for this program after the Americans.' However, at the time he was sure the Soviets would catch up."[4]
For the first time, it seems, this was the confirmation that the L-3 program (Russia's manned lunar landing project) was-despite being started later than the American project-created and slated to beat Apollo 11's timetable of Summer 1969. (A timetable known to the Russians since at least April 1966--when, for example, the US periodical National Geographic had explicitly published the Moon landing date of June 24, 1969--a target that was based on the best guesses of NASA's space contractors at the time.)[5]
Gorbatko's statements also appear to indicate that the limiting factor was not the development of the manned-related lunar payload for the N-1 rocket, but the rocket itself, and he hints that the Russians were certain that they could close the gap.
But I must ask the question: Gorbatko does broadly hint that no matter the obstacles, the Russians were certain that they could make the competition contemporaneous. But where did that confidence come from?
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