On the Moon, and whether they were there at all, there has been a debate for decades. Proponents of the landing of astronauts argue that this event was a decisive argument in the space dispute between the US and the USSR, after which the basic space programs were significantly adjusted on both sides. For some, the first manned flight to the moon is a myth developed by the cunning Americans, but for most people, visiting our natural satellite is an indisputable fact.

background

The first space launch towards our satellite was launched in 1959, already 15 months after the launch. For a long time, only Soviet space explorers acted in this direction. Representatives of the United States began to work in this direction only after the launches of their Ranger lunar automata, the first series of which was launched in 1964.

Until the early 70s, the question "How many people were on the moon?" did not make sense - there were no technological possibilities for this. In 1971, the Apollo program began to be seriously developed in the USA. Its successful implementation cost US taxpayers $25 billion. A successful start lunar expansion President Kennedy considered it a priority national task that would strengthen the space prestige of the United States and prove the economic and scientific capabilities of this state.

The implementation of the plan to land a man on the moon became possible after the launch and successful testing of the Saturn-5 launch vehicle. It was he who was used in the configuration of "Apollo 11".

First landing

About that, during the first interplanetary expedition, it is known from newspaper publications and reports, which in July 1969 circled the whole world. Names of three Americans, members of the first space crew, - N. Armstrong, M. Collins, Of these, Armstrong and Aldrin were the first to set foot on the ground of our satellite, and Collins remained in lunar orbit. The astronauts left commemorative signs on the Moon with images of the dead space explorers, collected samples of the lunar soil, installed radar reflectors, after 21 hours they started on the take-off stage and joined the main flight unit.

Eight days later, the crew descended without incident in the Pacific Ocean, where they were picked up by a rescue team.

Further expeditions

The successful start of the pioneers of space gave rise to further expeditions on ships of the Apollo type. Total for our natural satellite five expeditions were sent. This already gives a general idea of ​​how many people have been on the Moon and how many reserves have been expended for these flights. According to official sources, 26 people were sent to the moon, and twelve lucky people managed to directly touch

How many times people flew to the moon can be determined from the Apollo space program - a total of 7 expeditions were sent, and only one of them was unsuccessful. The ill-fated Apollo 13 had an accident at the start of its voyage, its crew was forbidden to descend to the surface of the satellite. Therefore, the answer to the question of how many times people have been to the moon contains a small catch. Apollo 13 flew to our satellite, but did not land on the surface of the moon.

twice?

Were there any people who visited our satellite several times? All the people who flew to the moon were US citizens, experienced astronaut pilots who special training at NASA centers. Of these, there was only one astronaut who managed to visit our Moon twice. It turned out to be Y. Sernan. He first flew to the moon as part of the Apollo 10 space crew. Then he was on board an artificial satellite of the moon, just 15 km from its surface. The second time, as commander of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, Eugene Cernan flew to the Moon in 1972. Then, together with his partner H. Schmitt, he landed in the region of the Littrow crater. Cernan went to the surface of our satellite three times in total and stayed there for 23 hours.

So how many people were on the moon? A total of twelve people touched the surface of the moon, and twenty-six flew as part of space crews.

A team of astronauts Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin began preparations for space flight under the Apollo program. It is noteworthy that all the crew members were experienced test pilots, all already had a space flight on their account, all of the same age (1930), in addition, Aldrin and Armstrong took part in the Korean War.

The priority was the crew of Frank Bormann, but on January 9th, Frank finally announced that he would no longer take part in space flights, as he had made a promise to his wife and children. At the moment when it became clear that it was the crew of the Apollo 11 spacecraft that would be the first to land on the moon, they began to decide who would be the first to set foot on the surface of the satellite. Since in most flights the exit to the open was carried out by the pilot, and not by the commander, it was assumed that it was Edwin Aldrin who would be the first man on the moon. But due to the design of the hatch lunar module, which opened towards Aldrin, it was more expedient for Armstrong to go outside first. If the choice falls on Aldrin, then the pilot will have to get over the hatch and the commander of the ship to get out. Such maneuvers would not only take a long time, but could also damage the suit or the ship's instruments.

On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 launched into space. The event was watched by 5,000 guests of the Kennedy Space Center and several tens of thousands of Florida residents and tourists. Some hotels sold tickets to view this event from prepared sites and balconies. The launch was followed by 25 million viewers.

Flight to the moon

After reaching the second space velocity and reaching the set course to the moon, maneuvers began to rebuild the ship, which were carried out by the pilot. The command module "Columbia" was undocked from the third stage, after which it was removed 30 meters from the entire structure, and rotated 180 °. After that, "Columbia" began rendezvous with the lunar module "Eagle", and a subsequent docking was carried out. The third stage went into flight in a heliocentric orbit.

On the second day of the flight, the White House announced that there were medals on board Apollo 11 dedicated to dead cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin, who were handed over by the widows of the cosmonauts, and who will be left on the surface of the moon. Already in the first two days of the flight, the astronauts began to conduct a television broadcast, for which they filmed the interior of the ship where they lived, as well as space views in the window.

On the third day, Armstrong and Aldrin went on board the lunar module to conduct a survey and check its condition, the process was broadcast to Earth. No problems were found. While preparing the astronauts for sleep, Armstrong suddenly contacted the Space Center to request the distance to the third stage of the booster. The fact is that the astronauts noticed an unidentified periodically sparkling object in the windows. Most likely, the object rotated and periodically beat off sunlight. Houston soon responded that the third stage was moving 11,000 kilometers from Apollo 11 and could not be seen by the crew. However, all three astronauts clearly saw mysterious object, which they said looked like the letter "L", "open suitcase", or "open book". The exact origin of the object has never been determined, but it is assumed that it was one of the parts of the adapter panel, located in the third stage, which housed the lunar module during the launch of the ship.

Moon landing

On the fourth day, Apollo 11 entered the gravitational influence of the Moon, which already exceeded gravitational force Earth. The ship was in lunar orbit. At this time, several photographs of the lunar surface were taken, as well as video filming. After choosing a landing site, astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin again switched to the lunar module and on the 13th orbit, above the far side of the Moon, the command and lunar module separated from each other. The Columbia continued in lunar orbit with Michael Collins while the Eagle began its lunar descent. Collins noticed from the Columbia that the lunar module was flying upside down, to which Neil Armstrong replied, "One of us is flying upside down."

460 meters before landing, astronaut Armstrong noticed that the autopilot directed the lunar module to the edge of the crater, which was surrounded by many 2-3-meter boulders. For this reason, the lunar module commander took control of the orientation engines and changed the trajectory of the spacecraft. Soon a notification appeared that only 8% of the fuel remained, later - 5%, the countdown began. After 94 seconds, the crew will have 20 seconds to land the module, or to abort the landing and then take off.

Astronaut Armstrong's pulse rose to 150 beats per minute as the module landed. 21 seconds before running out of fuel for landing, the Eagle lunar module landed on the surface of the satellite.

Stay on the moon

Before setting foot on the surface of the satellite, astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin practiced for two hours in the event of an emergency takeoff, and prepared all the required systems for this. Subsequent Apollo crews did not perform such actions, as it was already known that the Moon was uninhabited and did not pose any unforeseen threats to astronauts.

Further, Aldrin, as an elder in the Presbyterian Church, decided to conduct a brief church service by performing the sacrament of the sacrament. At this point, the live radio broadcast was turned off to avoid litigation by atheists. Armstrong, who was an atheist, did not participate.

After opening the hatch, the first thing the astronauts did was to throw a bag of garbage onto the surface of the moon. Next, Neil Armstrong turned on the TV camera located on the body of the lunar module and began descending the stairs. At the moment the astronaut's foot touched the surface, Armstrong's famous phrase sounded: "A small step for a man, but a giant one for all mankind." The astronaut made the first observations of the Moon's soil, began shooting a panorama with a video camera. 15 minutes after the first man went to the moon, Aldrin began to descend to the surface of the satellite. During their stay on the Moon, the crew filmed the surface of the satellite with a wide-angle camera, installed a sheet of foil to trap neon, argon and helium ions as part of a scientific experiment, planted the US flag, which did not fully open due to the fact that the flagpole was jammed. Since the upper layer of soil (regolith) of the Moon is fine dust, and solid soil begins somewhat deeper, Armstrong hardly stuck the flag into the regolith by only 15-20 cm.

Later, the astronauts were contacted by US President Richard Nixon and viewers could watch the astronauts in one part of the screen, and the president in another. In continuing his research, Aldrin left several footprints in the regolith and took a number of photographs from various angles to further study the properties of the soil. Further, the crew placed a complex of scientific instruments, one of which was a reflector. With the help of this instrument and a beam launched from the Earth into it, scientists in the future could calculate the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Since the command module "Columbia" had been in the field of view of the astronauts for some time, the latter began preparations for the return. They placed commemorative medals of other astronauts on the lunar surface and boarded the Eagle.

In 2 hours 31 minutes 40 seconds, the Apollo 11 crew collected 21.55 kg of lunar soil samples, the astronaut's maximum distance from the lunar module was 60 meters.

Takeoff of the lunar module

Having changed, the crew threw out shoes and other equipment to reduce the weight of the module. Buzz Aldrin reported to Mission Control that the take-off engine start button was broken, probably one of the astronauts had hit the equipment with his gear. It was revealed that pressing the button can be done using a felt-tip pen that was on board the lunar module. After eating, the astronauts put on spacesuits and began depressurization. It is noteworthy that moon dust remained under their nails, which could not be cleaned out. The crew was faced with the task of getting enough sleep before takeoff, but this was difficult for several reasons: the astronauts were in spacesuits, there was little space in the cabin and it was cold (+ 16 ° C), the noise of the module’s pumps and the light of the Sun breaking through the porthole curtains distracted. And if Aldrin slept intermittently for about two hours, then Armstrong never fell asleep.

After 21 hours and 36 minutes on the moon, the Eagle began to take off. It is noteworthy that during takeoff, Aldrin saw through the window that as a result of the operation of the jet engine, the set flag had fallen. Four and a half hours after takeoff, the lunar and command modules converged to 30 meters. After docking, astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin cleaned their clothes of regolith with a vacuum cleaner, and moved to the command module, where Collins was waiting for them.

Return to Earth

On the seventh day of the flight, the Apollo 11 spacecraft was already heading towards the Earth. The next day, the ship successfully splashed down pacific ocean. The astronauts were met by rescuers in bioprotective suits, they were given the same suits to the descent vehicle, after which the astronauts were transferred by helicopter to the Hornet aircraft carrier. It is noteworthy that after landing, the crew immediately went to the quarantine van, in order to avoid the spread of various kinds of infections that the astronauts could bring from the moon. It was through the glass of this van that the crew communicated with the president. In a quarantine van, the astronauts were taken to Houston, and spent 20 days in it.

In fact, the Americans did not land on the moon, and the entire Apollo program is a hoax, conceived in order to create the image of a great state in the United States. The lecturer showed an American film that debunks the legend of the landing of astronauts on the moon. The following contradictions seemed especially convincing.

The American flag on the Moon, where there is no atmosphere, flaps like it is being blown by air currents.

Look at the photo allegedly taken by the Apollo 11 astronauts. Armstrong and Aldrin are the same height, and the shadow of one of the astronauts is one and a half times longer than the other. Probably, they were illuminated from above by a spotlight, which is why the shadows of different lengths turned out, like from a street lamp. By the way, who took this picture? After all, both astronauts are in the frame at once.

There are many other technical inconsistencies: the image in the frame does not twitch, the size of the shadow does not match the position of the Sun, and so on. The lecturer argued that historical footage of astronauts walking on the moon was made in Hollywood, and the corner light reflectors, by which the paratrooper parameters were specified, were simply dropped from automatic probes. In 1969-1972, Americans flew to the moon 7 times. With the exception of the Apollo 13 emergency flight, 6 expeditions were successful. Each time, one cosmonaut remained in orbit, while two landed on the moon. Each stage of these flights was recorded literally every minute, detailed documentation and logbooks have been preserved. More than 380 kg of lunar rock was brought to Earth, 13,000 photographs were taken, a seismograph and other instruments were installed on the Moon, equipment, a lunar vehicle and a battery-powered self-propelled gun were tested. Moreover, the astronauts found and delivered to Earth a camera from a probe that visited the Moon two years before man. In the laboratory on this camera, the terrestrial bacteria streptococci that survived in outer space were found. This discovery turned out to be important for understanding the fundamental laws of survival and distribution of living matter in the Universe. In America, they argue whether the Americans went to the moon. In principle, nothing surprising, because in Spain, after the return of Columbus, there were also disputes about what new continents he discovered. Such disputes are inevitable new earth will not be easily accessible to everyone. But only a dozen people have walked on the moon so far. Despite the fact that in the USSR there was no live broadcast of Neil Armstrong's first walk on the moon, our and American scientists closely cooperated in processing the scientific results of the Apollo expeditions. The USSR possessed a rich photo archive, which was compiled on the basis of the results of several flights of the Luna spacecraft, as well as samples of lunar soil. Thus, the Americans had to come to an agreement not only with Hollywood, but also with the USSR, competition with which could be the only argument in favor of the hoax. I must add that Hollywood at that time had not even heard of computer graphics and simply did not have the technique to fool the whole world. As for the trace of the astronaut Konrad, then, as explained to us at the Institute of Geochemistry and analytical chemistry RAS, where samples of lunar soil are studied, since the lunar regolith is a very loose rock, the imprint must have remained. There is no air on the Moon, regolith does not dust there and does not scatter to the sides, as on Earth, where it immediately turns into swirling dust underfoot. And the flag behaved as it should. Although there is no and cannot be wind on the Moon, any material (wires, cables, cords) that the astronauts unrolled in low gravity, under the influence of an imbalance of forces, wriggled for several seconds and then froze. Finally, the strange static image is explained by the fact that the astronauts did not hold the camera in their hands, like terrestrial operators, but mounted it on tripods screwed to their chests. The US lunar program could not be a spectacle also because a very high price was paid for it. One of the Apollo crews died during an earth training, the Apollo 13 crew returned to Earth without reaching the Moon. Yes, and NASA's $25 billion financial outlay for the Apollo program has been repeatedly reviewed by numerous audit committees. The version that the Americans did not fly to the moon is not the first fresh sensation. Now in America, an even more exotic legend is growing by leaps and bounds. It turns out (and there is documentary evidence for this), a man still visited the moon. But it was not an American man. And the Soviet one! The USSR sent cosmonauts to the Moon to service their numerous lunar rovers and instruments. But the USSR did not inform the world about these expeditions, because they were suicide cosmonauts. They were not destined to return to their Soviet homeland. American astronauts allegedly saw the skeletons of these nameless heroes on the moon. According to the explanation of specialists from the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where cosmonauts are being prepared for the flight, approximately the same changes will occur with a corpse in a spacesuit on the Moon as with an old can of canned food. There are no decay bacteria on the Moon, and therefore an astronaut, with all his will, cannot turn into a skeleton.

I have repeatedly had to write on this topic. And just as many times I had to listen to angry replies from some experts in space flights. But to my request to give convincing arguments for the hypothesis put forward, the answer was always the same - this cannot be because ... it cannot be! And that's it! Therefore, my personal conviction that the famous American flights to the moon are a grandiose hoax, only strengthened. And today I am completely convinced of these suspicions of mine, which are based on this...

Yuri Gagarin's flight into space on April 12, 1961 marked the beginning of space age in the history of development human civilization. During the growing cold war and ideological confrontation between Soviet Union and the United States, it was a very serious breakthrough in Soviet science.

The Americans could not come to terms with such a grandiose success of their ideological adversary, and a month after the launch of Yuri Gagarin, then US President Jack Kennedy announced that in the near future the Americans would begin work on landing a man on the moon. Congress allocated $50 billion for this work, and the lunar program called Apollo was launched.

And this work ended with a grandiose scam, the scale of which has yet to be assessed by future generations...

It is officially believed that nine lunar expeditions took place between 1969 and 1972. Six of them allegedly ended with the landing of twelve American astronauts on the surface of the Earth's satellite. However, the most famous of them is the first expedition with the participation of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins. These people made a documentary about their flight, which, in fact, gave rise to doubts about the reliability of the American lunar expeditions.

Journalist-researcher Yuri Mukhin wrote about this in detail in his books and articles. In his conclusions, Mukhin relied not only on his own observations, but also on the conclusions made before him by other researchers, primarily from the West, where doubts about these lunar flights have long existed.

So, according to former rocket engineer Bill Kazing, who participated in the development of many US missile programs, all " lunar flights were held in the Nevada desert, at one of the secret military bases. It was there, points out Kazing, that at one time Soviet spy satellites fixed huge hangars. It was here that the filming of the lunar blockbuster was carried out ...

Flying in a dream or in reality?

Mukhin drew attention primarily to the duration of " documentary film". It lasts 75 minutes, but the actual lunar shooting takes no more than 25 minutes. Agree, this is not much if, according to legend, the astronauts were on the Moon ... almost 22 hours!

The first punctures of the authors of the movie under the code name "Flights to the Moon" are evident from the very beginning, when the flight itself is told. The footage shows blue light pouring through the windows of the Apollo spacecraft. But in outer space there is no atmosphere capable of imparting various color shades to light: space is as black as a coal pit. Hence the conclusion suggests itself - the shooting of the "space flight" was made in airspace Earth. Most likely in the cargo compartment of a supersonic aircraft that entered the high altitude in a deep peak to create the effect of weightlessness. The moment of transition of the astronauts from the spacecraft itself to the module that delivered them to the Moon is also puzzling (the ship itself remained in lunar orbit).

Firstly, this most complicated operation of undocking the module (during the flight to the Moon) and its docking (during the return of the astronauts) did not find the slightest reflection in the film. Secondly, there are big doubts that two astronauts, dressed in heavy bulky spacesuits, could even penetrate the module. At one time, the American researcher Jim Collier drew attention to this. He made a special visit to the museum of the American Agency for space research NASA, where the same lunar Apollo is exhibited.

Collier found that the tunnel to get into the module was too narrow even for one person. Meanwhile, the film shows how the astronauts freely ... fly through this tunnel. Not only that, they open the hatch of the module... in the wrong direction, as provided for by the design of the ship! It turns out that the structure presented in the film under the guise of "Apollo" has nothing to do with the ship itself!

Walk in the fresh air

Finally, the astronauts landed on the moon. The TV camera recorded this moment in such a way that not a single pebble, sand, or a single speck of dust flew out from under the lowered module. And this is on the Moon, where gravity is six times less than on Earth, where the slightest push should cause a real dust storm! But the oddities didn't end there.

Here the astronauts went for a walk and decided to install an American banner on the lunar surface. This flag suddenly ... began to develop in the wind of the absolutely airless space of the earth's satellite! The astronaut was even forced to pull down the banner. But as soon as he moved away from him, he again trembled merrily.

The traces left by the astronauts are also surprising. They are very clear and embossed, as if made in wet ground. This circumstance is difficult to explain again from the point of view of the complete absence of oxygen and its compounds on the Moon. In the lunar dry vacuum, the traces should be the same as in the most waterless desert - hardly noticeable, with crumbling edges (by the way, these are the traces that were already left by the Soviet moon rovers).

Yes, and the astronauts moved somehow very hard. Their total weight with spacesuits was almost 150 kilograms. Given the smaller force of lunar gravity, on the Moon they should have weighed no more than 27 kilograms, which would make them extremely mobile. Instead, the astronauts, as Mukhin notes, “They stomp their feet heavily when running, barely move their legs, socks are rowing along the surface all the time.” This inconsistency can be explained by only one thing - the shooting was carried out on Earth, where the spacesuit really strongly constrained the movements of the participants in the shooting ...

Photo panoramas of the Moon look no less amazing. By the way, this applies not only to the first expedition, but also to the video materials of other “lunar flights”. Everywhere there is no panorama starry sky, although the astronauts were supposed to be surrounded by the shining light of distant worlds - after all, the dense layers of the atmosphere do not interfere with the brightest sparkle of stars on the Moon. But instead of the stars on the black background of the "moon sky" one sees only some fairly large light glare, more like the spotlights of movie theaters.

Other signs indicate the presence of such spotlights. For example, astronauts and objects standing on the "lunar surface" cast many weak shadows, and these shadows have different directions. This simply cannot be! After all, there is no other source of light on the Moon than the Sun, so the shadows would have to fall in one direction. But from the point of view of the terrestrial cinema set, when the lighting accompaniment is set by the director and cameraman from different angles, this “unusual” phenomenon becomes quite understandable…

Extra Witnesses

Strange from a normal point of view, events continued after the end of the "lunar expeditions".

According to the American side, the astronauts brought with them 400 kilograms of samples of lunar rocks. But apart from the Americans themselves, no one really saw these breeds. At one time, when the Soviet automatic station "Luna-16" delivered the same soil, our side, as is customary in scientific world, sent individual samples of it to various research centers around the world. The Americans, apparently, did not. In any case, Soviet scientists received nothing from the USA.

For some reason, the soil "extracted" by the astronauts was placed in some kind of top-secret storage, from where it disappeared without a trace in 1979. So guess after that - either the “lunar samples” were stolen by KGB agents, or aliens did it, or there was never any soil at all ...

No less surprising is the fate of the astronauts themselves. Here is what became known about the most famous of them.

Edwin Aldrin retired from the US Air Force in 1972. After that, he suffered from alcoholism and depression for many years. More or less, his life improved only in Lately when he married for the third time. Now he writes fantasy novels.

Neil Armstrong retired from the Air Force even earlier, in 1971. At one time he taught at Ohio State University, then he also started selling computers there. Until his death in 2012, he lived very closed, categorically refusing to meet with journalists ...

Agree, some atypical fate of American heroes, the first people who landed on the moon: in theory, they were supposed to become the personification of a prosperous America, always be in sight and "cut" multimillion-dollar income from their discovery. And here we see generally unfortunate people who, in fact, were thrown out of service in the prime of their lives, about 40 years old, and for the rest of their lives they vegetated somewhere in the wilderness, trying once again not to fall into the focus of public attention. Things have come to the point that today even few American schoolchildren know the names of these "heroes".

One gets the feeling that the American leadership is doing its best to consign to oblivion the "lunar epic" from its recent history. And these feelings only intensify when you hear the answers of NASA leaders to the question why they did not develop their lunar success and did not make visits to the moon permanent. They say that the lunar project turned out to be too expensive - $ 5 billion a year - and therefore it had to be curtailed. But experts laugh at such arguments. With a US federal budget of 1446 billion dollars, this is just a minuscule! Only the war in Iraq costs thirty times more than all the lunar programs.

Most likely, the point is that the United States simply never had any real lunar programs ...

Stanley Kubrick's Secret Movie

The history of space exploration is the history of fierce competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. From the very beginning of the space race, the Russians began to overtake the Americans. We were the first to launch artificial satellite Earth, the first to bring man into space. The American leadership was furious and demanded that their pundits do everything to get ahead of the Russians at least in some way.

And so, on July 16, 1969, the Apollo spacecraft with astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins launched to the moon. But for technical reasons, the flight failed, and the ship blabbed for eight days in near-Earth orbit, after which it landed in the Pacific Ocean. During the flight, the heads of NASA, apparently, decided to use the prepared fallback. And when the astronauts landed, they were quickly transferred to a secret military base in the state of Nevada, where the film set for the production of the film "Landing on the Moon" had already been prepared. And given that the blockbuster A Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick was filmed in Hollywood at the same time, NASA directors were provided with all the necessary special effects. Perhaps Kubrick himself took part in this action.

Apparently, the rest of the “flights to the moon” followed the same pattern. Well, then the astronaut actors were treated like unnecessary witnesses - they were fired, driven into the most remote corners of America and ordered not to open their mouths until the very end of their lives ...

It is curious that in the 70s the Americans filmed a feature film called "Capricorn-1". According to the plot of the film, mafiosi from NASA, in order not to lose funding for their programs, staged a flight to Mars, exactly repeating the scenario of the lunar epic. And so that the astronauts would not blabbed later, they staged a catastrophe “upon returning to Earth” ...

It is possible that the authors of "Capricorn" knew something about the ins and outs of NASA's space scams, only in their cinematic version they increased the drama of the events taking place. So the real lunatic astronauts against this background are still very lucky: at least they were left alive.

Vladimir Maksimov, especially for the "Ambassadorial order"