Voshkod:The Soviet Gemini
experienced communications and attitude control problems. And to make matters worse, a solar panel, critical for electrical power, only partially deployed. Soon, he was ordered to reenter and everything went well until his parachute deployed. The parachute tangled and twisted because of the capsules position: Komarov slammed into the Earth at nearly 500 miles an hour.
By the 1970's the Russian space program shifted its focus onto building a space station; claiming they never intended to go to the moon. However, today, it is clear that they had every intention of sending someone to the lunar surface. Lunar landing craft sitting in museums and horror stories of the failed N-1 rocket (the tallest rocket ever created) tell the story clearly: that they intended to gamble and send a crew to the moon not knowing if they had enough luck to make it back. The Voshkod program is one that, in hindsight, Soviet planners wished they could have forgotten. It provided two space firsts (first three man crew and first EVA), but was only able to achieve two manned flights before the remaining Voshkod's were canceled because of their unreliability. As a comparison, it is hard to imagine the level of failure the Gemini program would have branded if only 2 of its ten flights had been a success. In fact, if only one of them had failed the landscape of the space race may have been much different than how it is remembered today.
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