[FPSPACE] interesting Soviet space paintings by Leonov and Sokolov

[Geert Sassen]

Goodday Chris,

sorry I was out of com for some time so I'm running a bit behind in 
reading and answering mail.

For Luna 9/13 details and the story of the airbag, see 'Soviet and 
Russian Lunar Exploration' by Brian Harvey (ISBN_13 978-0387218960 ) 
available via Amazon, which also details the exact separation sequence 
and causes of earlier failures.

The painting is wrong in showing the descent stage continuing firing 
after separation of the lander, from what I understand there was an 
automatic cut-off of the engine at the moment of separation. The fact 
that Luna-9/13 images show no sign of the airbag (and also show no sign 
of the wreckage of the descent stage, which should be somewhere very 
close) has also always amazed me. Possibly very detailed study of the 
original pictures (not the low-resolution pics we normally see) might 
show some sign of either the airbag-shreds of the descentstage-wreckage, 
or otherwise we will have to wait until we get some high-res pictures 
from the landing site from an orbiter ! On historical grounds, there are 
so many places on the moon which would make very interesting targets for 
high-res pictures, not only Luna 9-13 but also see what happened exactly 
to Luna 18 and 23, Surveyor 4, etc, etc. Problem always is that landing 
coordinates (especially for the early landings) are not very accurate to 
say the least so it's looking for a needle in a haystack and there 
aren't  that many space-historians around that  targeting  historic 
landing sites has  any priority  ;-).

Regards,

Geert.

Chris Jones wrote:
> http://englishrussia.com/?p=1501 has a gallery of 38 paintings of Soviet era
> space accomplishments (imagined in the case of a manned mission to Mars).  I
> find them very interesting, they cover Sputnik 1, the Luna "firsts", Vostok,
> Voskhod 2 (a self portrait of Leonov's EVA, I think) the afore-mentioned
> fictional mission to Mars, and Veneras landing on Venus.  The comments section
> afterwards is noteworthy for its misinterpretations (a Vostok reentry is
> described as showing blood on the window, Luna 9's airbag bursting is
> described as a Venus fly trap on the moon, a Venera descending under parachute
> toward Venus is called an atomic bo[m]b over New York city).
>
> I found the Luna 9 painting I mentioned particularly interesting.  I don't
> recall hearing anything about Luna 9 having an airbag until after the NASA
> Mars landers used the technique, so I'd love to know the date the painting
> was done.  I also don't recall any of the Luna 9 pictures showing any remnants
> of this on the surface, which is curious (there are pictures of jettisoned
> Venera hardware on Venus, as an aside).  The painting appears to show a cable
> running from the bursting airbag back toward (to?) the still firing descent
> stage as the folded up ball of the lander emerges from the "venting" air
> bag.  I realize I am possibly reading too much into what may or may not be
> a semi-fictionalized painting, but this would seem to indicate that the air
> bag wasn't for the landing, but to protect the lander from the vacuum of
> space (why?  it had to be able to survive a vacuum to function) until it
> arrived at the moon.  That would also account for not seeing it at the landing
> site, since it would presumably have gone down with the descent stage at
> some distance from the lander.  Anyway, this one picture has got me very
> curious about this feature of the Luna rough landers (Lunas 9 and 13 being the
> successful examples).  Can anyone provide more information, or a pointer to
> same?
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