Origins of the Soviet lunar programme

Abstract

The Soviet moon programme began in an unlikely place - in a children’s magazine, on 2nd October 1951. Mikhail Tikhonravov was a veteran rocket engineer from the 1920s and was now convinced that a flight to the moon might soon become a practical possibility. In the paranoia of Stalin’s Russia, talking about unapproved projects like moon flights was a potentially dangerous enterprise, so he chose a relatively safe outlet, one unlikely to raise the blood pressure of the censors: the pages of Pionerskaya Pravda, the newspaper devoted to communist youth. There, on 2nd October 1951, he outlined how two men could fly out to the moon and back in a 1,000 tonne rocketship. The article concluded: We do not have long to wait. We can assume that the bold dream of Tsiolkovsky will be realized within the next 10 to 15 years. All of you will become witness to this and some of you may even be participants in unprecedented journeys.