How Will We Get There?
WildWings Space Adventures DSE-Alpha mission will take place aboard the modern Soyuz TMA spacecraft. This proven transport vehicle has delivered crews to more than three generations of space stations and supported space expeditions lasting as long as six months. The Soyuz spacecraft, and its robotic sister spacecraft, the Progress M, have established a solid performance record in low Earth orbit. However, few people know that the Soyuz was originally designed to support manned lunar missions. The first spacecraft to orbit the moon and be recovered sucessfully back on Earth was a Russian Zond, three months before Apollo 8 . During the Cold War moon race between the Soviet Union and the United States, a spacecraft called the Lunar Orbital Craft, or "LOK" (its Russian acronym), was designed to orbit the moon and support lunar surface missions.
At the same time, the Soviets also had a second, smaller manned lunar program that they were developing, which consisted of a stripped-down variation of the Soyuz called the Zond. This craft was developed as part of a fast-track effort to carry a crew of two on a lunar orbital free-return-trajectory mission (one that would send the craft around the moon and back toward Earth), thereby making the Soviets the first to orbit men around the moon. Zond was essentially a Soyuz propulsion module and Soyuz reentry capsule with the orbital module removed.
Realizing that the Soviets were close to beating them in the quest to orbit the moon, the United States responded on December 21, 1968, with the Apollo 8 lunar orbital mission. The spectacular Apollo 8 victory effectively caused the Soviets to give up their plans of putting a crew in a Zond spacecraft. Although Zond was never flown manned, the program did validate that many of the components could be used in lunar missions.The Soviet manned lunar program was canceled in 1974 and remained largely unknown to the outside world until the breakup of the Soviet Union. However, a considerable amount of technology derived from that program was steadily improved and modernized, and has achieved an enviable flight history over the past 30 years. Both the Soyuz TMA and Block DM SL upper stage in use today can trace their origins back to the manned lunar effort. It is these mature spacecraft that WildWings Space Adventures intends to use in its manned lunar program, DSE-Alpha.
