after two years of redesigning and successful ground testing. January 20, Richard Nixon is sworn in as the 37th President of the United States in a news conference the new President said he is unimpressed with the Soviet mission pointing out that the whole Zond program is too small to land a man on the moon unlike Apollo that is getting ready to fulfill the goals of JFK set several years earlier to land a man on the moon.įebruary 21, The Soviet N-1 (Lenin) rocket launches into orbit in an unmanned flight. January 11, Soviets successfully follow the Americans with their Zond program and travel to the moon in a fly-by mission. The Soviets successfully launch two unmanned Soyuz 7K-Zond-B probes, redesigned and well-funded, they are larger than earlier models and capable of carrying three cosmonauts and supplies it was hoped they could perform a circumlunar loop flight around the moon before the American did their fly-by.Īpollo 8 launched on December 21 leaves earth orbit and became the first manned mission to leave LEO and travel to another celestial body. The United States test an unmanned Saturn V rocket in November, it is a total success. They also start redesigning and testing the N-1 super-heavy rocket. The Soviets start to test an improved and larger UR-500 (Proton) rocket hoping for a manned fly-by of the moon. They went before Premier Brezhnev, the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Central Committee. The ambitious plan calls for better cooperation, bigger rockets and even catching up with the Americans within two years then be in a position to pass them. Vladimir Chelomey, Korolev's chief rival, approaches Korolev with a plan to increase funding for the Soviet space program and be able to truly challenge the Americans in the race to the moon. Korolev sitting in cockpit of glider "Koktebel." POD: Soviet chief designer and leading architect of its space program Sergei Korolev enters a Moscow hospital for a colon cancer operation, it is a complete success. What if he is remembered for opening space to humanity? What if this paranoia fueled his anti-communism and he feared losing the Space Race? What if he had a change of heart in regards to the importance of the Space Race and wanted to win no matter what! And what if this and not Watergate is what stands out in his Presidency? It is his leadership and decisions during his Presidency that are why the Space Race continued and instead it was the Arms Race that died.
President Nixon is best known for the Watergate Scandal and for possibly being paranoid (mostly about getting re-elected). President Nixon was also very anti-communist, as most politicians were at the time. The President Richard Milhouse Nixon He felt that it was a waste of money and he wanted to concentrate on the Vietnam War and the poor economy that he had just inherited.