The great event or the great fake?
As a matter of fact it ended up a little harder than I expected nevertheless I’ve been trying to point out the main idea out of an article about the first landing to the Moon by American astronauts.
USA: our victory is priceless without looking back to our conscience as defeated competitor lost. USSR: let’s live in peace together.
The first space flight by Yury Gagarin out of Earth ended up on April 12, 1961.
It had been the second bang to US prestige in space area since Russians sent the first artificial satellite to the close-planet orbit. After that fact the president Kennedy declared that Americans would lend to the Moon by the end of 60x. The special space program that called Apollo started with leading NASA.
Meanwhile Russians developed their space program indeed. Russian scientists and engineers made all their best producing different kinds of space units.
At the same time USSR government came up an idea to increase their relationship with Americans making them friendlier. They started selling the domination with the Moon. Americans had never started finding tradeoffs in development of the space, if Russians have a lot of advantages in space technologies then. Americans scared that Russians would have lent to the Moon before they had done so. That fact could have been the third bang hitting to knockdown the whole American space program.
Start positions at the beginning of great space run.
The artificial spacecraft started the development of space area close to the Moon, some of them flew around it. Russian space program had gone quite forward to prove that they had sent a rocket into space toward the Moon that called Luna-2. Then they sent Luna-3 which had taken a lot of pictures with the other side of the Moon. Meanwhile, Americans couldn’t attain the other side of the Moon.
Luna-9 lent to the Moon on February 3, 1966 and was transmitting pictures of the Moon’s surface for 3 days. Next Luna-16 delivered some Moon’s ground to Earth in 1970. Then the first automated appliance that called Lunohod-1 landed there. It became a breakthrough in space technologies.
Let’s make friendship since space run starts.
It was a particular space run competition because Russians and Americans started collaborating in development of the space area. The first experiment of that cooperation was an agreement “Soyuz - Apollo” which couldn’t have been succeed if Russian scientists had been in touch with their American colleagues. Russian government persuaded US one that they had no thought to confront in space; they had just wanted wide cooperation at all. To confirm their strong intentions in collaboration, Russians cancelled lots space launches.
Americans started their own launchings. One of them was failed on April 4, 1968, nevertheless they claimed about their intentions to launch steered spacecraft to fly around the Moon. Russian doubted that It could be possible after failed attempts of launchings.
Russians had already had a steered spacecraft, but they couldn’t launch it to the Moon without agreement of Russian government. Moreover, they cancelled that program of landing to the Moon. Two full-equipped steered spacecrafts remained on Earth waiting their destiny. Russians simply waste their money for the space program “Zond”.
Whether the analysis of the American "lunar" soil was carried out to the USSR?
According to NASA reports, Americans carried out approximately 400 kg of lunar soil.
Apollo-11 had flown more than a year before Luna-16. Americans couldn’t suppose that Russians would be able to carry out lunar soil as soon as they had done. When Luna-16 delivered an authentic lunar soil and spread it among a plenty of laboratories over the world a lot of findings ended up then which concluded that American lunar soil had many distinctions than Russian one.
The Dutch experts carried out the analysis of the "moonstone", officially, through State Department presented to the prime minister of the Netherlands Willem Driz by the US Ambassador William Middendorf during visit to the country of astronauts of "Apollo 11" - on October 9, 1969. And only now researches of "moonstone" showed that gift of the USA appeared a simple fake - a piece of the hardened wood".
SU scientists could get clear and help with analysis, but they weren’t permitted to do that by SU government.
Another odd fact was that Russian seamen found the command module of Apollo in the Atlantic Ocean, though according to NASA reports it had to be in the Pacific Ocean. They said that all command modules with astronauts on their board had always landed in the Pacific Ocean. Russians brought it and carried to the Murmansk harbor. And on September 8, 1970 Russians loaded it to US icebreaker ship “Southwind” in a solemn atmosphere. Of course spreading of the information about it was suppressed both US and SU governments.
Eventually, Russians cancelled their space program of the Moon development.
What did Russia get in exchange?
As I mentioned before Russian government was tend to reload relationship with USA in all respects. The president Nixon arrived to Moscow in 1970 and concluded many agreements in trade area with SU. An embargo in oil trade with West Europe has been cancelled then. And USA started selling a lot of goods and food as cheap as they could to USSR and not allowed themselves to sell to others.
What did USA get indeed being winner the great space run?
Surely Americans got a prestige of the great nation of space pioneers which the first landed to the Moon and their success haven’t been repeated yet. In other words they bought the Moon almost for nothing. Yes, they cancelled an important embargo that forbade to sell oil and gas to Europe, but it ended up profitable to USA in case that the most part of Russian budget consists of incomes of selling oil and gas. Russians were bewitched and ‘placed to oil needle’.
And today the USA is the most significant power in the world which is exclusively dictating an image of behavior to a half of the world if it is no more.