Nikita Khrushchev ’s Son Watched his Father Lose the Space Race. 50 Years After the Moon Landing, He Holds No Grudge

Chernobyl was an awfully nice place to be half a century or so ago. Named after the wormwood herb that grew wild there, the town had a modest population, a river that ran clear, and open land for camping and star-gazing. So that was where Sergei Khrushchev, a 34-year-old engineer, stopped with a small group of other people led by his father Nikita, 75, the former leader of the Soviet Union, in the predawn hours of July 21, 1969. The day before had been a glorious one for humanity—and particularly for the portion of humanity that was American. Just hours before, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon, stepped outside, set up a suite of instruments and planted a flag. That—the flag part—made it a less glorious day for the Soviets. Since 1957, when the USSR put Sputnik, the first satellite, into orbit, the two nations had been in a race to land American astronauts or Soviet cosmonauts on the lunar surface. By 1969, the Soviets had been having a terrible run; just three weeks before the Apollo 11 landing, their giant, experimental N1 moon rocket had blown up at the launch pad, causing one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. The dream of beating the Americans was finished and the Soviet engineers knew it. Now, the former premier, who had led the early years of the race to space, was reduced to following the news of the Americans’ success like any other Soviet citizen. As the half-century anniversary of the ...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized apollo1150 Buzz Aldrin John Kennedy NASA neil armstrong Nikita Khrushchev Soviet Union space space race Sputnik Yuri Gagarin Source Type: news