65: 4. The Failure of the Soviet Zond Program and the Decision to Gamble on Apollo 8. Bob Zimmerman discusses the fierce moon race with the Soviet Union's Roscosmos, which utilized the Zond capsule for circumlunar missions. Zond 5 and 6, launched in late 1968

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 8 November 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

4. The Failure of the Soviet Zond Program and the Decision to Gamble on Apollo 8. Bob Zimmerman discusses the fierce moon race with the Soviet Union's Roscosmos, which utilized the Zond capsule for circumlunar missions. Zond 5 and 6, launched in late 1968, suffered critical failures (guidance system and atmosphere loss, respectively), forcing the Soviets to cancel their planned manned December flight. Watching this, NASA manager George Low realized the Lunar Module (LM) for Apollo 8 was behind schedule. To maintain the initiative and potentially win the space race, Low and Sam Phillips made the aggressive decision to send Apollo 8 to the moon without the LM "lifeboat." They informed NASA boss James Webb after the decision was finalized. Webb, though initially upset, accepted the decision, betting that the engineering was sound enough to risk the mission in order to prove the US was superior.
1965 APOLLO 1

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0:00.0	This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor. Here's John Batchelor.
0:07.0	It is a late winter, 1968.
0:11.0	Ross Cosmos, Bikinard Cosmodrome, the launch of a vehicle called Zond4.
0:18.0	Zand 4, 2 March, 1968.
0:21.6	The idea was to prep a moon landing.
0:26.2	I welcome Bob Zimmerman.
0:28.1	He's the author of Genesis, The Story of Apollo 8, First Man Flight, to Another World.
0:35.2	Bob, a very good evening to you.
0:37.3	Ross Cosmos, the Soviet program, and NASA, the American program, were in a moon race.
0:43.3	At this point, both had recovered from catastrophes, and they were preparing for their march to moon landing.
0:52.3	What was Zon for? What was the zon series that so
0:56.1	fascinated worried and made nassar hurry up its plans good evening to you bob good
1:02.6	evening john uh it was a moon race it was it was actually it was a neck and neck
1:07.3	moon race in many ways uh uh what the r What the Russian Soviets were doing was they had gotten into orbit and successfully
1:17.0	started to use manned, their Soyuz capsule, the very first iteration of it.
1:22.1	And what they did with the Zandt program was they revised it so that it would be sent on a succumb lunar mission
1:32.3	around the moon and back to Earth.
1:34.3	It would not go into orbit around the Moon, but it would circle around, it would zoom around the Moon,
1:39.3	and the Moon's gravity would slingshot it back to Earth, and then it would come back to Earth,
1:43.3	and then it would hit the atmosphere, bounce off the atmosphere, and come down and land safely.
1:48.0	And the idea was to put two astronauts on this and get to around the moon before we could get to the Moon.
1:55.0	And that would win the space race. They wouldn't land, but they'd gotten people to the moon and back, and they beat us.
	...

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