S8 Ep326: SOVIET UNION'S SECRET 1972 LUNAR BASE AMBITIONS AND THE N1 ROCKET FAILURE Colleague Anatoli Zak, Publisher of RussianSpaceWeb.com. Anatoli Zak explains that in 1972, the Soviet Union pursued the L3M project to establish a permanent lunar base, refusing to
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.6 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
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MARCH 1959
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| 0:00.0 | Hiring isn't just about finding someone willing to take the job. |
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| 0:34.4 | with Indeed. do it the right way with indeed i'm john bachel this is hotel mars david dav, Dr. Space himself, is here as my colleague and co-host and friend and co-pilot, as we're getting not only into time and space, but we're going back to 1972 to go forward to the moon. |
| 1:09.5 | We welcome Anatoly Zach, who keeps the very helpful Russian spaceweb.com. |
| 1:15.4 | A subscription site I hardly recommend for those of you who live through the first moon race |
| 1:21.3 | during the Cold War of the 20th century, and now are witnessing a new moon race. This time a new player on the field, |
| 1:29.9 | the Chinese space program. However, in 1972, America had won the moon race in 1969. |
| 1:38.5 | There were subsequent moon ventures by the Americans. The Russians and the Americans were talking de Tont, |
| 1:46.1 | and that would lead to a joint space mission in Earth orbit. |
| 1:50.0 | But as of that point, the Russians, Russ Cosmos, had ambition to get to the moon. |
| 1:56.4 | And they still have ambition to get to the moon. |
| 1:59.1 | And it's totally wonderful to travel to 1972 when I was a much younger fellow and didn't see |
| 2:06.4 | or didn't know about all these developments in Russia. |
| 2:09.8 | What was, what is L3M? |
| 2:14.2 | Good evening to you. |
| 2:16.1 | Good evening, John. |
| 2:17.0 | And thank you so much for the interest in this topic, even though, again, events were happening more than half a century ago. |
| 2:23.4 | But yes, this 50 years later, we're still getting drip, drip, drip of information about activities of the Russian space industry at the time in the 70s. |
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