When the Space Race was its height, the Soviets and the Americans were locked in an ideological and technological battle for global sup...
When the Space Race was its height, the Soviets and the Americans were locked in an ideological and technological battle for global supremacy. As a result, there was the attempt to explore the space and even venture into other planets. The Russians got a head start when they launched Sputnik into space and they weren't even satisfied, they also planned to send manned space flight and exploration beyond the Earth's orbit as shown in Soviet visions of their lunar cities. Yes, permanent human settlement on the moon!
Soviet artists have created a collective future vision by showing how human settlement would be made. If you have watched the Simpson's episode wherein Springfield was covered in a glass dome then you have to imagine the St. Basil's Cathedral on a force field on the moon! In their efforts to build a workers' utopia on Earth, the Soviets have also envisioned a similar city beyond the planet.
In the 1965 children's book and film of the same name "Stantsiia Luna" (Station Moon), Russian filmmaker Pavel Klushantsev envisioned a lunar city built like that we do on Earth, a bustling construction site with heavy machinery and equipment doing the bulk of the work. Klushantsev showed children how the USSR will go to the moon and what effort they will do to make it livable.
The Soviet rocket looks bigger than the Saturn V rocket that brought man to the moon in 1969. Although it was featured on the children's book but seeing a lot of civilians around the launch platform seems distressing.
Although the Soviets never made it to the moon, the images looks the same as how the Apollo 11 astronauts made it to the moon and back, minus the lunar photoshoot.
Even with this vision of a lunar city being built, the construction seems to be so ambitious that a lot of "earthly" construction mega machines have to be used to transport building material and lay down pipes. They even have a monorail that transports workers to other areas of the construction site.
Lunar probes were also used to explore the dark side of the moon.
Living in space is also depicted art with large monolithic structures housing humans from deadly cosmic radiation. Unlike real space capsules, the lunar station is spacious enough to let see the barren panoramic view of Moon's desolate landscape.
The Soviet counterpart to "Popular Mechanics" was "Tekhnika Molodezhi" (Technology for the Youth) and it promoted the space race with interesting and intriguing cut-out image of a lunar space station. The cross section of this underground lunar facility has a solar-powered communal residence complete with its own clinic, entertainment area and supply storage space.
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