11:30am EST., Friday February 10th

Presenting Live via Zoom

Competing with Apollo: The Soviet Reach for the Moon

The talk will highlight the Soviet lunar program, a response to NASA’s Apollo project, which involved the creation of a giant superbooster known as the N1. Although the project was kept secret for decades, information from the archives has revealed the details of a huge effort to match Apollo, involving considerable resources. After several major failures, the N1 project was shelved and the Soviets denied they were ever in the race to the Moon. The talk will explore the political, technological, and programmatic aspects of the Soviet Moon program.

Asif Siddiqi is a Professor at Fordham University in New York where he teaches on the history of science and technology. He is the author of many books on the history of space exploration including Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 and The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857-1957.