By Hardship, to The Stars

The Space Race to the Moon was always expected to be just the begining of eventuall exploration and settlement farther beyond to Mars, the Asteroids and eventually the stars. All this by the end of the century. But without the rivalry with the Russians, space followup projects were abandoned and the apollo program cancelled. But what if the Soviets had managed to remain somewhat competitive and the drive to continue the race still existed into the 70s and beyond? How would the world look today?

Point of Departure
The late 1960s was a difficult time for the Soviet Space Program still struggling to maintain it's supremacy in Space Exploration. The Gemini and soon to be Apollo Program had acheived many important firsts in the history of Space Technology including rendezvous and docking. A task critical for any piloted moon flight. The Zond Program was the Soviet Union's last chance to beat the American's to the Moon. While unable to land, the Zond (technically called the Soyuz 7K-L1) was able to fly two cosmonauts around the moon on a simple, bare bones, free return trajectory. While essentially useless to the goal of landing on the moon it provided a very important prestige boost for the Soviet Union and a major progagand victory against the Americans. Despite having only one previous successful flight (Zond 5 in September 15th 1968) it was decided to proceed with a Manned mission.

And so on November 10th 1968 the Soviet Union launched the Zond 6 mission. Onboard were the cosmonauts, Alexi Leonov as Commander who had previously peformed the world's first spacewalk and flight engineer, Oleg Mackorev.

The Duo performed the first Manned Lunar Flyby on November 13th just 3 days after there launch and took the inspirational picture that would come to be known as 'Earthrise' as they emerged from the back side of the Moon.

The flight was not without technicle challenges however as on November 17th a faulty o-ring seal caused the entire cabin to depressurize just one day before re-entry. The crew who had been uncomfortably space-suited for the entire flight survived the incident. Because of the risk of a coronal discharge the crew was instructed to completly depressurize the cabin to prevent complications with the capsule a later investigation had found that if this had not been done the same incident that lead to the crash of Soyuz 1 could have occured again. The crew landed off coarse somewhere in the Soviet Union but were rescued after a long wait. World heroes!

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