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Cocoanut Grove fire

The Cocoanut Grove fire was a nightclub fire which took place in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 28, 1942, and resulted in the deaths of 492 people. It is the deadliest nightclub fire in history and the third-deadliest single-building fire (after the September 11 attacks and Iroquois Theatre fire). The Cocoanut Grove was one of Boston's most popular nightspots, attracting many celebrity visitors. It was owned by Barnet "Barney" Welansky, who was closely connected to the Mafia and to Mayor Maurice J. Tobin. Fire regulations had been flouted: some exit doors had been locked to prevent unauthorized entry, and the elaborate palm tree décor contained flammable materials. The air-conditioning used flammable gas because of the wartime shortage of Freon.

During the first Thanksgiving weekend since the U.S. had entered World War II the Grove was filled to more than twice its legal capacity. The fire was initiated by an electrical short and fueled by methyl chloride in the air conditioning unit. Flames and smoke spread rapidly through all areas of the club, and people were unable to escape efficiently because of the locked exit doors. Blame was directed at Welansky for violation of standards; he served nearly four years in jail before being released just weeks before his death.

Local hospitals were especially well prepared to treat the casualties having been rehearsing emergency drills in response to possible wartime attacks on the East Coast. The crisis demonstrated the value of the recently installed blood banks and stimulated important advances in the treatment of burn victims. Following the fire many new laws were enacted for public establishments, including the banning of flammable decorations, a provision that emergency exits must be kept unlocked (from the inside), and that revolving doors cannot be the only exit.

Club
The Cocoanut Grove opened as a partnership between two orchestra leaders, Mickey Alpert and Jacques Renard, in 1927 during Prohibition at 17 Piedmont Street in the Bay Village neighborhood of Boston, spanning from Piedmont Street to Shawmut Street. It became a speakeasy as Alpert and Renard's Mafia-connected financiers gained control, and the club had a reputation as a gangland hangout. Although neither Alpert nor Renard held an interest in the club by 1942, Alpert was leading the house band on the night of the fire.

Gangland boss and bootlegger Charles "King" Solomon, also known as "Boston Charlie", owned the club from 1931 until he was gunned down in the men's room of Roxbury's Cotton Club nightclub in 1933. Ownership passed to his lawyer Barnet "Barney" Welansky, who sought a more mainstream image for the club while privately boasting of his ties to the mob and Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin. Welansky was known to be a tough boss who ran a tight ship, hiring teenagers as busboys for low wages and street toughs to double as waiters and bouncers. He locked exits, concealed others with draperies, and even bricked up one emergency exit to prevent customers from leaving without paying.

Originally a garage and warehouse complex, the brick and concrete buildings which constituted the Cocoanut Grove had been converted to a one-and-a-half-story meandering complex of dining rooms, bars, and lounges. A lounge in an adjoining building had opened the week before the fire. The club offered its patrons dining and dancing in a South Seas-like "tropical paradise" with a roof that could be rolled back in summer for dancing under the stars. The decor consisted of leatherette, rattan and bamboo coverings on the walls, heavy draperies, and dark blue satin canopies and covering on ceilings. Support columns in the main dining area were made to look like palm trees, with light fixtures made to look like coconuts. The theme was continued in the basement Melody Lounge, with what little light there was provided by palm tree light fixtures.

Background
The "Grove" had become one of Boston's most popular nightspots, featuring a restaurant and dancing in the main area, floor shows, and piano-playing entertainers in the Melody Lounge. Visiting movie stars and singers would have their entry announced by the maître d'. The "Caricature Bar" featured renditions of the establishment's prominent guests. The club had expanded eastward with the new Broadway Lounge, which opened onto adjacent Broadway between Piedmont Street (south side) and Shawmut Street (north side).

Wall coverings and decorative materials had been approved on the basis of tests for ordinary ignition, which showed resistance to combustion from sources such as matches and cigarettes. Decorative cloth was purportedly treated with fire retardant ammonium sulfate upon installation, but there was no documentation that the treatment was maintained at the required intervals. The air-conditioning freon refrigerant had been replaced with the flammable gas methyl chloride because of a wartime shortage.

On the day of the fire College of the Holy Cross football team beat Boston College, causing the Boston College celebration party scheduled for the Cocoanut Grove that evening to be canceled. Mayor Tobin, a Boston College fan, also canceled his plans to go to the Grove. Female impersonator Arthur Blake was a headlining act that night. It is estimated that more than 1,000 people were crammed into the space rated for a maximum of 460. On the night of the fire Welansky was recovering from a heart attack in a private room at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

Fire
Official reports state that the fire started at about 10:15 pm in the Melody Lounge. Goody Goodelle, a young pianist and singer, was performing on a revolving stage surrounded by artificial palm trees. The lounge was lit by low-powered light bulbs in coconut-styled sconces beneath the fronds. A young man, possibly a soldier, had unscrewed a light bulb in order to give himself and his date privacy while kissing. Stanley Tomaszewski, a 16-year-old busboy, was instructed to put the light back on by tightening the bulb. He stepped up onto a chair to reach the light in the darkened corner. Unable to see the bulb, he lit a match to illuminate the area, tightened the bulb, and extinguished the match. Witnesses first saw flames in the fronds, which were just below the ceiling, immediately afterward. Though the lit match had been close to the same fronds where the fire was seen to have begun, the official report determined that Tomaszewski's actions could not be found to be the source of the fire, which "will be entered into the records of this department as being of unknown origin."

Despite waiters' efforts to douse the fire with water, it spread along the fronds of the palm tree decoration. In a final desperate attempt to separate the burning fronds from the fabric-covered false ceiling, the decoration was pulled away from the corner, taking with it a triangular plywood panel at the ceiling level and opening the enclosed space above the false ceiling. The fire then spread to the false ceiling which burned rapidly, showering patrons with sparks and burning shreds of fabric. Flames raced up the stairway to the main level, with embers landing on patrons fleeing up the stairs. A fireball burst through the front entryway and spread through the remaining club areas: through the adjacent Caricature Bar, down a corridor to the Broadway Lounge, and across the central restaurant and dance floor as the orchestra was beginning its evening show. Flames raced faster than patrons could move, followed by thick clouds of smoke. Within five minutes, flames and smoke had spread to the entire nightclub. Some patrons were instantly overcome by smoke as they sat in their seats. Others crawled through the smoky darkness, trying to find exits, all but one of which were either non-functioning or hidden in non-public areas.

Many patrons attempted to exit through the main entrance, the same way they had entered. The building's main entrance was a single revolving door, which was rendered useless as the crowd stampeded in panic. Bodies piled up behind both sides of the revolving door, jamming it until it broke. The oxygen-hungry fire then leaped through the breach, incinerating whoever was left alive in the pile. Firemen had to douse the flames to approach the door.

Other avenues of escape were similarly useless; side doors had been bolted shut to prevent people from leaving without paying. A plate glass window, which could have been smashed for escape, was boarded up and unusable as an emergency exit. Other unlocked doors, like the ones in the Broadway Lounge, opened inwards, rendering them useless against the crush of people trying to escape. Fire officials would later testify that had the doors swung outwards, at least 300 lives could have been spared.

From nearby bars, soldiers and sailors raced to assist. On the street, firefighters lugged out bodies and were treated for burned hands. As night deepened, the temperature dropped. Water on cobblestone pavements froze over, and hoses were fused to the ground. Newspaper trucks were appropriated as ambulances. Smoldering bodies, living and dead, were hosed in icy water. Some victims had breathed fumes so hot that when they inhaled cold air, as one firefighter put it, they dropped like stones.

Later, during the cleanup of the building, firefighters found several dead guests sitting in their seats with drinks in their hands. They had been overcome so quickly by fire and toxic smoke that they had not had time to move.

Victims and escapees
Boston newspapers were filled with lists of the dead and stories of narrow escapes. Well-known film actor Buck Jones was at the club that night, and his wife later explained that he had initially escaped and then gone back into the burning building to find his agent, producer Scott R. Dunlap of Monogram Pictures. However, Jones was discovered slumped under his table severely burned, so some doubted accounts of his escape. Although rushed to hospital, Jones died of his injuries two days later. Dunlap, who was hosting a party at the nightclub in honor of Jones, was seriously injured but survived.

Staff at the Cocoanut Grove fared better in escaping than customers, owing to their familiarity with service areas, where the fire's effects were less severe than in the public areas, and which provided access to additional window and door exits. A double door opposite the public entryway to the main dining room was unlocked by wait staff and became the only functional outside exit from public areas. Although several members of the band died, including musical director Bernie Fazioli, most of them escaped backstage and through a service door that they rammed open. Alpert escaped out of a basement window and was credited with leading several people to safety. Bassist Jack Lesberg went on to play music with Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Leonard Bernstein, and many others until shortly before his death in 2005.

Cashier Jeanette Lanzoni, entertainer Goody Goodelle, three bartenders and other employees and patrons in the Melody Lounge escaped into the kitchen. Bartender Daniel Weiss survived by dousing a cloth napkin with a pitcher of water and breathing through it as he made his escape from the Melody Lounge. Those in the kitchen had escape routes through a window above a service bar and up a stairway to another window and a service door that was eventually rammed open. Five people survived by taking refuge in a walk-in refrigerator and a few more in an icebox. Rescuers reached the kitchen after about ten minutes.

Coast Guardsman Clifford Johnson went back inside the building no fewer than four times in search of his date who, unbeknownst to him, had safely escaped. Johnson suffered extensive third-degree burns over 55% of his body but survived the disaster, becoming the most severely burned person to survive his injuries to date. After 21 months in a hospital and several hundred operations, he married his nurse and returned to his home state of Missouri. Fourteen years later he burned to death in a fiery automobile crash.

The Cocoanut Grove fire was the second-deadliest single-building fire in American history; only the 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago had a higher death toll, of 602. The Grove fire occurred only two years after the Rhythm Club fire which had killed 209.

Investigations
An official report revealed that the Cocoanut Grove had been inspected by a captain in the Boston Fire Department (BFD) just ten days before the fire and declared safe. Further, it was found that the Grove had not obtained any licenses for operation for several years; there were no food handlers' permits and no liquor licenses. Stanley Tomaszewski, the busboy who had allegedly started the fire, was underage and should not have been working there. Moreover, the recent remodeling of the Broadway Lounge had been done without building permits, using unlicensed contractors.

Tomaszewski testified at the inquiry and was exonerated, as he was not responsible for the flammable decorations or the life safety code violations. He was nevertheless ostracized for much of his life because of the fire. Tomaszewski died in 1994.

The BFD investigated possible causes of ignition, the rapid spread of the fire and the catastrophic loss of life. Its report reached no conclusion as to the initial cause of ignition but attributed the rapid, gaseous spread of the fire to a buildup of carbon monoxide gas from oxygen-deprived combustion in the enclosed space above the false ceiling of the Melody Lounge. The gas exuded from enclosed spaces as its temperature rose and ignited rapidly as it mixed with oxygen above the entryway, up the stairway to the main floor and along ceilings. The fire accelerated as the stairway created a thermal draft, and the high-temperature gas fire ignited pyroxylin (leatherette) wall and ceiling covering in the foyer, which in turn exuded flammable gas. The report also documented the fire safety code violations, flammable materials and door designs that contributed to the large loss of life.

During the 1990s, former Boston firefighter and researcher Charles Kenney discovered that a highly flammable gas refrigerant, methyl chloride, had been used as a substitute for freon, which was in short wartime supply. Kenney reported that floor plans, but not the fire investigation report, showed air-conditioning condenser units near street level on the other side of a non-structural wall from the Melody Lounge, and that these units had been serviced since the start of the war. Kenney also reported that photographic evidence indicates an origin for the fire in the wall behind the palm tree and suggested ignition of methyl chloride accelerant by an electrical failure caused by substandard wiring. Methyl chloride combustion is consistent with some aspects of the fire (reported flame colors, smell and inhalation symptoms) but requires additional explanation for ceiling-level fire as the gas is 1.7 times as dense as air.

In 2012, the BFD released the transcripts of witness interviews following the fire. Witnesses Tomaszewski, Morris Levy, Joyce Spector, David Frechtling and Jeanette Lanzoni (Volume 1) provided accounts of the ignition of the palm decoration and ceiling in the Melody Lounge. Frechtling and Lanzoni described the start of the fire as a "flash." Tomaszewski described the spread of the fire across the ceiling as like a gasoline fire. The flame front across the ceiling was faint blue, followed by brighter flames. Witness Roland Sousa (Volume 2) stated that he was initially unconcerned about the fire because, as a regular customer of the Melody Lounge, he had seen the palm tree decorations ignite before and they were always quickly put out.

Legal consequences
Barney Welansky, whose connections had allowed the nightclub to operate while in violation of the loose standards of the day, was convicted on nineteen counts of manslaughter (nineteen victims were randomly selected to represent the dead). He was sentenced to 12–15 years in prison in 1943. Welansky served nearly four years before being quietly pardoned by Tobin, who had been elected governor of Massachusetts since the fire. In December 1946, ill with cancer, Welansky was released from Norfolk Prison and told reporters, "I wish I'd died with the others in the fire." He died nine weeks after his release.

In the year that followed the fire, Massachusetts and other states enacted laws for public establishments banning flammable decorations and inward-swinging exit doors, and requiring exit signs to be visible at all times (meaning that the exit signs had to have independent sources of electricity and be easily readable in even the thickest smoke). The new laws also required that revolving doors used for egress must either be flanked by at least one normal, outward-swinging door, or retrofitted to permit the individual door leaves to fold flat to permit free-flowing traffic in a panic situation, and further required that no emergency exits be chained or bolted shut in such a way as to bar escape through the doors during a panic or emergency situation. Jack Thomas of The Boston Globe wrote in his front page 50th-anniversary article "the Licensing Board ruled that no Boston establishment could call itself the Cocoanut Grove." There has never been another Cocoanut Grove in Boston.

Commissions were established by several states that would levy heavy fines or even shut down establishments for infractions of any of these laws. These later became the basis for several federal fire laws and code restrictions placed on nightclubs, theaters, banks, public buildings, and restaurants across the nation. It also led to the formation of several national organizations dedicated to fire safety.

Medical treatment
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Boston City Hospital (BCH) received the majority (83%) of the victims from the fire; other Boston area hospitals received a total of about thirty patients: Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Beth Israel Hospital, Cambridge City Hospital, Kenmore Hospital, Faulkner Hospital, St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Malden Hospital, Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, Carney Hospital, and St. Margaret's Hospital. MGH took 114 burn and smoke inhalation victims, and BCH received over 300. It was estimated that one casualty arrived at BCH every eleven seconds, the greatest influx of patients to any civilian hospital in history. Both hospitals were unusually well-prepared, as medical facilities all along the eastern seaboard had drawn up emergency plans in preparation for attacks against the East Coast. Boston had carried out a city-wide drill only a week earlier, simulating a Luftwaffe bombing assault, with over 300 mock casualties. At MGH, a special store of emergency supplies had been stockpiled. The fire caught both hospitals at change of shift, so that a double complement of nursing and support staff was available, in addition to volunteers who flocked to the hospitals as word spread of the disaster.

Nonetheless, most patients died en route to the hospitals or shortly after arrival. Because no standardized system for triage yet existed in civilian mass casualty management in the U.S., precious minutes were initially wasted in attempts to revive those who were dead or dying, until teams were dispatched to select the living for treatment and direct the dead to be taken to temporary mortuaries. By Sunday morning, November 29, only 132 patients out of the 300 transported to BCH were still alive, whereas at MGH, 75 of the 114 victims had died, leaving 39 surviving patients in treatment. Of a total of 444 burn victims hospitalized after the fire, only 130 survived.

One of the first administrative decisions made at MGH was to clear the general surgery ward on the sixth floor of the White Building and devote it entirely to victims of the fire. All victims were housed there; strict medical isolation was maintained, and a part of the ward was set aside for dressing changes and wound care. Teams of nurses and orderlies were organized for administration of morphine, wound care, and respiratory treatments.

Prior to the fire, in April 1942, MGH had established one of the area's first blood banks, and had stocked it with 200 units of dried plasma as part of preparations for the war. A total of 147 units of plasma were used in treating 29 patients at MGH. At BCH, where the Office of Civilian Defense had stored 500 units of plasma for wartime use, 98 patients received a total of 693 units of plasma, which included plasma donated by Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the United States Navy and the American Red Cross. The volume of plasma used in treating victims of the fire surpassed that used during the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the days following the fire, 1,200 people donated over 3,800 units of blood to the blood bank.

Most survivors were discharged by the end of 1942; however, a few patients required months of intensive care. In April 1943, the last survivor from MGH was discharged. At BCH, the last casualty, a woman from Dorchester, died in May after five months of treatment for severe burns and internal injuries. Hospitals rendering service chose not to charge any of the patients for treatment. The Red Cross provided financial aid to both public and private hospitals. This was especially helpful to BCH, given its enormous influx of patients.

Advances in the care of burn victims
The fire led to new ways of caring for both burns and smoke inhalation. The team at BCH was directed by Dr. Charles Lund as senior surgeon and Dr. Newton Browder. In 1944, Lund and Browder, drawing upon their experiences in treating Cocoanut Grove victims, published the most widely cited paper in modern burn care, "Estimation of the Areas of Burns", in which a diagram for estimating burn size are presented. This diagram, called the Lund and Browder chart, remains in use throughout the world today.

Fluid therapy
Surgeons Francis Daniels Moore and Oliver Cope at MGH pioneered fluid resuscitation techniques for the burn victims, noting that the majority of patients suffered from severe hemorrhagic tracheobronchitis because of "prolonged inhalation of the very hot air and fumes which presumably contained many toxic products...and, in addition, numerous hot particles of fine carbon or similar substances." At the time, infusions of saline alone were thought to "wash out" plasma proteins and increase the risk of pulmonary edema. Accordingly, patients at MGH were given a solution of equal parts of plasma and saline solution, based on the extent of their cutaneous burns, while at BCH, patients with respiratory injuries were given fluids as needed.

Careful evaluations showed no evidence of pulmonary edema, and Finland's studies at BCH concluded that "the fluids seemed to produce obvious improvement in most instances without any apparent adverse effect on the respiratory system." This experience stimulated further studies of burn shock, leading to a 1947 publication by Cope and Moore of the first comprehensive formula for fluid therapy based on a calculation of the total surface area of burn wounds and the volume of urine and liquids that had been wrung out of patients’ bedsheets.

Burn care
The standard surface burn treatment in use at the time was the so-called "tanning process" involving the application of a solution of tannic acid, which created a leathery scab over the wound that protected against the invasion of bacteria and prevented the loss of bodily fluids. This was a time-consuming process that subjected the patient to agonizing pain because of the scrubbing procedure required before the application of the chemical dyes.

At MGH, burns were treated with a new technique pioneered by Cope and refined by Bradford Cannon: soft gauze covered with petroleum jelly and boric acid ointment. Patients were kept on a closed ward, and meticulous sterile technique was used in all patient care activities. A month later, at BCH 40 of the initial 132 survivors had died, mostly from complications from their burns; at MGH none of the 39 initial survivors died from their burns (seven died from other causes ). As a result, the use of tannic acid as a treatment for burns was phased out as the standard.

Antibiotics
At MGH, intravenous sulfadiazine (a drug which had only been approved for use in the U.S. in 1941 ) was given to all patients as part of their initial treatment. At BCH, 76 patients received sulfonamides for an average of 11 days. Thirteen survivors of the fire were also among the first humans to be treated with penicillin. In early December Merck and Company rushed a 32-liter supply of the drug in the form of culture liquid in which the Penicillium mold had been grown, from Rahway, New Jersey, to Boston. These patients received 5,000 IU (roughly 2.99 mg) every four hours, a small dose by today's standards, but at the time antibiotic resistance was rare, and most strains of Staphylococcus aureus were penicillin-sensitive. The drug was crucial in preventing infections in skin grafts. According to the British Medical Journal:

"Though bacteriological studies showed that most of the burns were infected, the second-degree burns healed without clinical evidence of infection and with minimal scarring. The deep burns remained unusually free of invasive infection."

As a result of the success of penicillin in preventing infections, the U.S. government decided to support the production and the distribution of penicillin to the armed forces.

Psychological trauma
Erich Lindemann, an MGH psychiatrist, studied the survivors of the dead and published what has become a classic paper, "Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief", read at the Centenary Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1944.

At the same time Lindemann was laying the foundation for the study of grief and dysfunctional grieving, Alexandra Adler conducted psychiatric observations and questionnaires over eleven months with more than 500 survivors of the fire, publishing some of the earliest research on post-traumatic stress disorder. More than half of the survivors exhibited symptoms of general nervousness and anxiety which lasted at least three months. Survivors who lost consciousness for a short period of time during the incident exhibited the most post-traumatic mental complications. Adler noted that 54% of survivors treated at BCH and 44% of those at MGH exhibited "post-traumatic neuroses", and that a majority of the survivors' friends and family members showed signs of "emotional upset that attained proportions of a major psychiatric condition and needed trained intervention." Adler also discovered one survivor with a lasting brain lesion who presented symptoms of visual agnosia, most likely caused by exposure to carbon monoxide fumes, other noxious gases and/or a lack of sufficient oxygen.

Former site and memorial
After the Cocoanut Grove complex was torn down in 1944, the street map of the vicinity changed by urban renewal, with nearby streets being renamed or built over. The nightclub address was 17 Piedmont Street, in the Bay Village neighborhood near downtown Boston. For decades after the fire, this address was used as a parking lot. Much of the club's former footprint, including what was the main entrance, now lies under the Revere Hotel; only a portion of the club extended out to Shawmut Street. The surviving section of Shawmut Street, and a newer extension cutting through what was the club's original footprint, formerly known as Shawmut Street Extension, were renamed Cocoanut Grove Lane in 2013. In 2015, several condominium residences were constructed on the site and designated as 25 Piedmont Street.

In 1993, the Bay Village Neighborhood Association installed a memorial plaque in the sidewalk—crafted by Anthony P. Marra, youngest survivor of the Cocoanut Grove fire—next to the location where the club formerly stood:

In memory of the more than 490 people who died in the Cocoanut Grove fire on November 28, 1942. As a result of that terrible tragedy, major changes were made in the fire codes, and improvements in the treatment of burn victims, not only in Boston but across the nation. "Phoenix out of the Ashes"

The plaque has been moved several times to some controversy. A committee was formed to build a more substantial memorial.

On November 26, 2023, groundbreaking was held in Boston's Statler Park, near Piedmont Street, for an 18 x memorial, scheduled to be completed by September 2024. It will contain 492 granite bricks, each with a victim's name inscribed.

title: Cocoanut Grove fire


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Zond program

Zond (Зонд) was the name given to two distinct series of Soviet robotic spacecraft launched between 1964 and 1970. The first series, based on the 3MV planetary probe, was intended to gather information about nearby planets.

The second series of test spacecraft was intended as a precursor to remote-controlled robotic circumlunar loop flights, using a stripped-down variant of Soyuz spacecraft, consisting of the service and descent modules, but lacking the orbital module.

Two tortoises and other lifeforms aboard Zond 5 were the first terrestrial organisms to travel around the Moon and return to Earth.

Missions based on the 3MV planetary probe

The first three missions were based on the model 3MV planetary probe, intended to explore Venus and Mars. After two failures, Zond 3 was sent on a test mission, becoming the second spacecraft to photograph the far side of the Moon (after Luna 3). It then continued out to the orbit of Mars in order to test telemetry and spacecraft systems.

Circumlunar missions
The missions Zond 4 through Zond 8 were test flights for the Soviet Moonshot during the Moon race. The Soyuz 7K-L1 (also mentioned just as L1) spacecraft was used for the Moon-aimed missions, stripped down to make it possible to launch around the Moon from the Earth. They were launched on the Proton rocket which was just powerful enough to send the Zond on a free return trajectory around the Moon without going into lunar orbit (the same kind of path flown by Apollo 13 in its emergency abort). With minor modification, Zond was capable of carrying two cosmonauts.

In the beginning, there were serious reliability problems with both the new Proton rocket and the similarly new Soyuz spacecraft, but the test flights pressed ahead with some glitches. The majority of test flights from 1967 to 1970 (Zond 4 to Zond 8) showed problems during re-entry.

The Zond spacecraft made only uncrewed automatic flights. Four of these suffered malfunctions that would have injured or killed any crew. Instrumentation flown on these missions gathered data on micrometeor flux, solar and cosmic rays, magnetic fields, radio emissions, and solar wind. Many photographs were taken and biological payloads were also flown.

3MV planetary probe based missions

 * Zond 1
 * Launched 2 April 1964
 * Communications lost 14 May 1964
 * Venus flyby 14 July 1964
 * Zond 2
 * Launched 30 November 1964
 * Communications lost May 1965
 * Mars flyby 6 August 1965
 * Zond 3
 * Launched 18 July 1965
 * Lunar Flyby 20 July 1965
 * Communications lost 3 March 1966

Soyuz 7K-L1/L1S test missions

 * Kosmos 146
 * Launched 10 March 1967
 * Prototype Soyuz 7K-L1P launched by Proton into planned highly elliptical Earth orbit.
 * Kosmos 154
 * Launched 8 April 1967
 * Prototype Soyuz 7K-L1P launched by Proton and failed to go into a planned translunar trajectory.
 * Zond 1967A
 * Launched 28 September 1967
 * Fell off course 60 seconds after launch. Escape tower took the Zond capsule safely away. The rocket crashed 65 km downrange.
 * Attempted Lunar flyby
 * Zond 1967B
 * Launched 22 November 1967
 * Second stage failure. The Zond capsule was safely recovered. The rocket crashed 300 km downrange.
 * Attempted Lunar flyby
 * Zond 4
 * Launched 2 March 1968
 * Study of remote regions of circumterrestrial space, development of new on-board systems and units of space stations.
 * Returned to Earth 7 March 1968 – Self destruct system automatically blew up the capsule at 10 to 15 km altitude, 180 - 200 km off the African coast at Guinea.
 * Zond 1968A
 * Launched 23 April 1968
 * Second stage failed 260 seconds after launch.
 * Attempted Lunar flyby
 * Zond 1968B (Zond 7K-L1 s/n 8L)
 * Launched 21 July 1968
 * Block D stage exploded on the pad, killing three people.
 * Zond 5
 * Launched 15 September 1968
 * Circumlunar 18 September 1968
 * Returned to Earth 21 September 1968
 * A biological payload of two Russian tortoises, wine flies, meal worms, plants, seeds, bacteria, and other living matter was included in the flight and were the first Earth lifeforms to travel around the Moon and return safely.
 * The first spacecraft to circle the Moon and return to land on Earth.
 * Zond 6
 * Launched 10 November 1968
 * Circumlunar 14 November 1968
 * Returned to Earth 17 November 1968
 * Zond 1969A
 * Launched 20 January 1969
 * Stage two shut down 25 seconds early. Automatic flight abort. The capsule was safely recovered.
 * Attempted Lunar flyby
 * Zond L1S-1
 * Launched 21 February 1969
 * First stage failure. The capsule escape system fired 70 seconds after launch. The capsule was recovered.
 * Attempted Lunar orbiter and N1 rocket test
 * Zond L1S-2
 * Launched 3 July 1969
 * First stage failure. The Zond capsule was recovered.
 * Attempted Lunar orbiter and N1 rocket test
 * Zond 7
 * Launched 7 August 1969
 * Lunar flyby 11 August 1969
 * Returned to Earth 14 August 1969
 * Zond 8
 * Launched 20 October 1970
 * Lunar flyby 24 October 1970
 * Returned to Earth 27 October 1970
 * Zond 9
 * Planned but cancelled. Planned for July 1969, carrying a crew of Pavel Popovich and Vitali Sevastyanov, but never flew.
 * Zond 10
 * Planned but cancelled

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Zond program


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Talk:First-rate

These should maybe be "first rate", without the hyphen. I don't know of a rule, noun vs adjective or whatever, but usage seems to lean more towards omitting the hyphen. Stan Shebs 18:38 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

The article claims the lowest deck was useless in all but the calmest weather. That would be true when attacking (from windward), but surely the lowest deck would often be usable when defending against a windward attacker because the heel of the ships would then be favourable? The article also claims that "first-rate" meaning "excellent" derives from "first-rate ship". Is that really so? Gdr 19:06, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

 * Ship bobs up and down, and likely needs to turn at various angles to the wind, plus the heel would only raise the gunports by a couple feet. It would be an exceedingly bold captain who would run the risk of being swamped, especially with the admiral glaring at him. Etymology of "first-rate" as an adjective is attested by OED - in fact the first references in literature begin appearing within a couple decades of the introduction of the rating system. OED reports without attempting to explain, but one can imagine captains at parties and balls bragging or complaining about the rate of ship they got, and sharp-eared wits picking up on it, just as today's writers use computer slang for their own purposes. Stan 21:09, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

First paragraph is navigational aid
Please do not remove the first paragraph as it functions as a quick navigational aid to the other articles in this series. Thank you. Petersam 03:50, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Statistics
I have a source here (The Wooden World by N.A.M. Rodger) which says that (in the Georgian Navy at least), first rates carried 90 guns or more, had complements from 780 men and had tonnages from 1,800 tons. However, I can see that the round figures are more dramatically powerful, and will understand if someone reverts my edits. --David.Mestel 14:06, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

David, the problem is that whoever wrote the original articles had a poor knowledge of the history of the Rating System. The numbered Rates were established in 1625 or 1626 (the exact date is unrecorded), not in 1670 as this article suggests (the amendments I have put into the main article on the Rating System gives more details of the history) and the basis for the rating changed over the years. By the time of the Georgian era, certainly all First Rates had 100 guns or more. By this time, too, ships of 90 or 98 guns were clearly classed as Second Rates. But if you look back to the Restoration era (1660-1688), First Rates had as few as 90 guns. Might I refer you to my series of volumes on "British Warships in the Age of Sail" for a more detailed response. Rif Winfield (talk) 16:27, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Capitalisation
It has become apparent that the words "first rate", "second rate", etc have become capitalised over the last year or so. This seems to me to directly contradict the guidance at Manual of Style (capital letters), and I have changed them back again. To clarify, if we were talking about frigates, we would use lower case, because it's not a proper noun; "first rate" is exactly analogous. The usage on Category:Set indices on ships follows the lower case usage almost exclusively, as far as I can tell. Please address any concerns here before making wholesale changes back again.

On another note, some of the hyphenation has been rather patchy. Adjectival use will require a hyphen (first-rate ship) but when used as a noun (first rate), it does not. Again, I've made the changes were I've spotted the need.

Apologies if I've missed any or introduced any errors, since we all err from time to time. Shem (talk) 22:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

 * Shem, I have to say that I totally disagree with your action, as I have stated on Acad's userpage. I feel that you have grossly distorted the Wiki pages dealing with the rating system, and made the rating system much more difficult to understand for the lay reader. Having carefully looked at the Wikipedia guidance (and it is "guidance", mark you, not "regulation"), this clearly states that the writer should take the cultural and linguistic context into account. By removing the capitals you have made it appear that the wording is being used as an adjective. I must make clear also that the hyphen is out of place when referring to the Rate of a ship. In fact, its use is always as a noun, and if the word "ship" appears afterwards that extra word is a tautology. Rif Winfield (talk) 21:01, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Rif, firstly may I make it clear how much weight your opinion holds with me; for this reason it is surprising to find that we are diametrically opposed on this issue. Let me lay out the reasons clearly here:
 * Wikipedia is a 21st century encyclopaedia read by 21st century readers; it follows contemporary rules of grammar, spelling and capitalisation. Historic spellings or capitalisations have no bearing on the way we write here - the article on Chaucer does not use Middle English, not does the article on Shakespeare employ blank verse, except where quoted.
 * "First rate" is the name of a type of ship, like "frigate" or "destroyer". It is not a proper noun, and therefore it ought not to be capitalised.
 * The Manual of Style is quite clear on the issue of capitalisation; and if you go to Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters), you will find that it says "the words for types of military unit (army, navy, fleet, company, etc.) do not require capitalization if they do not appear in a proper name".
 * You're misquoting the MOS when you say "the writer should take the cultural and linguistic context into account". The full quote (under the capitalisation sub heading) is "There are differences between the major varieties of English in the use of capitals (uppercase letters). Where this is an issue, the rules and conventions of the cultural and linguistic context apply." The major variety of English used in this article is British English, and the use of capitals in British English does not allow for a non-proper noun like "first rate" to be capitalised.
 * You say "its use is always as a noun, and if the word "ship" appears afterwards that extra word is a tautology". This is not correct; we talk of fifth-rate frigates (in contrast to sixth-rate frigates) and first-rate ships-of-the-line. Here the term is used adjectivally, and thus needs to be hyphenated (when so used).
 * I am applying the principles laid down in the MoS, and will revert your capitalisation of these terms unless consensus is reached here that an exception should be made for such terms. I'll publicise this talk at WikiShips, and see if we can't get a wider range of opinion. Yours, with the greatest respect, Shem (talk) 07:41, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Gentlemen (I presume sex and acknowledge manifest behavior), As you (Shem) know, I agree with Rif on this. I looked up "Term of art" in Wikipedia, which redirects to Technical language. My position is that "First Rate" is a Term of art or technical language, as the lawyers would put it, and so usage should follow the field. I take Shem's point about Wikipedia being a 21st Century resource, but an encyclopedia's job is to inform and educate, and in this case we can educate people reading about naval warfare in the Age of Sail to the usages of that period, especially when doing so reduces ambiguity, removes redundancy (e.g., Second Rate ship-of-the-line; ship-of-the-line being redundant, as Rif has pointed out), and provides insight into the evolution of language. Incidentally, when I went to the Glossary of nautical terms the Rates were missing. They do show up in Category:Nautical terms, but there they are isolated under the sub-category of Rating system of the Royal Navy. Even worse, Wiktionary uses "first-rate" to describe all three uses: noun (i.e., First Rate), noun used as an adjective (e.g., Fifth Rate frigate), and adjective used to describe the quality of something (second-rate First Rate). If we accept Rif's point about redundancy, and I do now that he has pointed it out, we should remove most/almost all cases of the use of the noun as an adjective. Regards, Acad Ronin (talk) 15:31, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There are several relevant usage trends here, and I don't know how to balance them. First, how do you alert the reader that a phrase that usually has one meaning is being used in a different sense? Capitals aren't the "correct" way to do this, but they're used for just this purpose sometimes, including in the New Yorker and the New York Times. Second, I never criticize people when they leave out "required" hyphens, because the trend towards self-publishing means that there are fewer hyphens year by year, including in the most carefully copyedited American publications. Although I support the basic position at WP:MOS that Wikipedia wants to stick to a slightly old-fashioned view of hyphen usage, because it's so much easier to learn and apply and because our writers are often reading sources that are older, it's impossible to know the precise point in time that it has become "okay" to omit a certain hyphen. - Dank (push to talk) 16:40, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. I realize this article is British English, but I generally aim to copyedit so that the text makes sense to as many readers as possible. - Dank (push to talk) 16:44, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The subject of hyphenation isn't really the issue here (it's clearly explained at MOS) - what we're most interested in is the issue of capitalisation. Shem (talk)

 * The rates as used on wikipedia are not proper nouns, and therefore their capitalisation is unusual in modern English usage, though it does appear to be fairly common in scholarly works. The OED has examples of contemporary usage of both capitalised and uncapitalised terms, both as a noun and as an adjective, suggesting that even during the period usage varied and was not standardised. The OED itself uses the uncapitalised form for both types, in common with the modern English usage of not capitalising nouns which are not proper nouns, unlike historical usage where capitalisation of common nouns was widespread to the point where practically every noun, proper or not, was capitalised. This practice died out centuries ago though. I disagree with the statement that 'fifth rate frigate' for example indicates a redundancy, as it would only do so if 'fifth rate' were synonymous with 'frigate'. As the two are not, and the term 'fifth rate frigate' can give greater understanding and meaning to readers unfamiliar to rating systems and warship types, the phrase should not be changed out of hand. Benea (talk) 16:31, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Benea, nice work. I just want to add that if you guys decide to go without capitals, I don't think we can count on our readers to click on the link the first time "first rate" or "second rate" shows up in an article because they may think they know what the term means since it already has a common meaning, so a little more explanation is needed, something like: the blah-blah, designated "first rate" (one of the largest ships of the line), was ... - Dank (push to talk) 18:29, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Benea, apologies for reverting HMS Ethalion without explaining first. Mea culpa, but I just didn't notice. That said, I must say that I agree with Rif and disagree with you re redundancy. All Fifth Rates are frigates, so Fifth Rate frigate is redundant. Frigate of the Fifth Rate would not be redundant, but it would feel a little clumsy. As far as Sixth Rates are concerned, some are frigates and some are post ships. In all these cases I have found that that in the initial paragraph formulas such as, "...was a 38-gun Artois-class Fifth Rate. Tom Smith built this frigate for the Royal Navy ...", or "...was a 24-gun X-class post ship. Tom Smith built this ship..." have the nice properties of removing the redundancy, providing most of the explanation, and reducing use of the passive voice. I believe Dank is correct in worrying that using the adjective fifth-rate (or even the noun Fifth Rate adjectively) leads one to infer that the quality of the vessel was somehow deficient. This would be especially the case for the formula, "second-rate ship of the line". Regards, Acad Ronin (talk) 01:03, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Acad, after a little thought, and Benea's comments, it is apparent that not all fifth rates were frigates. The term "fifth rate" emerged in about 1640, but the frigate did not develop until about 1750. Therefore it is quite possible for a fifth rate not to be a frigate. As you know, some sixth rates were also frigates, so it is clear that the term fifth-rate frigate has an exclusive meaning not fully explained by either "fifth rate" or "frigate". Shem (talk) 11:12, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Shem, Good point. I had forgotten about the two-decker Fifth Rates. However, the formula, "...was a Fifth Rate. This two-decker..." can handle this situation and avoids using the Rate as an adjective and hence the ambiguity between Second Rate and the quality second-rate. Now, unless I have overlooked something, which is always possible, all post ships are Sixth Rates, so sixth-rate post ship is redundant. The formula "...was a Sixth Rate. This frigate..." handles the case of frigates that were of the Sixth Rate quite adequately. Regards, Acad Ronin (talk) 18:54, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I honestly think there is no value in changing fifth-rate frigate and the like to avoid "confusion", especially where you're changing sixth rate to "post ship", which will mean something quite different to the uneducated reader. On the subject of capitalisation, I see no change from last week's position, which is that your edits are not in accordance with the MoS - except that Benea has pointed out that the OED uses the lower case form. I think it's time to come round to the "house style" and concentrate on writing new articles rather than spending hours of your time modifying old ones to little or no benefit. Think of it like this - if I change "Fifth rate" or "Fifth Rate" to "fifth rate", citing the MoS, on what grounds will you revert me? Yours, Shem (talk) 13:42, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Shem, I too prefer writing new articles. What I have been doing is going back over my contributions and tidying them up to make them clearer, simpler, non-redundant, and in the active voice. As for the issue of capitalization, the house style is a suggestion that acknowledges Terms of Art. Given that currently the vote is two vehemently for capitalization (Rif and I), vs one vehemently for the house style, and one supportive, I do not see a consensus around one approach or the other. I have stopped reverting your changes (i.e., I am not changing the uncapped version of the rate to the capped version), and will hew to that. However, I would ask that you tolerate my capped versions. Can we agree to disagree? Regards, Acad Ronin (talk) 14:13, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * PS: this disagreement aside, I appreciate your clean-up of my contributions. As I have mentioned before, after working on an article I just stop seeing the extra word or the missing paren. Proofing does require a fresh eye and I am glad when you provide it.Acad Ronin (talk) 14:17, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

 * As far as agreeing to disagree, in this case I don't think it will work. What we have is an accepted style as supported by the MOS on the grounds of capitalising nouns. We still need to have a common approach to formatting of these articles, what there is is no consensus to change from the uncapitalised style to introduce capitals, nor is there one for removing the term frigate or ship of the line from opening sentences on the grounds that they are redundant when paired with the rate. Given that there is no consensus, this majority usage should remain. Developing an alternative style with sufficient reason to cause capitalisation and use of terms to jump around dramatically depending on what article a user is reading will require considerable consensus. Benea (talk) 14:32, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm with Benea all the way; a consensus already exists, laid down clearly in the MoS as far as capitalisation is concerned. Rif & Acad, for all their "vehemence" do not constitute a consensus (let alone a considerable consensus) against the current usage. Benea also rightly notes that removing terms such as "frigate" and "ship-of-the-line" from opening lines of articles also has no support, and I think we would breathe a sigh of relief if it were to cease. Shem (talk) 17:27, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * One possible solution that might meet everybody's approval can be seen at HMS Belvidera (1809). It has the advantage of being in accordance with the MoS, reducing confusion to zero and keeping a full description. I like it - but then I would, since I wrote it. Please consider. Shem (talk) 22:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I looked at HMS Belvidera. What you did sort of works, but requires substantial effort to implement. When I get back in early July I will look at the pages the individual ratings connect to and think about whether there is a better way of using the original link (e.g. first rate). Acad Ronin (talk) 15:12, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I have a copy of a book dated 1832 by John Edye, reagarding the rating system of that time. He does capatilize First Rate, and does not hyphenite it. The headings on the tables are First Rate, Second Rate, Third Rate, Forth (Razee), Forth Rate, Fifth Rate, The Razee Corvette, 6th Rate, Sloop, Sloop Brig, Schooneer and Cutter. He also has a 52 and 46 gun frigate listed between Razee and Razee Corvette. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.8.196.93 (talk) 20:22, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * But Wikipedia does not capitalise these words - see WP:MOSCAPS. As for the hyphenation, I agree that this article should be at the unhyphenated form. Do you fancy starting a move request? Shem (talk) 20:48, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I realize this is an old discussion, but I only just found it. My vote is heavily in favor of Rif in that I believe capitalizing things like "First-Rate" is very much to the benefit of the reader. I do not believe it is mandatory for all articles to follow the MoS. Furthermore, allowance for exceptions is always necessary for any type of guideline. --Trifler (talk) 06:34, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Other usage
As it now stands, there is nothing in the article that refers to the most common usage of the term "first-rate", which means of high quality and has no reference to a former naval vessel. Is there somewhere a verifiable reference to this term being of naval origin? This would seem to be important to the article if verifiable, especially since "second-rate" and "third-rate" mention the modern usage of the terms and their context of inferior quality. 75.200.37.120 (talk) 04:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Good point; sorted. Shem (talk) 14:52, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

80 guns minimum
The page on the HMS Royal Charles indicates it was a first-rate ship, but had 80 guns. The indication on this page, that a first-rate ship needs to have at least 100 guns is therefore incorrect. Or the number on the page of the HMS Royal Charles is incorrect, but since that is a more specific number, I'm assuming that one is correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.18.168.219 (talk) 13:59, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

poor description of first-rate's usability
The article states "There was also too little storage space to stow provisions for long voyages, and the ships themselves routinely proved unseaworthy in winter weather. As a consequence the first-rates were restricted to summer cruising, and then only in the English Channel and nearby waters". This would undoubtably be surprising news to Admiral Nelson, who sailed HMS Victory from Toulon to the West Indies, back to Portugal, to England, and back to Portugal to fight at Trafalgar, at the end of October. I suggest those lines be removed, or at least properly qualified that they apply to first-rates of the 1600's, not those of the Napoleanic era. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:589:380:130B:0:0:0:4CF3 (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

HMS St Lawrence
The HMS St Lawrence does not "survive intact" as mentioned in this article, but instead has rotted to only the keel and ribs of its frame. The dedicated article for the HMS St Lawrence says as much, and the same is clear from videos of the wreckage. I suggest the wording is changed to reflect the actual condition of the ship. 198.208.47.92 (talk) 23:40, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:First-rate


text:
Zond 3

Zond 3 was a 1965 space probe which performed a flyby of the Moon far side, taking a number of quality photographs for its time. It was a member of the Soviet Zond program while also being part of the Mars 3MV project. It was unrelated to Zond spacecraft designed for crewed circumlunar missions (Soyuz 7K-L1). It is believed that Zond 3 was initially designed as a companion spacecraft to Zond 2 to be launched to Mars during the 1964 launch window. The opportunity to launch was missed, and the spacecraft was launched on a Mars-crossing trajectory as a spacecraft test, even though Mars was no longer attainable.

Spacecraft design
The spacecraft was of the 3MV-4 type, similar to Zond 2. In addition to a 106.4 mm focal length imaging system for visible light photography and ultraviolet spectrometry at 285-355 μm, it carried ultraviolet (190-275 μm) and infrared (3-4 μm) spectrophotometers, radiation sensors (gas-discharge and scintillation counters), charged particle detector, magnetometer, and micrometeoroid detector. It also had an experimental ion engine.

Operational history
Zond 3 was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 18, 1965, at 14:38 UTC, and was deployed from a Tyazhely Sputnik (65-056B) Earth-orbiting platform towards the Moon and interplanetary space. This was a repeat of a mission that failed in late 1963 intended to test communication at distances equivalent to the distances experienced by Mars and Earth.

Zond 3's lunar flyby occurred on July 20 with a closest approach of 9219 km, approximately after launch. 25 visible light photographs and 3 ultraviolet spectra of very good quality were taken of the lunar surface, beginning at 01:24 UTC and 11570 km prior to closest approach and ending at 02:32 UTC and 9960 km past closest approach, covering a period of 68 minutes. The photos covered 19 e6km2 of the lunar surface.

Zond 3 proceeded on a trajectory across Mars' orbit, but not at a time when planetary encounter would occur. These images were transmitted by radio frequency on July 29 at a distance of 2.25 e6km. To test telemetry, the camera film was rewound and retransmitted in mid-August, mid-September, and finally on October 23 at a distance of 31.5 e6km, thus proving the ability of the communications system. The subsequent transmissions were also at progressively slower data rates but higher quality. The mission was ended after radio contact ceased on March 3, 1966, when it was at a distance of 153.5 e6km. It operated for 228 days, roughly equivalent to the time needed to survive a journey to Mars and exceeding that needed for Venus.

title: Zond 3


text:
Zond 5

Zond 5 (Зонд 5) was a spacecraft of the Soviet Zond program. In September 1968 it became the first spaceship to travel to and circle the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory, the first Moon mission to include animals, and the first to return safely to Earth. Zond 5 carried the first terrestrial organisms to the vicinity of the Moon, including two tortoises, fruit fly eggs, and plants. The Russian tortoises underwent biological changes during the flight, but it was concluded that the changes were primarily due to starvation and that they were little affected by space travel.

The Zond spacecraft was a version of the Soyuz 7K-L1 crewed lunar-flyby spacecraft. It was launched by a Proton-K carrier rocket with a Block D upper-stage to conduct scientific studies during its lunar flyby.

Background
Out of the first four circumlunar missions launched by the Soviet Union there was one partial success, Zond 4, and three failures. After Zond 4's mission in March 1968, a follow-up, Zond 1968A, was launched on 23 April. The launch failed when an erroneous abort command shut down the Proton rocket's second stage. The escape rocket fired and pulled the descent module to safety. In July, Zond 1968B was being prepared for launch when the Block D second-stage rocket exploded on the launchpad, killing three people, but leaving the Proton first-stage booster rocket and the spacecraft itself with only minor damage.

The Zond 5 mission was originally planned to fly cosmonauts around the Moon, but the failures of Zond 1968A and Zond 1968B led the Soviets to send an uncrewed mission instead, from fear of the negative propaganda of an unsuccessful crewed flight.

Payload
Two Russian tortoises (Agrionemys horsfieldii) were included in the biological payload, weighing 0.34 – each pre-flight. Along with the tortoises, insects and micro-organisms were part of the crew. Soviet scientists chose tortoises since they were easy to tightly secure. There were also two tortoises used as control specimens and four more in a vivarium. Twelve days before launch, the two space-bound tortoises were secured in the vehicle and deprived of food and water; the control tortoises were similarly deprived. The food deprivation was a part of pathomorphological and histochemical experiments. The biological payload also included fruit fly eggs, cells of wheat, barley, pea, pine, carrots and tomatoes, specimens of the wildflower species Tradescantia paludosa, three strains of the single-celled green algae Chlorella, and one strain of lysogenic bacteria. The purpose of sending a variety of terrestrial lifeforms was to test the effect of cosmic radiation on them. However, the test subjects were not analogous to humans, because the choice of life forms were all extremophiles with a substantially higher radioresistance. The Russian Academy of Sciences stated that a mannequin equipped with radiation sensors occupied the pilot's seat.

Kazan Optical and Mechanical Plant had developed the AFA-BA/40 imager, which was installed on the spacecraft, giving it the ability to image the Earth. Zond 5 also contained proton detectors. Zond 5 could transmit some of its data back to ground stations, although data stored onboard and collected after return to Earth has less noise.

Launch and trajectory
Zond 5 launched on 14 September 1968 at 21:42.10UTC, from Site 81 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The thrust of the third-stage rocket was terminated at 160 km, which was the start of a 251-second coast. Block D, the upper-stage rocket, ignited and burned for 108 seconds, placing the spacecraft into a parking orbit of 191 by(x). Fifty-six minutes into the parking orbit the Block D fired a final time for the trans-lunar injection. After this maneuver, the launch was announced to the world. Mission Control discovered a problem with Zond 5's attitude and traced the cause to a contaminated star tracker. Heat caused some of the interior coating to outgas, which delayed an attitude correction on the way to the Moon. The maneuver was performed 325000 km from Earth using the Sun and the Earth as reference points.

On 18 September, the spacecraft flew around the Moon, although it did not orbit it. The closest distance was 1950 km. On the way back from the Moon, another star tracker failed. The spacecraft also erroneously switched off the guided reentry system. Eight ships were deployed to the Indian Ocean prior to launch, as a precaution in case the spacecraft could not reach Soviet territory; only three of them had rescue helicopters on board.

Reentry and recovery
On 21 September, the reentry capsule entered the Earth's atmosphere. The primary landing zone was in Kazakhstan, but instead Zond 5 splashed down in the Indian Ocean and was recovered by the Soviet vessels Borovichy (Боровичи) and Vasiliy Golovnin (Василий Головнин). It landed at −32°38' latitude and 65°33' longitude, 105 km from the nearest Soviet naval ship. The landing occurred at night, which impaired recovery efforts.

Zond 5 became the first spacecraft to circle the Moon and return to Earth. The entire journey took 6days, 18hours and 24minutes. The biological specimens were safely recovered. USS McMorris (DE-1036) shadowed the Soviet recovery ships, collecting intelligence, but left shortly after the spacecraft was brought on board the Soviet ship.

Results and future plans
High-quality photographs of the Earth, the first photos of their kind, were taken at a distance of 90000 km. British astronomer Bernard Lovell, considered to be Britain's top space expert, said that the Zond 5 mission showed that the Soviets were ahead in the Space Race. The British Interplanetary Society believed that the USSR would be able to send cosmonauts around the Moon within a matter of months.

In October 1968, sources in the U.S. claimed the mission was not as successful as the Soviets advertised. The mission had been intended to fly closer to the Moon, and its actual distance did not allow for useful lunar photography. They also said that the angle at which the spacecraft reentered the atmosphere was too steep for a cosmonaut to survive. The sources indicated that the spacecraft landed in the Indian Ocean when the planned location was in Soviet territory, which was a factor in the recovery taking ten hours.

The official Soviet news agency, TASS, announced in November 1968 that the flight carried living animals. The tortoises were dissected on 11 October after fasting for 39days. The flying tortoises, identified as and, had lost 10% of their body weight during the trip, but showed no loss of appetite. The control tortoises lost 5% of their weight. Comparison of analyses of blood from the space-travelling tortoises and the control specimens revealed no differences. Another analysis showed the flying tortoises had elevated iron and glycogen levels in their liver and that the flight also affected the internal structures of their spleens. The authors concluded that the changes in the flight tortoises were primarily due to starvation, with the space travel having little effect. In November 1968, it was announced that the spacecraft was planned as a precursor to a crewed lunar spacecraft. The Soviets made this announcement a month before the planned Apollo 8 flight, in an attempt to show they were close to being able to carry out a crewed trip to the Moon.

Cosmonaut crew communications test and hoax
The Zond 5 caused a scare in the United States when on 19 September 1968, the voices of cosmonauts Valery Bykovsky, Vitaly Sevastyanov and Pavel Popovich were transmitted from the spacecraft and intercepted by Jodrell Bank Observatory and the CIA. The cosmonauts were apparently reading out telemetry data and computer readings, and even discussing making an attempt to land. At the height of the Cold War, there was a real concern that the Soviets might actually beat NASA to the Moon. Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan remarked that the incident had "shocked the hell out of us."

Popovich would later recall: "When we realized we would never make it to the moon, we decided to engage in a little bit of hooliganism. We asked our engineers to link the on-the-probe receiver to the transmitter with a jumper wire. Moon flight missions were then controlled from a command centre in Yevpatoria, in the Crimea. When the probe was on its path round the Moon, I was at the center. So I took the mic and said: "The flight is proceeding according to normal; we’re approaching the surface..." Seconds later my report – as if from outer space – was received on Earth, including [by] the Americans. The U.S. space advisor Frank Borman got a phone call from President Nixon [actually Johnson], who asked: 'Why is Popovich reporting from the moon?' My joke caused real turmoil. In about a month's time. Frank came to the USSR, and I was instructed to meet him at the airport. Hardly had he walked out of his plane when he shook his fist at me and said: 'Hey, you, space hooligan!'"

Location
The Zond 5 capsule is on display at the RKK Energiya museum, located in Moscow Oblast, Russia.

title: Zond 5


text:
Zond 6

Zond 6 was a formal member of the Soviet Zond program, and an unpiloted version of the Soyuz 7K-L1 crewed Moon-flyby spacecraft. It was launched on a lunar flyby mission on November 10, 1968, from a parent satellite (68-101B) in Earth parking orbit. The spacecraft carried a biological payload of turtles, flies, and bacteria. It also carried scientific probes including cosmic ray, micrometeoroid detectors, and photographic equipment.

The mission was a precursor to a crewed circumlunar flight which the Soviets hoped could occur in December 1968, thus beating the American Apollo 8. However, after rounding the Moon on November 14, Zond 6 crashed on its return to Earth, due to a parachute failure when the parachute was detached from the capsule too early.

Mission
Zond 6 was the official designation for Soyuz 7K-L1 s/n 12. It was supposed to photograph the Moon in colour and in black and white, from 8,000 km and 2,600 km ranges, then return to Earth, landing at Tyuratam, only 16 km from the launch pad. It had been a long and difficult road to develop the L1 guidance system, but it worked perfectly that time.

Zond 6 flew around the Moon on 14 November 1968, at a minimum distance of 2,420 km. Photographs of the lunar near side and far side were obtained with panchromatic film. Each photo was 5 by. Some of the views allowed for stereo pictures. The photos were taken from distances of approximately 11,000 km and 3,300 km.

The flight was tracked by Jodrell Bank Observatory, which picked up telemetry data and voice transmissions. The telemetry data appear to have been simulated sensor readings; the voices were either from a tape recorder or being relayed through the probe. In 2018, a recording of the signals was found in Jodrell Bank's archive.

During the craft's return from the Moon, concerns arose about the falling temperatures of the hydrogen peroxide tanks. This issue was addressed by rotating Zond 6 so that the tanks were in direct sunlight. While this was successful in raising the temperatures of the tanks, it also damaged the seal around the door of the re-entry cabin, resulting in the spacecraft starting to leak and the pressure in the cabin falling.

Zond 6 used a relatively uncommon technique called "skip reentry" to shed velocity upon returning to Earth. A few hours before reentry, on 17 November 1968, the cabin largely depressurised, killing all the animal test subjects aboard. A further problem resulted in Zond 6's parachutes ejecting while the cabin was still several miles up. The craft crashed in Kazakhstan, near the designated landing area.

Investigation of the remains of the spacecraft was delayed while the self-destruct system was located and removed. The craft's film magazines could then be recovered, and the images therein were published, along with claims that the mission had been entirely successful.

A State Commission investigating the crash later determined that the coronal discharge effect which caused the parachute to jettison would only occur at the 25 mmHg capsule pressure. If the capsule had been completely depressurised to a high vacuum, the accident would not have occurred.

Details

 * Launch Date/Time: 1968-11-10 at 19:11:31 UTC
 * On-orbit dry mass: 5375 kg

title: Zond 6


text:
Zond 7

The Zond 7 spacecraft, part of the Soviet Zond program, was launched towards the Moon on a Proton-K D rocket on August 7, 1969. Its mission was to support studies of the Moon and circunlunar space, to obtain color photography of Earth and the Moon from varying distances, and to flight test the spacecraft systems. It was an unpiloted version of the Soyuz 7K-L1, a crewed Moon-flyby spacecraft.

Earth photos were obtained on August 9, 1969. On August 11, 1969, the spacecraft flew past the Moon at a distance of 1984.6 km and conducted two picture taking sessions. On its way back from the Moon the spacecraft tested its radio systems by transmitting recorded voices.

Zond 7 carried four turtles, a follow-up to the September 1968 Zond 5 mission which carried two tortoises on a circumlunar lunar mission, and the November 1968 Zond 6 mission which also carried turtles.

A human-like tissue-equivalent phantom for radiation measurements was placed aboard. The phantom was equipped with 20 channels for radiation detectors (thermoluminescent glasses and nuclear photoemulsions) distributed along the whole body for measurement of doses in critical organs. The doses accumulated during the flight through the radiation belts and around the Moon were between 0.2 and 0.7 rad in different points at the depth of 3 g/cm2 from the body surface.

Like other Zond circumlunar craft, Zond 7 used a relatively uncommon technique called skip reentry to shed velocity upon returning to Earth. Of all circumlunar Soviet Zond craft launches, Zond 7 would have been the first to make a safe flight for a cosmonaut had it been crewed.

Zond 7 reentered Earth's atmosphere on August 14, 1969, and achieved a soft landing in a preset region south of Kustanai, Kazakhstan. The return capsule is on display at the Dmitrov Facility of Bauman University in Orevo, Russia.

title: Zond 7


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Zond 8

Zond 8, also known as L-1 No.14, was the last in the series of circumlunar spacecraft, a member of the Soviet Zond program, designed to rehearse a piloted circumlunar flight, an uncrewed version of Soyuz 7K-L1 crewed circumlunar flight spacecraft. The project was initiated in 1965 to compete with the Americans in the race to the Moon but lost its importance once three astronauts orbited the Moon on the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968.

Mission
Zond 8 was launched on 20 October 1970, at 19:55:39 GMT by a Proton-K / Blok D launcher from Site 81/23 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, towards the Moon. Zond 8 had a mass of 5375 kg. The announced objectives of Zond 8 were investigations of the Moon and circumlunar space and testing of onboard systems and units.

The spacecraft obtained photographs of Earth on 21 October from a distance of 64480 km. After a mid-course correction on 22 October 1970 at a distance of 250000 km from Earth. The spacecraft transmitted flight images of Earth for three days. Zond 8 reached the Moon without any apparent problems, circling its target on 24 October at a range of 1110 km and took both black-and-white and color photographs of the lunar surface during two separate sessions. The minimum distance from the Moon during the mission was 1,120 kilometres (696 miles) from the lunar surface. Scientific measurements were also obtained during the flight.

After two mid-course corrections on the return leg, Zond 8 achieved a return trajectory over Earth's northern hemisphere instead of the standard southern approach profile, allowing Soviet ground control stations to maintain near-continuous contact with the craft. The guidance system, however, malfunctioned on the return leg, and the spacecraft performed a simple ballistic (instead of a guided) reentry into Earth's atmosphere. The reentry was different from other reentries in the Zond program as it went over the north pole and landed in the Indian Ocean.

Zond 8 descent module reentered the Earth's atmosphere and splashed down safely in the Indian Ocean at 13:55 GMT on 27 October 1970 at 730 km southeast of the Chagos Islands, 24 km from its original target point. The USSR recovery ship Taman was on hand to collect it and bring it back to Moscow.

The Soviet Kremlin officials finally decided to cancel the L1 project in 1970.

Scientific instruments

 * Imaging system
 * Solar wind collector packages

Zond 9
Zond 9, Soyuz 7K-L1 s/n 10, was planned but cancelled. Zond 9 was planned to launch in July 1969, carrying a crew of Pavel Popovich and Vitali Sevastyanov, but never flew.

Zond 10
Zond 10, Soyuz 7K-L1 s/n 15, was planned but cancelled.

title: Zond 8


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Robert Stewart

Robert Stewart may refer to:

Nobility and politics

 * Robert II of Scotland (1316–1390), King of Scots
 * Robert III of Scotland (c. 1340–1406), King of Scots, son of the above
 * Robert Stewart, 4th Lord of Aubigny (c. 1470–1544), French soldier
 * Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of March (c. 1522–1586), 1st Earl of March, Scottish nobleman
 * Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Orkney (1533–1593), illegitimate son of James V, King of Scotland
 * Sir Robert Stewart (d. c.1670), Scottish soldier, Governor of Londonderry
 * Robert Stewart, 1st Marquess of Londonderry (1739–1821), Irish politician and landowner
 * Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany (c. 1340–1420), Scottish royal, regent to three Scottish monarchs
 * Robert Stewart, Master of Atholl (died 1437), Scottish nobleman of royal descent, great-grandson of Robert II
 * Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), Irish politician
 * Robert Stewart (Australian politician) (1831–1908), member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly
 * Robert Stewart (Canadian politician) (1850–1925)
 * Robert Stewart (New South Wales politician) (1816–1875), New South Wales colonial politician
 * Robert Stewart (Prince Edward Island politician) (1731–1787), first Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island
 * Robert Desmond Stewart (born 1949), Northern Irish politician
 * Robert Marcellus Stewart (1815–1871), governor of Missouri
 * Robert Strother Stewart (1878–1954), English lawyer, colonial judge and Liberal Party politician
 * Robert Stewart (Alabama politician), American Democratic politician serving in the Alabama Senate

Sports

 * Robert Stewart (lineman) (1967-2022), arena football player
 * Robert Stewart (American football coach), American football coach for Washburn University
 * Robert Stewart (cricketer) (1856–1913), South African batsman
 * Robert Stewart (draughts player) (1873–1941), British champion of English draughts from Scotland
 * Robert Stewart (footballer, born 1894), Scottish footballer with Motherwell and Ayr United
 * Robert Stewart (Morton footballer) ( 1900s), Scottish footballer with Morton
 * Robert Stewart (sailor) (1906–1988), New Zealand yachtsman

Business

 * Robert Stewart (designer), Scottish designer
 * Robert Stewart (entrepreneur) (1918–2006), American entrepreneur and founder of GMA Network
 * Robert Stewart (industrialist) (1913–2007), New Zealand industrialist knighted in 1979

Other

 * Robert Banks Stewart (1931–2016), Scottish-born television writer, sometimes credited as Robert Stewart
 * Sir Robert Christie Stewart (1926–2019), Scottish army officer, landowner, and Lord Lieutenant
 * Robert John Stewart (born 1949), author and occultist
 * Robert L. Stewart (born 1942), astronaut
 * Robert Leslie Stewart (1918–1988), executioner
 * Robert Prescott Stewart (1825–1894), Irish composer, organist and conductor
 * Robert Stewart (priest) (1850–1895), Anglican Church missionary to China
 * Robert Stewart (born 1963), perpetrator of the Carthage nursing home shooting
 * Robert Stewart (born 1980), perpetrator of the murder of Zahid Mubarek
 * Robert Stewart (saxophonist) (born 1969), American musician
 * Robert Stewart, of Irry (1598–1662), Irish rebel
 * Robert Walter Stewart (1812–1887), Scottish minister of the Free Church of Scotland

title: Robert Stewart


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Micrometeoroid

A micrometeoroid is a tiny meteoroid: a small particle of rock in space, usually weighing less than a gram. A micrometeorite is such a particle that survives passage through Earth's atmosphere and reaches Earth's surface.

The term "micrometeoroid" was officially deprecated by the IAU in 2017, as redundant to meteoroid.

Origins and orbits
Micrometeoroids are very small pieces of rock or metal broken off from larger chunks of rock and debris often dating back to the birth of the Solar System. Micrometeoroids are extremely common in space. Tiny particles are a major contributor to space weathering processes. When they hit the surface of the Moon, or any airless body (Mercury, the asteroids, etc.), the resulting melting and vaporization causes darkening and other optical changes in the regolith.

Micrometeoroids have less stable orbits than meteoroids, due to their greater surface area to mass ratio. Micrometeoroids that fall to Earth can provide information on millimeter scale heating events in the solar nebula. Meteorites and micrometeorites (as they are known upon arrival at the Earth's surface) can only be collected in areas where there is no terrestrial sedimentation, typically polar regions. Ice is collected and then melted and filtered so the micrometeorites can be extracted under a microscope.

Sufficiently small micrometeoroids avoid significant heating on entry into Earth's atmosphere. Collection of such particles by high-flying aircraft began in the 1970s, since which time these samples of stratosphere-collected interplanetary dust (called Brownlee particles before their extraterrestrial origin was confirmed) have become an important component of the extraterrestrial materials available for study in laboratories on Earth.

Historical studies
In 1946 during the Giacobinid meteor shower, Helmut Landsberg collected several small magnetic particles that were apparently associated with the shower. Fred Whipple was intrigued by this and wrote a paper that demonstrated that particles of this size were too small to maintain their velocity when they encountered the upper atmosphere. Instead, they quickly decelerated and then fell to Earth unmelted. In order to classify these sorts of objects, he coined the term "micro-meteorite".

Velocities
Whipple, in collaboration with Fletcher Watson of the Harvard Observatory, led an effort to build an observatory to directly measure the velocity of the meteors that could be seen. At the time the source of the micro-meteorites was not known. Direct measurements at the new observatory were used to locate the source of the meteors, demonstrating that the bulk of material was left over from comet tails, and that none of it could be shown to have an extra-solar origin. Today it is understood that meteoroids of all sorts are leftover material from the formation of the Solar System, consisting of particles from the interplanetary dust cloud or other objects made up from this material, like comets.

Flux

The early studies were based exclusively on optical measurements. In 1957, Hans Pettersson conducted one of the first direct measurements of the fall of space dust on Earth, estimating it to be 14,300,000 tons per year. This suggested that the meteoroid flux in space was much higher than the number based on telescope observations. Such a high flux presented a very serious risk to the high-orbiting Apollo capsules and for missions to the Moon. To determine whether the direct measurement was accurate, a number of additional studies followed, including the Pegasus satellite program, Lunar Orbiter 1, Luna 3, Mars 1 and Pioneer 5. These showed that the rate of meteors passing into the atmosphere, or flux, was in line with the optical measurements, at around 10,000 to 20,000 tons per year. The Surveyor Program determined that the surface of the Moon is relatively rocky. Most lunar samples returned during the Apollo Program have micrometeorite impacts marks, typically called "zap pits", on their upper surfaces.

Effect on spacecraft operations
Micrometeoroids pose a significant threat to space exploration. The average velocity of micrometeoroids relative to a spacecraft in orbit is 10 kilometers per second (22,500 mph). Resistance to micrometeoroid impact is a significant design challenge for spacecraft and space suit designers (See Thermal Micrometeoroid Garment). While the tiny sizes of most micrometeoroids limits the damage incurred, the high velocity impacts will constantly degrade the outer casing of spacecraft in a manner analogous to sandblasting. Long term exposure can threaten the functionality of spacecraft systems.

Impacts by small objects with extremely high velocity (10 kilometers per second) are a current area of research in terminal ballistics (although accelerating objects up to such velocities is difficult; current techniques include linear motors and shaped charges). The risk is especially high for objects in space for long periods of time, such as satellites. They also pose major engineering challenges in theoretical low-cost lift systems such as rotovators, space elevators, and orbital airships.

Spacecraft micrometeoroid shielding

Whipple's work pre-dated the Space Race and it proved useful when space exploration started only a few years later. His studies had demonstrated that the chance of being hit by a meteoroid large enough to destroy a spacecraft was extremely remote. However, a spacecraft would be almost constantly struck by micrometeorites, about the size of dust grains.

Whipple had already developed a solution to this problem in 1946. Originally known as a "meteor bumper" and now termed the Whipple shield, this consists of a thin foil film held a short distance away from the spacecraft's body. When a micrometeoroid strikes the foil, it vaporizes into a plasma that quickly spreads. By the time this plasma crosses the gap between the shield and the spacecraft, it is so diffused that it is unable to penetrate the structural material below. The shield allows a spacecraft body to be built to just the thickness needed for structural integrity, while the foil adds little additional weight. Such a spacecraft is lighter than one with panels designed to stop the meteoroids directly.

For spacecraft that spend the majority of their time in orbit, some variety of the Whipple shield has been almost universal for decades. Later research showed that ceramic fibre woven shields offer better protection to hypervelocity (~7 km/s) particles than aluminium shields of equal weight. Another modern design uses multi-layer flexible fabric, as in NASA's design for its never-flown TransHab expandable space habitation module, and the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, which was launched in April 2016 and attached to the ISS for two years of orbital testing.

title: Micrometeoroid