ЛУННАЯ ПРОГРАММА АМЕРИКИ. БЕСЕДА С ВАДИМОМ ЛУКАШЕВИЧЕМ

April 12, 2026·1 hr 10 min·5 clips

Lukashevich states bluntly that there are no economically justified reasons for any country to fly to the Moon — every lunar program, from Apollo to Artemis, exists solely to demonstrate terrestrial power and status.

1. Feigin Live presents a special Cosmonautics Day broadcast on April 12, featuring host Maks Feigin and aerospace expert Vadim Lukashevich discussing the just-completed Artemis 2 crewed lunar flyby. 2. Vadim Lukashevich is identified as an aerospace analyst who has been following the Artemis program and Russia's space activities; Feigin notes he gave many interviews about the mission and references Lukashevich's Facebook channel for further space analysis. 3. The episode's core argument is Lukashevich's claim that 'the Moon is needed only to prove that you are cool on Earth' — that no economically justified rationale for crewed lunar missions has ever existed, and every lunar race is a geopolitical demonstration of terrestrial power. 4. Kennedy's 1961 Moon commitment is described as a direct psychological response to Gagarin's flight — a national humiliation that required the US to demonstrate technological and political supremacy. 5. The Soviet Union initially led the space race: first satellite (1957), first human spaceflight (Gagarin, 1961), first woman in space (Tereshkova), first soft Moon landing, first artificial Moon satellite — all pre-Apollo. 6. Lukashevich describes the Saturn V rocket as still unequaled for single-chamber oxygen-kerosene engines: the F1 engines that brought Apollo to the Moon in the late 1960s remain the most powerful of their type, delivering 139 tons to low-Earth orbit — more than today's SLS rocket achieves. 7. The Artemis program is described as a technology-inheritance strategy: SLS was built from shuttle engines and solid fuel boosters rather than new development, which paradoxically made it more expensive while delivering less capability — at $2-4 billion per launch versus Saturn V's equivalent. 8. Artemis 2 flew four astronauts — including a woman, a Black astronaut, and a Canadian — on a free-return trajectory around the Moon, reaching a record distance from Earth, then returning via a single-pass atmospheric entry after the skip-entry maneuver used in Artemis 1 damaged the heat shield. 9. The skip-entry physics is explained in detail: lunar return entry speed of 11 km/s generates 20g+ overloads that are lethal in seconds; the Soviet-pioneered maneuver — dipping into the atmosphere, ricocheting to 90km altitude, and cooling the heat shield before final entry — was originally designed for Soviet lunar probes in the 1960s and has now been adapted for Orion. 10. Artemis's critical gap is that the program has a rocket and a crewed ship but no certified lunar landing module — NASA has given competing contracts to SpaceX (a Starship variant requiring orbital refueling) and Blue Origin (a more conventional lander similar to Apollo's), with testing expected through 2025-2026. 11. Lukashevich says he would personally bet on China to land on the Moon before the US, noting that China — following a planned-economy Apollo-style mobilization — is developing its crewed lunar ship, super-heavy rocket, landing module, and launch infrastructure simultaneously and systematically. 12. The SpaceX Starship landing module requires orbital refueling that has not yet been demonstrated, adding another certification bottleneck; Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is larger but also unproven for this mission profile. 13. Lukashevich argues that a crewed lunar landing will not happen before 2029-2030 at the earliest, and that Trump's desire to end his presidency with a Moon landing is unlikely to be fulfilled given certification timelines. 14. Russia's lunar program is analyzed through the prism of a November 2018 Roscosmos document that explicitly states: 'the strategic goal of the lunar programs of the world's space states is to ensure their national interests on the new border' and that a lunar base is 'a necessary component of strategic parity of the leading world states.' 15. Russia's lunar ship, originally called Federation (then Orel after Rogozin renamed it), has slipped its first-flight date six times — from 2020 to 2022 to 2024 to 2026 to now 2028 — and the Angara-A5 rocket it must fly on has only 20 launch complexes and has not yet achieved crewed-flight reliability certification. 16. The Soviet N-1 rocket, Russia's equivalent of Saturn V, failed all four of its test launches and the program was shut down after Apollo 11 landed; today's Russia still relies on the Union spacecraft — itself a simplified version of the Soviet lunar orbital ship — as its primary crewed vehicle. 17. Lukashevich notes that the Soviet lunar program produced technologies still in use: the DM acceleration block and the Union spacecraft (now modified but ideologically unchanged since 1966) both originated as N-1 program components. 18. The discussion is conducted in a relaxed, expert-to-expert format — Feigin asks probing questions, Lukashevich provides detailed technical explanations with occasional humor — making complex engineering history accessible to a general audience. 19. Best for listeners interested in the geopolitics of space exploration, the US-China space race, and the historical arc from Sputnik to Artemis, especially those who want engineering context alongside political analysis. 20. Listeners who prefer current events, news commentary, or are not interested in space technology will find most of the episode too technically focused.

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