Danny Dot wrote:
"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...

The Soviet criteria for manned flights were actually more rigorous than
the US ones -- they wanted to see two full successes of unmanned flights
before going manned. (Manning Apollo 8 at all, after the Apollo 6 mess,
was a very bold step indeed.) And the Zond tests were not nearly as
successful as they looked from outside; in particular, the Soviets made
much of the photographs taken by Zond 6, without mentioning that the
film was salvaged, with great difficulty and some danger, from the
smashed wreckage of the Zond capsule. Zond 7, which flew three weeks
after Apollo 11, was the first fully successful Zond... by which time,
nobody cared.

The Zonds had a lot of ballistic entries that ended up in the Indian Ocean
(v.s. the planned skipped entry into Russia). The darn thing would pull
20G;s but apparently the human body can take this much for a short time. I
have seen centrifuge testing reports of the US Navy doing simulated 20 G
entries. They did this in the early 60s. The crew stayed alert and could
fly a thumbwheel throughout the profile.

Danny Dot
www.mobbinggonemad.org