<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>There are lots of things that are "common knowledge" about the Russian space program that are wrong. Zond is one of them.<br /><br />Zonds 5, 7 and 8 were both completely successful, Zonds 4 and 6 completed much of their mission although they ended badly.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Really? The 20G re-entries of Zond 4 and 5 was not an issue?<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>But the spacecraft was ready for crews with Zond 9. I don't know what the crewed flight would have been called. probably not Zond, and I suspect not Soyuz either.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />That is a good point. One would think that they had given it some thought, even if we don't know about it.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>The only reason the Zonds were not flown with crew was the unreliability of the booster. It failed 6 tiumes out of 11. The launch escape system worked well each time, but it was too big a risk.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />The booster certainly was unreliable, but given the excellent launch escape system and that the Soviets had taken chances before, I think it was probably more political. Not only had Apollo 8 flown, but also Apollo 11. It was a shame for the Cosmonauts though, as I'm sure they still wanted to go.<br /><br />By the way, which launches do you include to get that number? I assume that you are not counting the four early Proton 8K82 launches or the Proton 8K82K in general, but only the Proton 8K82K/11S824(/Soyuz 7K-L1) combination. I still don't get the same number as you though. Here is the launch list as I have been able to put it together from Encyclopedia Astronautica:<br /><br />10 March 1967 - Cosmos 146 - Soyuz 7K-L1P s/n 2P - Success - boilerplate<br />8 April 1967 - Cosmos 154 - Soyuz 7K-L1P s/n 3P - Failure - Block D failed to restart in LEO, boilerplate<br />27 September 1967 - N/A - Soyuz 7K-L1 s/n 4L - Failure - RD-253 failed in first stage