Free Republic

<p>Although it was never publicly acknowledged during the existence of the Soviet Union, the Soviets did plan a program to land cosmonauts on the Moon comparable to the Apollo landings. Such missions were seen as a logical continuation of the Space Race that had begun when Sputnik was launched in 1957. However, the Soviets were forced to abandon their lunar program following a string of failures from the mid-1960s to early 1970s. The Soviets then attempted to conceal their lack of success by claiming that no such program had ever existed in the first place.</p>

EDWARDS AFB - A Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle known as N-1 took off from Edwards' main runway Monday evening on a one-way mission to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. The N-1, an RQ-4A Global Hawk - one of two acquired by the U.S. Navy through the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration Program - is the first of its kind delivered to the Navy and is being prepared for participation in the Navy's Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment 2006. The delivery was enabled by the installation of a launch and recovery element at Patuxent River that allows the Navy to begin...