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As a successor to the Soyuz program, Russia is currently planning the Oryol/Federatsiya, at first for LEO flights and eventually for lunar ones. Russia wants to build a lunar space station (similar to the Lunar Gateway) but I recall President Putin once said something like they also want to land on the Moon and see if Americans really landed there (of course America did land on the Moon, I'm just quoting the President). So far, I don't know of any proposed lunar lander. Would the Lunniy Korabl be possibly able to dock to the Oryol spacecraft, or would Russia rather build a new lunar lander, and why?

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Would the Lunniy Korabl be possibly able to dock to the Oryol spacecraft

Oryol isn't currently designed to dock with an LK, but I don't think there's a fundamental reason it couldn't be modified to do so; the docking system is basically just a probe that plugs into one of a large grid of holes on the LK. There's no pressurized connection and little need for precision in the docking.

would Russia rather build a new lunar lander, and why?

The LK lander would almost certainly not be used for any future lunary mission.

The design of the LK was terribly compromised by the requirement to put both it and the Soyuz 7K-L3 mother ship on a single N1 launcher. The N1 couldn't lift as much payload to LEO as the United States' Saturn V, so the mass budget for the LK was about a third that of the Apollo LM. This meant it carried only a single crewman, and there was no pressurized connection between it and the Soyuz; the crewman would have to spacewalk to board the LK and to return to the Soyuz afterward. It was capable of only very short surface stays, and couldn't carry the science experiment payloads that the LM did.

While these compromises were justified by the calculus of the 1960s space race, it wouldn't make sense to use the LK in a 21st-century lunar mission. If Russia decides to go to the moon, they'll design a new, safer and more capable lander for the task.

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  • $\begingroup$ I knew that only one cosmonaut could board it and that they had to spacewalk inbetween. I didn't know that it couldn't carry many science experiment payloads and that it couldn't stay as long on the surface as the LM. Hence, the three-day-stay of Apollo 17 wouldn't be accomplishable by the Soviet LK? $\endgroup$
    – user43968
    Sep 20, 2021 at 7:48
  • $\begingroup$ Wikipedia says the "design life" of the LK is 48 hours. With a few hours on either end for checkout, ascent, descent, and rendezvous, it should have been possible for it to stay a day and a half or so. $\endgroup$ Sep 20, 2021 at 7:53
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    $\begingroup$ As per the WP page it seems clear the spacecraft has been renamed from Federatsiya to Oryol. $\endgroup$
    – user43968
    Sep 20, 2021 at 7:54
  • $\begingroup$ As per the "Talk" behind the same WP page, Oryol refers to a single spacecraft of the type; the WP page was mistakenly renamed. $\endgroup$ Sep 20, 2021 at 7:54
  • $\begingroup$ You mean like Discovery refers to a single spacecraft of the Space Shuttle type? $\endgroup$
    – user43968
    Sep 20, 2021 at 7:55

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