Moon landing the first Soyuz flight in 1967, the co-ordination of the Soviet Moon landing program quickly unraveled. The Soviets built a landing craft and selected cosmonauts for the mission that would have placed Aleksei Leonov on the Moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a manned landing suffered first delay and then cancellation. A program of automated return vehicles was begun, in the hope of being the first to return lunar rocks. This had several failures. It eventually succeeded with Luna 16. But this had little impact, because the Apollo 11 and
Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World had only just left the USSR to move to France and felt it would be overly painful to line up as an opponent of his old friends. Hort simply had other commitments. Bent Larsen and Korchnoi were the other veterans present on the world side. Meanwhile, USSR newcomers Karpov and Kasparov strengthened the top half of the USSR side, an area of weakness in the previous match. The veterans Tal, Smyslov and Polugaevsky participated once more and again turned in respectable performances. Petrosian was absent through illness but the solid Yuri Razuvaev deputised admirably. The World's Miles and Torre restored