Facts about N1 rocket

Video from the channel NUREK and AKN about N1, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:52. Video type: Documentary.

An explainer piece in Polish that reviews the history of the Soviet N1 rocket, conceived as a response to the Saturn V to get ahead of the United States in the Moon race, and explains why it never achieved its goals.

After Kennedy's pledge to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade, the USSR developed its own plan. Sergei Korolev began work on the N1 in 1959, and in 1962 the project was presented to the Kremlin. The rocket was meant to launch the L3 complex, with an orbital module and a lunar module: two cosmonauts would reach lunar orbit and one would descend. Korolev's death in 1966 after an operation weakened the program; his successor, Vasily Mishin, was removed in 1974.

The N1 stood 105 m tall and 17 m in diameter at the base, weighed almost 3,000 t at liftoff, and could place 95 t in low orbit. Its first stage carried 30 kerosene engines, and the KORD system meant to coordinate them was one of the causes of the failures. All four launches, between 1969 and 1972, failed: in February 1969 a fire forced the first stage to shut down around second 70; in July 1969 a metal fragment in a pump caused an explosion that destroyed the pad; in June 1971 the rocket spun out of control around its axis, and in November 1972 the shutdown of the central engines ruptured fuel lines. In the 1990s, the surplus engines were sold to Aerojet.