Soviet N1 Moon Rocket Documentary

Video from the channel Imp5011 about N1, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 49:33. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

This Equinox documentary covers Soviet closed-cycle rocket engines, from their development for the N1 lunar launcher to their rediscovery by American industry after the end of the Cold War. It alternates interviews with Russian and American engineers with footage of the countdown for the first flight of an Atlas III, powered by the Russian RD-180 engine.

In the early 1960s, CIA spy satellites detected the construction of two large platforms at Baikonur that gave away a Moon rocket. Sergei Korolev, head of OKB-1, calculated that a crewed expedition required placing about 100 tonnes in orbit, with a rocket of about 2,000 tonnes at liftoff. Unable to come to terms with his usual supplier, he commissioned the engines from Kuznetsov, a designer of aircraft engines in Samara. With neither the time nor the means for giant engines, the N1's first stage carried 30 small closed-cycle engines, which reinject the preburner gases into the combustion chamber.

Korolev died in January 1966 and was succeeded by Vasily Mishin. The first launch, in February 1969, ended in an explosion about a minute into the flight because metal debris had gotten into an engine. In the second, in July, the rocket fell back onto the pad. The 1971 and 1972 flights also failed. In 1974 the Kremlin cancelled the program, removed Mishin, and ordered the destruction of the remaining rockets and engines.

Disobeying that order, Kuznetsov kept more than 60 NK-33 engines for almost 20 years. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Aerojet engineers saw them in Samara. In October 1995, an NK-33 met all its specifications on the test stand in Sacramento, and George Mueller chose them for the reusable K-1 launcher. NPO Energomash's RD-180, heir to a closed-cycle engine from the 1970s, uses an oxygen-rich cycle that had been ruled out as dangerous in the United States. Its development required new high-temperature-resistant stainless steels. A single RD-180 replaces the old Atlas's engines and offers 10% more performance.