n-1

Prelude: Birth of a Giant "I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth." - President John F. Kennedy, 25th May, 1961, United States Congress, Washington DC...

I recently came across the, in my opinion, lost potential of the Soviet N1F-L3M program. http://www.astronautix.com/l/l3m-1972.html http://www.astronautix.com/n/n1f-l3m.html The value of the L3M, from my casual reading, seems immense. Imagine if the United States, having let Saturn-Apollo...

In February 1962 Nikita Khrushchev organized a meeting of the USSR’s Defense Council with the main missile designers in the Soviet Union. In attendance were Chelomei, Korolev and, courtesy of Glushko's maneuverings, Mikhail Yangel. At stake was who would get to design the USSR's heavy lift...

So we've discussed the Soviet N-1 moon rocket before, but usually those discussions have focused on the rocket succeeding in the 60s, allowing the Soviets to either win the moon race or at least score a close second... What I'd like to do here, is ignore the 60s, and focus on the results of the...

According to RussianSpaceWeb.com: "However, the developers of the super-powerful engine of the first stage for Zenit run into considerable trouble. Between 1981 and 1983, the problems plagued the test firings of the RD-171 engine. One of solution proposed at the time called for the use of...