The fourth N-1 rocket launch attempt failed just seconds before first-stage shutdown, but a consensus emerged that if the stage had shut down early rather than explode, the mission could still have succeeded. So what if the mission had succeeded, and N-1 had made orbit in 1972, winning enough support from the Politburo to keep Mishin and Kuznetsov in charge of it? Would the program have continued to a late-1970s lunar landing (as was the official plan at the time)? Would it have been used for super-Salyuts, or integrated into an alternate Buran program (similar to the Shuttle-Saturn concepts)?