N1 (rocket)

Rare card · No. 68665

The N1 (from Ракета-носитель Raketa-nositel', "Carrier Rocket"; Cyrillic: Н1, GRAU index: 11A52, Sheldon: G-1-e, DoD: SL-15) was a super heavy-lift launch vehicle of the Soviet space program intended for crewed travel to the Moon and beyond. All four launch attempts between 1969 and 1972 failed. Studied and designed by OKB-1 since 1959, it was the counterpart to the US Saturn V. A five-stage kerolox-fuelled rocket, its Block A was the most powerful rocket stage flown for over 50 years, at 45 meganewtons of thrust, until the SpaceX Super Heavy. Block A's large cluster of thirty NK-15 engines, prone to individual failures, was managed by KORD, an analog computer which shut down engines opposite the failure, to maintain attitude control. Block B and V used eight and four hot staged engines respectively, planned to bring the rocket to low Earth orbit. Dangers of the complex engine cluster and fuel feeder systems were not discovered earlier as static fires were not conducted on the Block A...

Read on Wikipedia · Image National Reconnaissance Office, Public domain