The USSR's Moon Rocket

At the height of the Cold War and the Space Race, the Soviet Union tried it's hand at building its own moon rocket. So far, the USSR seemed to be winning the Space Race, having sent the first man into orbit and back safely to earth in 1961. The next obvious step, then, was to send cosmonauts to the moon.

However, the Soviet Union was famously strapped for money and didn't have a specific branch devoted to space exploration. Rather, space exploration was a smaller branch of the military, which was organization that financed it. And, because of the Soviet Union's stretched budget, it was difficult to justify spending so much on a heavy launch vehicle, even if it would be used for other purposes besides lunar exploration (i.e. launching ICBMs and spy satellites into orbit).

After much personal and political infighting, the Soviet military approved the development of the N1, though there were more budget cuts before this. The launch vehicle also had different designs which were being pushed at the same time. But, as if things weren't already difficult, the main driving force behind the lunar program--Sergei Korolev--passed away before the N1 could be completed.

As a bit of a silver lining, the Soviet Union did land an unmanned spaceflight, Luna 9, on the surface of the moon in 1966, even taking pictures of the lunar surface. Also at this time, the Soviet Union had also developed the Soyuz launch vehicle, which could perform docking maneuvers with other spacecraft and stay in space for several weeks. All of this was done on a budget that was the equivalent to the value of a paper clip and a piece of string.

Budget and bureaucracy weren't the only things plaguing the N1, however. A large issue was the design, which was changed often, even up to the date of the N1's first unmanned launch test. In addition to this, the United States was finally beginning to catch up in the Space Race. In 1968, the United States sent a manned crew to circle the moon and safely returned them to Earth in one piece.

The N1 was finished in February 1969 after completely skipping static ground testing (which is a necessary test of a rocket's propulsion system), and as it was moved onto the launch platform the engineers and military waited with bated breath. It was a long, difficult process, but it was finally done. The rocket towered over them, at 105 meters (345 feet) tall, weighing about 2,783 metric tons--or about 6.1 million pounds.

The bottom stage of the N1 had 30 engines, 24 clustered in an outer circle, and 6 arranged in an inner circle. Together, the engines in the first stage would produce 4,590 metric tons (about 10 million pounds) of thrust, which would accelerate the spacecraft to a speed of over 25,000 mph. In short, the N1, like its American counterpart, was a beast. This rocket's first stage was the most powerful first stage ever built for the next fifty years.

The N1's thirty engines (Source: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fspace.stackexchange.com%2Fquestions%2F61609%2Fwhy-did-the-soviet-union-decide-to-use-30-small-engines-instead-of-a-few-large-o&psig=AOvVaw0wQxjVdLPDDOa4LinE0w2f&ust=1751251548794000&source=images&opi=89978449)

The engines ignited with a resounding boom that shook the very ground, and was felt from miles away. Finally, the rocket began to lift off from the ground for about 68 seconds.

It quickly became evident that something was wrong. As quickly as it lifted off, it began to fall back to the earth, its engines failing. Later, it was found that the accident was caused by a propellant fire. In an attempt to stop the fire from spreading, the N1's engine monitoring system mistakenly turned off the engines. Fortunately, the body of the rocket was largely undamaged and recovered for use in a later launch.

The N1 moments before disaster

At this point, the US was already well on the way to a manned lunar mission, but the Soviet Union tried to launch the N1 three more times after this.

The most infamous of these launches occurred in July 1969, when the engines failed again. Except this time, the massive rocket didn't make it more than a few hundred feet in the air before crashing back down on the launch pad. The ensuing fire ball could be seen at least 20 miles away, and it's actually one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history!

At this point, the US already beat the Soviet Union to the moon, and it could be said that this is the point that the Soviet Union lost the Space Race. Still, they attempted two more test launches, each of them ending up the same way. That is, in massive explosions. Finally, in 1972, the Soviet Union sacked their plans to go to the moon for good.

Overall, the massive cost of such an endeavor was one of the things that did the program in. Rushing the project through the first part of the testing phase and going straight to the launch tests were just adding fuel to the fire (pun intended).

All wasn't lost, though. The US and the Soviet Union did a joint mission together a few years later, on the space station Skylab, and the Soviet Union built several more of their own space stations in the coming decades until it dissolved in 1989.

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