USSR-USA lunar race. The history of Soviet N1 Lunar Rocket. [History]

Aerospaceweb.org ^ | 3 October 2004 | Jeff Scott

[vertolet]

Although it was never publicly acknowledged during the existence of the Soviet Union, the Soviets did plan a program to land cosmonauts on the Moon comparable to the Apollo landings. Such missions were seen as a logical continuation of the Space Race that had begun when Sputnik was launched in 1957. However, the Soviets were forced to abandon their lunar program following a string of failures from the mid-1960s to early 1970s. The Soviets then attempted to conceal their lack of success by claiming that no such program had ever existed in the first place.

[raygun]

Ping

[Riley]

Fascinating post. I remember getting up early to watch the Apollo Program launches on television- and wondering what the Soviets were up to at the same point in time.

[carumba]

Truth would have been the short cut. Sunday School lesson material for integrity and honesty.

[Marius3188]

I'm always amazed about how far ahead the USSR was in the space race before we passed them.

It's a shame that we still use 70's designs like the SH. Well, at least thats the stuff published. I'm sure we have some 4th generation stuff out there.

[carumba]

Now we can see these techno marvels in the museums. Along side the oxcarts, carriages, locomotives, and bi-planes we can look at the LEM and pretty soon the shuttle.

[Mr170IQ]

www.astronautix.com has a more technical and detailed article starting at

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/thepart1.htm

The Soviets developed very advanced LOX/Kerosene rocket motors for the N1. The NK-33 and NK-43 are highly efficient engines, with amazing thrust-to-weight ratios.

The Russian RD-180 motor is used in the current Atlas CCB, and uses much of the same technology.

[BallyBill]

I knew about the booster N1 and the failures and secrecy, but I had never seen a picture of their lunar lander. Just like the Soviets Shuttle, it is quite a coincidence it looks like ours, or is it?

[75thOVI]

3.....2.....1.....PING!

[Jonah Hex]

Not totally. Function does drive engineering design. While there are some egregious examples of Soviet designs just "happening" to look like Western designs ("Concordski", "Shuttleski"), a lot of Soviet designs were straight-forward response to engineering requirements.

Korolev was a believer in using a "building block" approach to meeting mission objectives, using proven components when possible to minimize failure risk. He visualized the Soyuz family of orbiters as a design baseline to modify as required to meet unique mission requirements. Ironically, the LOK/LN approach resembles a 1961 NASA LOR proposal to use a Gemini capsule (referred to as a "Mercury-II" at the time) and an open-cockpit one-man lander to place a man on the moon, at an estimated cost of 1/20th of the proposed Apollo project.

(Open-cockpit, over the Moon. That would have been one helluva ride down! Somehow, I could see Pete Conrad with a grin on his face relishing the chance to give it a go. :-))

As it turned out, following the Gemini LOR path might have moved up a possible lunar landing date to December 1968. NASA (and von Braun) saw the Saturn/Apollo family of booster/capsules as the building blocks of the future (Apollo applications such as Skylab), however, and decided to follow that route. Ironically, NASA later decided to pull the plug on Apollo developments in favor of the reusable shuttle.

Which brings us, 35-some years later, to today's NASA Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) which amazingly resembles an enlarged Apollo craft. What could we have accomplished in space by now if we had continued with Apollo?

Sorry, I started to answer a simple question and swerved into an essay. :-) Encyclopedia Astronautica is a good source on the history of space flight.