The N-1: The Soviet Moon Rocket

hello everybody welcome to mega projects which today is brought to you by squarespace from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespaces the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful website and run your business check out squarespace through the link in the description below more on them in a bit so megaprojects today we're talking about the soviet n1 because i made a video about the saturn 5 and people were like simon we don't want to hear about this we want to hear about the giant soviet version that blew up loads of times so here we go [Music] it remains one of the largest non-nuclear explosions the world has ever seen the date was the 3rd of july 1969. the apocalyptic blast that occurred at the baikonur spaceport in present-day kazakhstan was the second of four failed attempts to put the monstrous soviet n1 rocket into space it was a rocket that was not only flawed but also badly rushed and it faced a catalog of issues on the road to its doomed launchers in the late 1960s and early 1970s now we've already done a video on megaprojects as i already said about the saturn v rocket which successfully transported nine apollo missions to the moon and the n1 was designed to be the soviet equivalent two titanic rockets one worked really well and one didn't if you like more stuff like this where we kind of have the western version and the soviet version you should definitely check out the concord video and the duper love video the concord ski also a great comparison the soviet union had led the space race throughout its earliest exchanges they were the first to put a satellite in orbit in 1957 the first to put a living being into space a dog named leica in 1957 and of course they were the first to have a human look down on this pale blue dot that we call home with yuri gagarin orbiting the earth in 1961. it's pretty fair to say that if it was the early 1960s you would have put your money on the soviet union beating the united states to the moon but they didn't so what went wrong we choose to go to the moon on september 12 1962 u.s president john f kennedy gave his now iconic speech in which he stated american ambitions to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade this not only lit a fire under nasa's behind but beneath the soviets behind two the gauntlet had been well and truly thrown down but the idea for a soviet moon landing was already well into development and plans for a super-heavy rocket boost had already begun at the end of the 1950s under the direction of okb-1 the experimental design bureau led by sergey korolev who had been responsible for the development of sputnik early design plans for the n1 envisioned a rocket with capabilities that went much further than just the moon it was designed as a multi-purpose rocket that could satisfy both military and scientific demands including trips to future space stations the moon and even distant voyages off to mars now this sounds incredibly far-fetched today i mean with hindsight but back then i mean why not aim big but while the u.s effort was coordinated and concentrated at least so it appeared the soviet union spread their bets two other design bureaus submitted proposals for rockets in the early 1960s and initially plans for the ur-500 proton rocket and the lk-1 lunar module were accepted and given a high priority over the n1 although development on it did still continue it seems the soviet union was in no hurry to put all of their eggs in one basket at least not yet and while this is probably the right time to introduce you to the soap opera element of today's video while they were both working towards the glory of the soviet union the two final competing projects that emerged became bitter rivals much of the animosity seems to have originated from two of the main players sergey korolev who we already know and valentin glushko the leading designer of soviet rocket engines at the time the two they couldn't stand each other with korolev blaming glushko for his imprisonment in the colma gulag in the 1930s after his rival had allegedly denounced him to the soviet authorities and if there was ever a good reason to hold a grudge well there it is on the other side though glischko thought korolev cavalier autocratic and out of his depth clearly no christmas cards were sent between the two also one of those is severely worse like oh yeah no i think he's incompetent i sent him to a gulag initially the two worked together on the n1 but after a major disagreement about fuel type they eventually went their separate ways with glushko joining the rival project he had been adamant about using nitrogen tetroxide as fuel while corelev had insisted on using kerosene which was what all of the n1 launchers eventually used in 1964 corollav's design was officially selected but once again the rival project was still encouraged to continue the soviet authorities set a target date for a moon landing 1967 or 1968 just enough time they believed to beat the americans to the punch now this would have beaten them to the punch except it was just hopelessly optimistic and sort of bordered on the delusional the saturn 5 it had been started four years earlier and it was already well ahead of them what's more 1966 would prove to be a very bad year for the soviet space program with the successful completion of its gemini program in 1966 the u.s had essentially leapfrogged the soviet union in the space race its main objectives were to test space travel technologies that would be used on the apollo missions and it saw any advantage that the soviets held just completely disappear even more damaging for the n1 rocket program was the death of sergey korolev after complications relating to a minor surgery his deputy vasily mission who according to many was borderline incompetent on several issues assumed control of the project it was a change of course that effectively doomed the n1 but before we talk about its death let's focus on the rocket itself [Music] this beast of a rocket reached 105 meters in height with its l3 lunar module payload on top and fully loaded it weighed a mammoth 2750 tons the weight of around nine 747 passenger liners it had a base diameter of 17 meters and was divided into four sections the first three located on the n1 would be used for insertion into a low earth parking orbit which is essentially a slow holding orbit before firing the next stage and continuing towards the moon the last stage situated on the l-3 would provide the translunar injection a propulsive maneuver to set the spacecraft on a course for the moon and the lunar orbit insertion a corrective boost that pushes the spacecraft into a lunar orbit block a was powered by 30 nk 15 engines arranged in two rings and yet really there were 30 engines on this thing the pictures are quite impressive the main ring housed 24 of these engines while the inner ring used for the core propulsion system which controlled the pitch of the rocket as it moved upwards had the remaining six block a also came with four grid fins located on the side which eventually came to be used on soviet air-to-air missiles for better stability in total blockade produced a gigantic 10.2 million pounds of thrust which is the same as 121 engines used on the airbus a380 which is a massive plane this actually made it the most powerful stage of any rocket even to this day this was also significantly more than the first section of the saturn 5 with its 7.6 million pounds of thrust blockay was designed to have a burn time of 125 seconds before disconnecting from the rest of the stack and falling back to earth block b was powered by eight nk 15v engines but this time around a single ring and it was designed in such a way that it could withstand a shutdown involving a pair of opposing engines if one engine failed the opposite engine could be manually turned off but they did need to be opposite to maintain the rocket's trajectory block b had a burn time of 120 seconds and a thrust of 3.16 million pounds and that's just 37 a380 engines now [Music] the final stage on the n1 was block 5 which came with four smaller nk21 engines this time placed in a square block 5 could technically still function if one engine shut down as long as the three remaining were working correctly it had a thrust of 360 thousand pounds and was scheduled to have a burn time of 370 seconds to blast off towards the moon the l3's block g would fire at single one nk19 for 443 seconds with a thrust of a hundred thousand pounds the final maneuver to put the l3 into the moon's orbit would use the same engine but its burn time vary depending on the specific need of the spacecraft at the time and now's going to be a great time to compare the n1 to the saturn 5. we've talked a lot of figures so far but we'd like to see how they stack up but before we do that well let me tell you about today's fantastic sponsor squarespace now a couple of simple things maybe you've got an idea for a website or a business or something up there in your minds and you're like maybe that's a good idea well the second thing is the only way to figure that out is to get it out there into the world and i know that can be daunting because it's scary to go and pursue new ideas but not knowing how to set up a website is not an excuse there are no excuses available with squarespace squarespace allows you to create a powerful website for whatever you're up to you want to sell something online yes easy to set up a store with squarespace you want to do a podcast sure they support that maybe you're doing a youtube channel well obviously you do the youtube channel on youtube but you're going to want a website to compliment it it all starts on squarespace with a beautiful template that you can customize to your heart's content or you can start from scratch or you can move over from an existing domain making everything super easy to manage but take my advice just use one of their templates it's easier like i say no excuses squarespace also handle all the websitey stuff like i said they do podcasts but also mailing lists social integrations all of that great stuff and in case you get stuck you probably won't because it's easy but in case you do 24 7 customer support head to squarespace.com for a free trial when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com forward slash megaprojects to save 10 of your first purchase of a website or a domain [Music] comparisons between the n1 and the satellite rocket that would take the americans to the moon are pretty obvious they look similar did roughly the same job and were both well ahead of any other nation on earth the saturn v was a slightly larger rocket coming in six meters taller than its soviet rival and also weighed nearly 200 tons more but the n1 did have considerably more thrust than the saturn v in all of its stages except the last on paper there wasn't too much to separate these two monsters but their experiences on the launch pad well they couldn't have been more different by the end of the 1960s the soviets knew that they had lost the race to have the first manned moon mission with apollo 11 in its final stages of preparation but there was still plenty at stake pride being one of them the soviets attempted to heave the slovathan into space on four separate attempts each failing it was a sad and cataclysmic end to this mighty rocket on the 21st of february 1969 the stage was set for the first unmanned test launch scheduled to depart from site 110 at the baikonur spaceport things began to go wrong just seconds into the launch after engine number 12 malfunctioned to maintain symmetry engine number 24 was shut down but shortly after engine number 2 suffered from pogo oscillation a very common issue among early spacecraft where longitudinal vibrations travel up through the structure causing serious damage this is actually what happened to apollo 13. on this n1 launch it caused several mounts within the engine to be ripped out causing a fuel leak and soon after a fire the fire quickly tore through the first stage and after 68 seconds all the engines within the stage closed down the rocket began falling back to earth eventually landing 52 kilometers from the launch pad [Music] despite two further failures after it it was the second failed launch that has come to define the n1 rocket on july 3 1969 just two weeks before apollo 11 began its historic journey an n1 was readied once more at baikonur preparations came and went smoothly without any obvious issues arising while it's difficult to imagine that anybody could have predicted what was to come it was interesting that there was a large scale evacuation of personnel from the site beforehand as the time near midnight final checks were carried out and the launch was given the all clear at 2318 moscow time the engines in block a began their ferocious roar the n1 slowly began moving upwards but moments later several of the thrust indicators in the command center began showing zero the rocket continued to rise to an altitude of 100 meters before pieces of it just began shedding the rocket seemed to hang in the air momentarily before collapsing back down to earth a mighty mushroom cloud followed the earth-shattering explosion when you see the video of the explosion it's difficult to imagine that the whole thing could have been so much worse only the first stage had ignited meaning around 85 percent of the fuel on board was not part of this enormous fireball there has been plenty of debate over how powerful the explosion was with estimates ranging from one to seven kilotons of tnt the higher end for that estimate would be the equivalent of a small nuclear bomb while there were no reported casualties rocks from the explosion were scattered as far as 10 kilometers and windows up to 40 kilometers away were smashed lieutenant colonel seaman gamowski famously said today i saw without exaggeration the end of the world and not in a nightmare but while fully awake and standing right next to it an investigation into the accident found that it had been caused by a malfunctioning turbo pump with an engine number eight there was speculation that a piece of foreign debris had been sucked into the pump jamming it and causing the explosion [Music] the fiery crash of the second attempt had proved devastating for soviet lunar ambitions and it would take 18 months to even rebuild the destroyed launch pad three weeks later they had the ignominity of witnessing american feet stepping onto the moon for the first time but and you've got to give it to them for this they pick themselves up and ready to third attempt on the 26th of june 1971. while it was nowhere near as dramatic as what had happened two years earlier once again shortly after takeoff things began to go wrong this time it was down to abnormal fluid dynamics in the fuel on block a that caused an uncontrolled roll which quickly went far beyond what could be manually corrected the rocket began to come apart in mid-air with the upper stages landing seven kilometers from the launch pad even after the engines cut out the first and second stages continued for a short distance eventually plummeting to earth 15 kilometers away where it created a 15-meter deep crater [Music] perhaps at this point it was only stubborn soviet pride that brought them back for the fourth and final attempt this was the most successful of the four launchers with everything going smoothly for the first 90 seconds but after a programmed shutdown of the core propulsion system fuel lines burst and caught fire engine number four promptly exploded and after 107 seconds the entire first stage began breaking apart as per protocol the upper stages were ejected from the disintegrating rocket and crashed into the ground an investigation found that fuel from the split lines had flowed down onto the hot engine causing the turbo pump in engine 4 to malfunction it was later discovered that had the ground crew realized what was happening quicker it would have been possible to commence the second stage burn slightly earlier in jettison stage 1 effectively saving the rocket the first stage had failed just 15 seconds from the point that it would have been disconnected this was the closest that the n1 rocket would ever come to outer space [Music] this was a rocket that seemed a bit doomed from the start badly rushed underfunded and just out of its depth when combined with the infighting between the designers in the build-up and perhaps most importantly the death of its mastermind the n1 was always a bit of an outside bet we've done several soviet mega projects now on this channel and we've seen a bit of a pattern they're all enormous and powerful but they're often pretty ragged when it comes to actually getting the job done another good example is the tu144 which was concord supersonic rival that i mentioned earlier i mean the soviets wanted something to beat concords and the reality was they rushed out something substandard and the results were plain to see as i mentioned earlier the first stage of the n1 remains the most powerful stage ever built and the rockets as a whole was a thunderous piece of engineering but it's always going to remain a story of ifs and buts a story of the mighty soviet dragon that could never really fly so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below please do support this channel by supporting our fantastic sponsor squarespace by doing that it really does help me keep making these videos so that's fantastic thank you very much and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 552,979

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Id: YscKBzvHBSw

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2020