From the time immemorial :) R-7 was flying with fully 32 chambers lit at the start. Damn, Musk couldn't allow that record sit unchallenged. That's a joke, of c

From the time immemorial :) R-7 was flying with fully 32 chambers lit at the start. Damn, Musk couldn't allow that record sit unchallenged. That's a joke, of course. The N1 problems were specifically in turbopumps - chambers themselves were relatively robust - and R-7 has those 32 chambers distributed among just 5 engines, one turbopump assembly each. Regarding N1 I'd say the problem was not as much the complexity of the first stage, as complexity of engines, which couldn't be compensated enough by clever tricks of the rocket itself. NK-33, the next version of the engine, flew successfully at the first try after some 40+ years in storage.