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> Russia followed the former, much like SpaceX, and Soyuz is second only to Falcon 9 in number of launches. Yeah, but it failed with more complex rockets (the

• timschmidt 1y ago
  N1 would have worked eventually with enough effort. The larger problem is that Korolev died and his deputy was far less politically capable.
  • preisschild 1y ago
    Its questionable if it would have ever worked https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apollo-moon-khrushchev/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apollo-moon-khrus... > Korolev was not a scientist, not a designer: he was a brilliant manager. Korolev's problem was his mentality. His intent was to somehow use the launcher he had. [The launcher was called N1]. It was designed in 1958 for a different purpose and with a limited payload of about 70 tons.] His philosophy was, let's not work by stages [as is usual in spacecraft design], but let's assemble everything and then try it. And at last it will work. There were several attempts and failures with Lunnik [a series of unmanned Soviet moon probes]. Sending man to the moon is too complicated, too complex for such an approach. I think it was doomed from the very beginning.