[00:00] Ten, nine ignition sequence start six
five four three two one zero all engine
[00:12] running
[00:13] lift off , we have a lift off at that
it's probably the most well-known
[00:18] peacetime battle between the United
States and the Soviet Union in both
[00:22] technological and ideological terms of
the 20th century and although the USA
[00:28] won the race to the moon, if you've been
a betting person from the mid-1950's
[00:33] to the 1960's the
chances are that you would have thought
[00:36] that the Soviet Union would have a very
good chance of getting there first,
[00:41] so why didn't Russia put a man on the
moon. At the time the Soviets were
[00:46] leading in the space race, they had
already started with the launch of
[00:49] Sputnik, then launched several probes to
the moon including one in 1959 that
[00:55] orbited and taken photos of the far side
and by 1961 they put the first man into
[01:02] space,
[01:03] so when Kennedy made his now-famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech in 1962
[01:09] to rally public support the Soviet
leader Khrushchev’s response was silence,
[01:15] neither confirming nor denying that they
had a plan for manned moon missions but
[01:20] at the time Khrushchev wasn't really
interested in competing with the US over
[01:25] the moon,
[01:25] he was more interested in ICBMs the
intercontinental ballistic missiles for
[01:31] strategic rocket forces of the Soviet
Union but there were others in the
[01:36] Soviet Union that had harbored plans for
a manned moon mission for a long time
[01:41] these included the man whose name was a
state secret and the most powerful man
[01:45] outside the Kremlin when it came to
space he was Sergei Pavlovich Korolev,
[01:51] off outside the inner circle of the top
space scientists he was known only as
[01:55] the "Chief designer" or by his first two
initials "SP" because the Soviet
[02:01] leadership feared that the Western
powers would send agents to try and
[02:04] assassinate him.
[02:05] Korolev was the man who was behind many of the Soviet space successes and the
[02:10] head of the OKB1 the design bureau, he
oversaw Sputnik and the manned missions
[02:15] including the first man in space
[02:17] "Yuri Gagarin". His authority extended over
most everything to do with space his
[02:22] design group worked on missions to Mars
and Venus, communication
[02:26] and spy and weather satellites, ICBMs and
the soviet manned moon missions. Korolev
[02:32] have had a huge amount of control over
the space program, in administrative
[02:36] power he was almost a one-man version of
NASA, covering areas that in the US were
[02:42] done across multiple aerospace companies
and flight centre's but even a man of
[02:46] his power and connections didn't get
everything his own way. He had to
[02:50] continuously fight against rival
designers and design groups. Although
[02:54] Korolyev wanted the moon missions
himself, in 1964 the job was given to his
[02:59] rival, Vladimir Chelomei  because of his
patronage by Khrushchev but his lack of
[03:04] experience meant that the missions
progressed slowly. The progress of Apollo
[03:10] on the other hand worried the chief
designers and as a result of this and
[03:14] the infighting between the design
bureaus meant that they were multiple
[03:18] overlapping designs for the moon
missions at one point there were 30
[03:23] different designs for launchers and
spacecraft. In 1964 the Soviet Leader
[03:29] Khrushchev was replaced by Leonard
Brezhnev, Korolev was given the
[03:33] complete control over the moon missions
and pushed through his designs ahead of
[03:38] Chelomei’s and the decision finally to
compete for the moon was given with the
[03:43] aim to land in 1967, the 50th
anniversary of the october revolution
[03:48] and to get there before the Americans.
This however created a problem for
[03:53] Korolev, in order to lift a payload
weight of 95 tons he needed a very large
[03:59] rocket this new rocket will be called
the N1, be as big as the American Saturn 5 and
[04:06] would require new large powerful engines
similar to the F1 rocket engines used in
[04:12] the Saturn. Valentin Glushko was the
leading rocket designer at the time and
[04:17] the head of the OKB 456 
Bureau which had a near-monopoly when it
[04:22] came to rocket design and production. He
specialized in making engines that used
[04:27] hypergolic propellants, these consist of
a fuel and oxidizer that when mixed
[04:33] together spontaneously ignite when they
come into contact with each other.
[04:37] Korolev thought these were too
[04:38] dangerous for manned missions due to the
highly toxic and corrosive nature of the
[04:43] chemicals used to make up the fuel. Glushko said that it was not possible to
[04:48] create a new large engine design that
used cryogenic fuel of liquid oxygen and
[04:54] kerosene and get it ready in time with
limited resources and cash.
[04:59] He also cited that at the time the
Americans had been working on cryogenic
[05:04] engines for the Saturn for 5 years
and still hadn't got them to work
[05:08] reliably. There was also a personal
problem between the two men Korolev
[05:13] blamed Glushko for denouncing him in the
great purge under Stalin in 1938
[05:19] leading to Korolev's near death
serving 6 years in a Soviet labour
[05:23] camp.  Glushko on the other hand considered Korolev's to be irresponsibly cavalier
[05:28] and autocratic towards things which were
outside of his own of competence. This
[05:33] clash between them led to Glushko 
refusing to work for Korolev and
[05:38] caused delays the overall program
[05:40] Korolev was forced to find a new engine
designer and gave the job to Nikolai
[05:46] Kuznetsov who was a leading jet engine
designer but had not designed a rocket
[05:51] engine before. The Kuznetsov 
design bureau looked at the problem and
[05:55] realized that creating a rocket engine
was not that different to the jet
[05:59] engines they were used to but they ran
into the same problem as Glushko, in
[06:04] that the Soviets simply didn't have the
industrial infrastructure that the
[06:09] Americans did to produce a new large
engine. The solution they came up with
[06:14] was innovative  but would have both
negative and positive outcomes. Where the
[06:20] Americans used 5 large engines for
the initial booster stage of Saturn,
[06:25] Korolev was forced to use 30 small but
highly efficient engines arranged in a
[06:31] ring of 24 around the base and 6 at
the center in order to achieve the thrust
[06:38] required. The design of these engines was
very advanced and used a method called
[06:42] for closed-cycle system this was capable
of boosting the efficiency
[06:47] power to levels to that which were believed
impossible before. The Americans had
[06:52] known about the closed cycle system but
thought it was too difficult and
[06:56] dangerous as the high-pressure
high-temperature oxygen method could
[07:01] cause the engine to burn up, so they used
for more reliable but less efficient
[07:06] open cycle system but with much larger
engines. It had only been possible for
[07:11] the Soviets to create a closed-cycle
engine because they had secretly
[07:16] developed advanced stainless steel
alloys something which the Americans
[07:20] didn't know about at of the time.
Using so many smaller engines allowed the
[07:25] N1 rocket to create more power than the
Saturn but the likelihood of one or more
[07:31] of them failing and making a rocket
unstable was much greater. One of the
[07:36] main problems was the complex fuel
plumbing that was required to supply all
[07:40] the engines which in time proved to be a
very fragile system. But just as the
[07:46] Soviets were working on the new engines,
in 1966 Korolev died after undergoing a
[07:53] routine operation,  this was a setback
because Korolev had a unique set
[07:58] of abilities and connections and was the
major driving force behind making sure
[08:02] that the moon missions would be
delivered. The work of continuing fell to
[08:07] Vasily Mishkin, Korolev’s deputy but
Mishkin didn't have the political
[08:11] astuteness or power of his old boss. The
Soviets also didn't have the facilities
[08:17] to test all 30 of the engines of the
main stage at once before they were
[08:23] mounted to the rocket. The Baikonur
launch complex could also not be reached
[08:28] by heavy barges so the whole rocket had
to be broken down into sections
[08:32] transported by rail and then rebuilt
again at the launchpad.
[08:36] This meant that the development of the
N1 rocket as a whole was still ongoing
[08:41] when it came to the launches, so it was
almost expected that there would be
[08:46] failures. The Soviets planned 14 launches
the first 12 will be unmanned
[08:51] and the last two would be the manned
lunar missions. On the 21st February 1969
[08:58] the first N1 rocket was prepared for
launch. This would be the first time that
[09:03] the whole system had been tested in fact
it was revealed later but only two out
[09:08] of every batch of six engines had even
been run before the launch. This was in
[09:13] contrast to the Americans which were
fully able to test their F1 engines
[09:18] before the Saturn was assembled. Once
that have been done it was removed from
[09:23] the assembly building to the launchpad
nearby, fully assembled tested and ready
[09:28] to go. Within seconds of the launch of
the engine control system which was
[09:33] called Kord shut down 2 the 30 stage
one engines, then self oscillating
[09:38] vibration started in the fuel system due
to unstable combustion in some of the
[09:43] engines, this ruptured fuel lines which
caught fire and burned through
[09:47] electrical control wiring, this then
caused the KROD system to incorrectly
[09:52] shut down all of the engines 68 seconds
into the flight and the rocket crashed
[09:57] 32 miles from the launch pad. After the
investigation and subsequent
[10:02] modification, the second flight was due
for the 3rd July 1969, the launch
[10:08] took place at 11:18 p.m. as the rocket
cleared the tower the liquid oxygen
[10:13] turbo pump on engine number eight
exploded causing a fire which
[10:17] triggered KORD to shut down all the
engines except one, the N1 fell back onto
[10:23] the launch pad with nearly 2,300 tonnes
of rocket fuel on board, the resulting
[10:30] explosion was one of the largest ever to
happen and was the equivalent of 3.8
[10:35] kilotons of TNT or a small nuclear bomb.
It destroyed the launch complex, blasted
[10:42] debris over 6 miles away and was
visible over 22 miles away. Some 30
[10:48] minutes after the blast when launch
crews were allowed onto the site they
[10:53] found droplets of unburned
[10:55] rocket fuel still raining down from the
sky and afterwards it was discovered
[10:59] that 85% of the rocket
fuel did not detonate which actually
[11:04] reduced the size of a blast. 17 days
later
[11:08] Neil Armstrong became the first man on
the Moon with the Apollo 11 mission and
[11:13] although the race for the moon had been lost, 
the Soviets carried on. The blast caused a
[11:19] two-year delay whilst the launch complex
was rebuilt and further modifications
[11:24] were made to the rocket. In November of
1971 the third attempt also failed due
[11:30] to unexpected Eddie and counter currents
in the base of the main stage causing
[11:35] the rocket to roll uncontrollably and
ultimately break up due to the stress on
[11:40] its structure.
[11:41] One year later in November 1972 the
fourth and final launch also failed 107
[11:49] seconds into the flight after the
program shutdown of the six centre
[11:53] engines caused a hydraulic shock wave to
rupture the fuel pipes and start a fire,
[11:57] the main stage then exploded shortly
afterwards.
[12:01] Although there had been four previous
launch failures the Soviets had actually
[12:06] made huge progress and the design by
trial and error was believed to have
[12:10] ironed out all the problems but by the
time of the fifth launched in August
[12:15] 1974 the whole moon mission was
cancelled by Brezhnev
[12:19] By this time the Americans had been to
the moon six times and public interest
[12:25] in space was waning. One theory is that
if the fifth launch had been successful
[12:31] it would have forced the Soviets to
carry on the lunar mission where the
[12:34] main goal of beating the USA had already
been lost. The cancellation of the
[12:39] project was therefore a way of sweeping
a very expensive undertaking under the
[12:44] carpet. Vasily Mishkin was ultimately
fired and replaced by Glushko but by
[12:49] 1976 the N1 rocket program was scrapped.
[12:54] The rockets were broken up to hide the
failure and to make the U.S. think that
[12:58] the space race was still ongoing.
[13:00] It wasn't until Gorbachev's period of "Glasnost" 
when this cover story was blown and the
[13:05] true story of the failed Soviet moon
mission became widely known about and
[13:10] why the Russians didn't put a man on the
moon. But there is a strange twist to the
[13:17] end of this story, the NK 43 rockets that
had been developed for the N1 were by
[13:24] the end much more reliable and the most
efficient and powerful rocket engines
[13:29] for their size ever made. 20 years after
they were meant to have been destroyed
[13:34] on order of a Kremlin, 60 of them were
rediscovered and sold to be Americans
[13:40] for $1.1 million dollars each.
[13:43] A subsequent new larger model the RD-180
based on the technology of the NK 43 is now
[13:51] built by the Russians and used by the
Americans for their Atlas 5 heavy launch
[13:57] vehicle.
[14:00] Thank you for watching I hope you
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[14:15] so until the next time it's goodbye from
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