THE PLOTTERS MOVE: CANCELLATION OF THE N1-L3M PROGRAMME

The engineers again set to work to tame this difficult beast. The volume of telemetry received probably assisted them greatly. This time, the following changes were introduced:

• New, much improved engines.

• Improved protection for propellant lines.

• Improvements to the fire extinguisher system.

[9] Faster performance of KORD.

Two new N-1s were built, the first set for launch in August 1974 and the second later that year, with the intention of making the N-1 operational by 1976 and then proceeding to the L-3M plan straight thereafter. A further four N-1s were at an advanced stage of construction and four more were being built. The flight plan was similar to the fourth mission, but this time a functioning LK would be carried. All the manoeuvres short of a lunar landing would be carried out and the LOK would return to Earth after four days of orbiting the moon. Again, hopes began to rise. Assuming the fifth and sixth flights were successful, the seventh would be manned.

Manned lunar flights were not the only missions scheduled. Approval was given for a large, 20-tonne spaceship to be sent to Mars using the N-1 on a sample return mission. This was called Project 5M, led by Sergei Kryukov, later director of OKB

[10] Proved, with Zonds 7 and 8, that it could send cosmonauts around the moon and recover them safely, using different return trajectories.

[11] It was a uniform, unstratified sample.

• Seventy different chemical elements were identified.

• The sample comprised a mixture of powder, fine and coarse grains.

• It had good cohesive qualities, like damp sand.

• The sample was basaltic by character.

• It included some glazed and vitrified glass and metal-like particles.

• The samples had absorbed quantities of solar wind.

[12] Sample return missions from remote areas, including uplands and the poles.

• Lunokhods to carry drills to obtain cores and analyze them in onboard labora­tories.

• Lunokhods to collect rocks and deliver them to sample return missions.