1962—SOVIET N-1 LAUNCH VEHICLE PROGRAM BEGINS

The Soviets had long realised that in order to put many of their space projects into production they would require a heavy lift launch vehicle. Design studies had begun a few years earlier, but in September 1962 the official go ahead was given by the Central Committee of the Communist Party to begin the program in earnest.

The original design requirements for this giant rocket called for it to be capable of launching 75 tonnes of payload to orbit, and this dictated that the dimensions of the rocket were huge. It stood 344 feet tall, its first stage comprised 30 engines producing 43,000,000 kN of thrust, and it weighed 2,735 tonnes. The requirements were initially formed by the needs of the OS-1, but these requirements grew in the years before its first test launch in 1969. Building work began in March 1963 to create a complex of two launch pads for the giant rocket, and they were completed in 1967. The growing requirements of the Soviet lunar missions put continuous pressure on the already over-burdened N-1 design, and Korolev, and as of 1966 his successor Vasily Mishin, were forced to ask more and more of the stages and the engines that powered them. The N-1 was eventually to be capable of launching 95 tonnes; 20 more than originally specified.