35
votes
Accepted
What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
Conveniently, NASA has a report which explains the Soviet moon-lander program at great length. It is available for free here.
As usual, the only real answer is "the totality of circumstances.&...
- 1,029
24
votes
What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
Russell Borogove's comment deserves to be an answer - the Soviets did not have the resources to put into it. Designing, building, and testing all the components of a moon landing mission takes an ...
- 11.4k
17
votes
What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
I think I saw a documentary that mentioned that large rockets like Saturn V could have vibration problems that would destroy them, but why couldn't the Soviets solve them?
Only the first of the four ...
- 128k
15
votes
What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
I will assume that by "going to the Moon" the question is about landing humans on the lunar surface, not just circling the Moon. If so the question seems to make an assumption that all that ...
- 5,558
12
votes
What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
Generally, I think that there's this mythos about how the Soviet Space Program was superior to the US one, or, more specifically, "red"washing on this topic that paints them as far more ...
- 20.8k
6
votes
Why did the Soviet Union decide to use 30 small engines instead of a few large ones on the N1?
The N1 was a big disappointment after exploding on every single launch attempt. From what I have read, it seems like most of the attempts went wrong because one of the 30 engines exploded causing a ...
- 128k
3
votes
What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
I think I saw a documentary that mentioned that large rockets like Saturn V could have vibration problems that would destroy them, but why couldn't the Soviets solve them? It's not like they lacked ...
- 7,965
3
votes
What kept the Soviets from going to the Moon (before the US)?
Sergei Korolev was the man in charge of the Soviet moonshot N1 rocket, and I'd argue that the root cause of that program's failure was his insistence on using oxygen/kerosene-powered (cryogenic ...
- 458
3
votes
Did Wernher von Braun really have the "Saturn V painted as the V2"?
This type of marking was not unique to either the V-2 or the Saturn V. Test versions of rockets have often had black and white markings to help engineers analyze their flight characteristics. As ...
- 5,558
2
votes
What was the volume of the Rocketdyne F-1 engine's main combustion chamber?
The Rocketdyne F1 engine had a round disk injector. I found this archive of photos. The page with pictures of the F1 injector states it was 44 inches across.
link here: http://heroicrelics.org/f-1-...
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