[FPSPACE] N1 launches on TV

[Bart Hendrickx]

Raoul Lannoy wrote :

>At this moment, there are fascinating color TV pictures of the N1  four
>launches in a flemish program.
>The third was launched and the pictures are seen  from a distance. The sky
>is all reddish. it exploded at an altitude (must have used  a zoom  to
>picture it) (sorry, I haven't recorded the program from the very beginning,
>but do now-I hope Bart, Tristan and Koen are seeing it too).

Yes, Raoul, I did see the documentary, which was a Dutch-language version of
a US documentary. There was no indication what the original English title
was, only that it was produced by a certain Dan Clifton. It featured
interviews with Charles Vick and James Harford.

I think most or all of the N-1 footage in this documentary was from a
compilation of N-1 pictures released by the Videocosmos organisation in
Moscow a couple of years ago. There was also footage of the July 1969 N-1
pad explosion taken from the RKK Energiya 1946-1996 video. The Videocosmos
compilation included a 1973 in-house movie of KBOM, the design bureau that
built the N-1 launch pads. A lot of the footage shown in the documentary was
from the KBOM movie. Actually, I'm quite sure the vehicle shown in the KBOM
movie is 7L, the fourth N-1. Mishin was shown watching the footage and said
it was the third launch, but that was a pre-dawn launch, so he must have
been mistaken. One thing that I don't recall having seen elsewhere was the
apparent break-up of an N-1. I say apparent, because it was shown from too
far to be sure that it was an N-1. It may well have been an entirely
different rocket. Perhaps Charles Vick knows.

The documentary was slightly misleading in that it began and ended with
footage of the first Atlas-3 launch (carrying NPO Energomash's RD-180),
while the rest of it was devoted to the history of Kuznetsov's NK engines.
There was not a word about the fact that the NK-33 is yet to make its first
flight (and may never do so unless Kistler finally works out its problems)
and that the RD-180 is an altogether different engine than the NK-33.  I'm
sure that many casual viewers went away with the impression that the Russian
engine used on the Atlas-3 is the NK-33. But that's enough nitpicking. It
was fun watching.

Bart Hendrickx