[FPSPACE] July 1969 N-1 explosion

[Phillip Clark]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, Dwayne Allen Day wrote:
> While reviewing a transcript of an interview with a former CIA official, I
> came across a piece of information that I had not noticed before.  He said
> that the July 1969 on-pad explosion of the N-1 launch vehicle was actually
> detected by seismic sensors in the US.  I'm not sure what sensors he was
> referring to--ones in Europe or in Alaska or the US itself--but he said
> that the CIA clearly knew something had happened in the Soviet Union at
> that time.  Later, they got the photography that let them figure out what
> it was.

Charles P Vick said that this explosion had been detected by seismographs
in his early 1974 Spaceflight article about the "Soviet
Superboosters".   I made enquiries at the geological institutes over here
and they checked their records of activity (based upon worldwide
measurements) and could find nothing with an epicentre anywhere near
Baikonur (or even Tyura Tam !) in June-July 1969.

I suppose that it is possible that there was a way for the intelligence
community to "suppress" such records, but I am not convinced about this.

So, I have always been a little skeptical about the "seismograph"
detection of the second N-1 explosion.

Thinking back to the first N-1 launch - this was never even rumoured in
the West until the Soviets announced it.   Was it simply a case of the
February cloud cover preventing photography of the launch site which would
have revealed the vehicle on the pad for a while and then gone suddenly ?

Phillip Clark

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip S Clark                                     22 Winterbourne Close
Molniya Space Consultancy                           Hastings
Compiler/Publisher, Worldwide Satellite Launches    E Sussex  TN34 1XG
                                                    U.K.

Specialist in "space archeology" - the older and more obscure the more 
interesting it is !
---------------------------------------------------------------------------