NK-33

The first stage of the N-1 needed thirty engines at once — at that number the reliability of each became critical. Kuznetsov chose staged combustion and reached a thrust-to-weight ratio of about 136, outstanding for the early 1970s. After the programme closed some hundred and fifty completed engines were ordered destroyed, but the factory kept them in storage. Twenty years later they were tested in the United States and flew on American launchers — a rare case of hardware outliving its programme by two decades. On display is a stored engine, de-preserved and opened to show the combustion chamber.