>>12801404Lack of interest from political leadership until 1964, which was 3 years after Kennedy's proclamation that the US would put a man on the moon by the end the 60s.
Infighting between two of the chief designs, Sergey Korolev and Valentin Gluskho. Korolev wanted to develop cryogenic propellants which Glushko believed impossible at the time, he thus favoured the use of hypergolics which Korolev was against due to their high toxicity. Due to personal issues leading back to Glushko's denoucment of Korolev during the Great Purge, the two refused to cooperate and Glushko supported rival designer, Vladimir Chelomei's design, the UR-700, which would use hypergolic propellants. Korolev thus turned to aircraft engine designer, Nikolai Kuznetsov to design engines for the N1, Korolev's design for a moon rocket. However unlike the US, the USSR never solved the issue of combustion instability, present in larger engines or ones with larger bell nozzles. Thus for the N1, Kuznetsov designed small but highly efficient engines for the N1, the NK-15 (NK-33 were designed for later, but never flown iterations of the N1). However, with so many engines in the first stage of the N1, the complex plumbing was prone to rupture and was responsible for the failure of the N1's four launches. For Mishin, Korolev's deputy (and later successor), as well as Kuznetsov, foreign bodies in the engines were to blame for these failures. In contrast, Glushko didn't believe in foreign bodies, hinting at the poor quality control of these engines.
