A concluded exhibition on the NK-33 engine of the N-1 rocket: a cancelled programme, rescued engines and a second flight forty years on.
When the N-1 lunar programme closed in 1974, the completed NK-33 engines were slated for destruction. Designers at the Kuibyshev bureau hid dozens of them in a factory warehouse — and forty years later those same engines flew again, on the American Antares and the Russian Soyuz-2.1v.
The exhibition displayed a sectioned engine beside its predecessors, the RD-107 and RD-108, and its supersonic relative the NK-144, presenting the Samara school of engine building.
The launch sequence chart and original 1970s test-stand recordings played in the hall.
