N111

N-111

Mission Profile

The N-111 was a proposed Soviet super heavy-lift launch vehicle studied in the early 1970s as a three-stage evolution of the N-1 rocket, intended to build on lessons from the N-1's troubled development with more reliable NK-33 and NK-43 engines and greater payload capacity. Part of the Soviet Lunar Program's long-term planning for post-Apollo crewed lunar operations, the N-111 was envisioned to deliver substantially heavier payloads to the Moon than the baseline N-1. Though the N-1 program was cancelled in 1976 before the N-111 could be developed, these studies demonstrated Soviet ambitions to exploit the N-1's enormous engine investment for a more capable and reliable successor vehicle.