Comment by ben_w
19 hours ago
Hmm.
I suppose, depending on how you count.
The N1 was cancelled after four explosions, and the fourth Starship launch was non-explody.
But the fourth N1 launch was 10 years after the N1 work was started. Starship began work under a different name in 2012, and by 2022 it had yet to launch at all, let alone reach the non-explody stage.
If you assume all the pre-2016-rebrand work was scrapped, then you can have it beating the N1; otherwise I think my point stands.
For the first few years they were just doing design work, and it's hard to say how much effort they were putting in since their focus back then was Falcon; the first Falcon 9 landing was 2015, and the first Falcon Heavy flight was 2018. For Starship they didn't even decide on stainless steel until 2019.
Comparing apples to apples, this seems to be the appropriate starting point for N1:
> Studied and designed by OKB-1 since 1959, it was the counterpart to the US Saturn V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
First launch was 1969. Starship's first launch was in 2023, so it took one extra year from initial concept to launch.
Starting from first launch, N1 did four launches in three years and never succeeded. Starship did 15 launches in three years, had multiple mission successes in which they achieved orbital velocity but had planned a suborbital trajectory, and then orbited on the 15th launch. Their first mission reaching orbital velocity was in 2024.
Also worth mentioning that a lot of the Starship work focuses on full reusability, a quite difficult problem which N1 did not attempt.