Comment Re:Success rate of 0% (Score 1) 152
It didn't help that Sergei Korolev died right before the Apollo moon landings. It was even apparently due to a poorly trained surgeon for what should have been a routine medical procedure that caused his death. Had Korolev been around to provide strong leadership to the Soviet Moon program, I think there might have been an outside chance for a Soviet crewed lunar landing to have happened by about 1970 with the N-1 rocket becoming successful.
The funny thing is that the N-1 engines that should have gone to the Moon ended up being used by Orbital Science for sending supplies to the International Space Station. Then again, when one of those engines exploded shortly after launch, it destroyed one of the cargo modules and a couple of satellites... so the disaster of the N-1 seems to keep repeating itself.