THE N-1 MOON ROCKET, THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL, LIFTED FROM ITS launch pad in Kazakhstan with the thrust of 30 engines. A cacophonous roar rolled across the steppes, a roar that carried hope. It was July 1969; at Cape Kennedy, half a world away, NASA was preparing to launch Apollo 11, which would carry the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to man’s first lunar landing. The N-1 was unmanned, but if its flight proved successful, the Soviets might be in a position to match the Americans’ achievement.

All engines were firing normally as the immense launch vehicle rose several hundred feet. Then a stray piece of metal, a bolt that a technician had failed to notice, entered the liquid-oxygen turbopump of engine number eight, causing it to explode. The blast broke cables in the electrical circuitry, damaged adjacent engines, and started a fire. An onboard fault-detection system shut down all propulsion. The N-1 moon rocket, fully fueled and weighing as much as a destroyer, fell back onto the launch complex and exploded in an enormous fireball.

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