The Soviets give up on the Moon: the first launch of the NK-33, the successor to the N-1, is canceled; the NK-33 is equipped with closed-cycle engines that also use the exhaust gases from the pre-combustion chamber; the technology, it will only be discovered 27 years later, is decades ahead of the American one; the Soviet political authorities order the destruction of every rocket and every engine; in defiance of orders, 70 closed-cycle engines are hidden; rediscovered in 1995 by the American Aerojet, they will power the American Atlas rocket (which, ironically, had initially been designed as an ICBM to bomb the Soviet Union…)
