The N1 super heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to deliver payloads beyond low Earth orbit. The N1 was the Soviet counterpart to the US Saturn V and was intended to enable crewed travel to Earth’s Moon and beyond. Its first stage remains the most powerful rocket stage ever built, but all of the four flown N1 Block A first stages failed. The N1 was designed to compete with the United States Apollo program to land a person on the Moon, using a similar lunar orbit rendezvous method.