L5-1967

Russian manned lunar lander. Study 1967. At a Lunar Soviet meeting in October 1967 preliminary agreement was reached to study a follow-on to the first N1-L3 lunar landings. A new N1 model was to be developed to launch a new 'L5' spacecraft.

This was mentioned as being able to handle 4 to 5 crew, 1.5 to 2.0 metric tons of scientific equipment, and spend three months on the lunar surface. This was to be ready two to three years after the first landing.

No other details were available, but this was clearly the ancestor of the two-crew L3M and various N1-launced lunar long-duration stay spacecraft planned for the late 1970's. The booster described in the discussions corresponded to the N-IFV-III design in Korolev's 1965 study of future N1 variants. This would have had a payload to low earth orbit of 125 metric tons, implying an L5 mass landed on the moon of about 27 metric tons in a two-launch scenario.

Crew Size: 5.