The N1/L3 (from , "Carrier Rocket"; Cyrillic: Н1) was a 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, with studies beginning as early as 1959. Its first stage remains the most powerful rocket stage ever built, but all of the four flown N1 Block A first stages failed because of a lack of static test firings that did not reveal plumbing issues and other adverse characteristics with the large cluster of thirty engines and its complex fuel and oxidizer feeder system.