I was wondering how many years were the Soviets away from landing on the moon when the Americans landed. Was it close? Or we would've to wait for the Soviet landing for another decade or so?
There were several key elements to the Soviet manned moon program. The spacecraft components were the Soyuz 7K-LOK (the equivalent of the Apollo CSM) and the LK Lander (the equivalent of the LM). The major launch component was the N1 rocket. Additionally, the Soviets developed the Zond spacecraft for manned flybys of the moon on a free return trajectory which could be launched on the Proton rocket.
Unfortunately, every launch attempt of the N1 failed and the Soviets were never able to achieve any degree of operational success in their moon program. By 1969 the Soviets had the capability on paper to launch manned spacecraft to orbit the moon, but not land on it. It was not until 1974 that LK lander development was finished, they even planned another N1 launch attempt with an unmanned LOK/LK stack to attempt a robotic dry run of a moon landing. But by they decided not to push their luck with the N1 and the cancellation of further Apollo landings reduced the pressure to try to keep up.
Hypothetically, if nothing had failed and the Soviets were aggressive at putting crews on launches then they could have put a man on the moon by 1974, perhaps a few years earlier. Somewhat more realistically, if they had not cancelled their program and didn't have any other major N1 failures then they probably would have been able to make a landing in 1975 or so.
Further Reading:
I do apologize if my lack of a source makes this point inappropriate.
The Soviets did not develop a new, larger engine for their moon rocket, unlike NASA who put a considerable effort into designing the giant F-1 engines. So, instead of Saturn V's 5 engines.on the first stage, the N-1 tried to achieve lift through 30 engines. That made it a lot cheaper to design, but also more prone to failure- 30 engines are a lot harder to maintain and troubleshoot than 5. The Russian design philosophy of using existing tech whenever possible has its merits, but in this case it got in the way of their goals. Source: my brother, MIT educated aerospace engineer.
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