[orbital-decay]

The original idea of the first step in outer space exploration by Korolev & co was a mission to circumnavigate Venus (before the surface conditions were known) or Mars. The N family or rockets, the concept of which had been studied before R-7 ever flew, was envisioned as a tool to assemble the large modular interplanetary spaceship in LEO.

Moon wasn't terribly popular among Soviet space engineers because orbital construction was seen as necessary tech, and a single launch mission would have accomplished nothing towards it. But the party decided to participate in the moon race so the largest rocket in the family, N-1, which was never optimized for TLI missions, has been selected and repurposed for this task (and never flew since the concept itself turned out to be flawed in several regards unlike R-7).

Hard to say whether this vision was right - too many unknowns, and they would probably have finished in early 80s at best - but the outcome of that idea was the modular space station tech.

[jahnu]

I guess it's really impossible to know for sure but imagining an alternative history of the space race is always fun. I really liked how For All Mankind did it.