Nearly a disaster. Energia rocket first launch with Polyus.

First energiya rocket launch. This rocket was also used to launch the soviet space shuttle. Video from You can see that it bents slightly just after lift-off (I bet some engineers suddenly remembered the N1). This was likely a bug in the guidance system, since this was the first launch and the second one (the one carrying the buran) went perfectly. Although that was a little scary, the system recovered very well and did a successful launch. The polyus payload guidance system failed after it was separated from energia core causing it to not reach orbit. ?tid=4913&posts=35&start=1 Update 2020-JUN-07: I posted these videos when information online about Buran, N1 and other launch systems used in USSR was extremely hard to find, and it was a way of sharing it to a wider audience and also for my future reference. Fortunately, this is not the case anymore, there are now plenty of videos and information nowadays. It could be argued whether the rocket deviation just upon start was intended or not. In this video, Pavel Vinogradov makes it clear: “крепление полезного груза было сбоку, и вот эта вся масса огромная - две тысячи тонн...* Ракета, когда вышла из стартовых сооружений, начала как бы сразу заваливаться набок. Угол был очень большой, градусов 10 - 12. Первое впечателение было, что вот сейчас это может закончиться трагедией. “ *My understanding is he is talking about the total mass of the rocket, not the polyus, that wouldn’t make sense.  “The rocket slanted sideways a lot, about 10 - 12 degrees. Our first impression was that it could end up in a tragedy“