N1 rocket watches

In years 2007 and 2008, two best selling Vostok models were Arktika and Rocket N1.

Vostok Europe is becoming more popular at least because of counterfeits or fakes of mentioned types that were found in Russia and South Korea. Usually there were made as rough copies, thus the design was stolen.

According to the super heavy Rocket N1, which was created to launch Soviet cosmonauts to the moon, as well as probes to Mars and Venus, and to place space stations into orbit, was named the Vostok Europe watch.

Let’s shortly say some fact about Rocket‘s pilgrimage. Officially there were 10 N1 vehicles produced/made. The first one N1 1M1 was just a static model. Then the N1 1L and 2L were test vehicles. N1 3L launched as first, but exploded at 12th km. Fourth N1 4L never launched, but its parts were used for other launchers.

Unfortunately, some problems reoccured in cases of N1 5L, 6L and 7L. Finally, the N1 8L, 9L and 10L were the successful ones that reached the space. However, the further developement was stopped because of several political and technical problems. Thus was the N1 Rocket replaced by the Energia Booster.

Considering the invention and process we could still find the N1 rocket as a worthy pattern for these Vostok watches. The N1 Rocket has a very notable predecessor. Raketa is its name, having a 24 hour version. It means that the hour hand registers 24 hours instead of 12. Its specifics are the mentioned 24 hour dial, rotating bezel, central second hand, 16 jewel movement, accurate to within -20 and +40 second per day, all including leather strap. Even though it’s sometimes difficult to read from this messy appearance, but they are still exceptional though.

Why to choose the Russian watch? The answer was given by Managing Director of Vostok-Europe, Igor Zubovskij, for russianwatchguide.com: „There are thousands of Swiss-made and millions of made-in-China watches on the market now. However, Russian watches are different from all of them because of their movements, design, prices and presentation. Russian watches are for people who want to be different, so my advice is to buy a Russian watch if you don’t want to be the same as everybody else.“