I had the same thought while watching! You could see the asymmetry in the lit engines as it climbed and I was wondering how long the control system could take it before losing it.
Can you share? I figure this is mostly just new system problems. When I write lots of new code my unit tests find a lot of bugs in the first pass, but you don't have that in complex dynamic mechanical systems. Simulation can only take you so far.
The issue was stage separation, N1 never got that far.
Also, N1 had many issues, non were really shown in this flight. So I don't know what you are referring to.
Maybe you are referring to the N1 failure where to many engine shut off, N1 used pure thrust vectoring for guidance and the board computer had a overly simple guidance computer where 1 engine getting shut down was automatically leading to a engine on the other side shutting down. This lead to a cascade where all engine shut down.
N1 also suffered from pipe failures because of vibration. Again not something experienced in this flight as far as we can see.
Can you be more concrete of what you are referring to?
I'm not sure the N1 actually killed anyone? The second launch resulted in the rocket falling on and destroying the launch pad (one engine exploded on liftoff, the computer turned most of the other engines off), but I don't think anyone died.
Going to guess you don't actually know what the details are in the comparison betwen the N1 and Starship, because this is a incredibly uniformed comment without any arguments/evidence.
N1: 30 engines working next to each other instead of big engines. Starship: 33 engines working next to each other. There might be some details, but concept and idea are same.
