Category Energiya-Buran

A Return Maneuver (MV) enabled Buran to return to its launch site runway in case of a single-engine failure on the strap-ons or the core stage early in the launch. The “negative return” point would have been reached between T + 2m05s-2m10s in the event of a strap-on failure and between T + 3m00s-3m10s if a core stage engine shut down.

If an RD-170 engine in one of the four strap-ons failed, the engine of the diametrically opposed booster would also shut down to make sure that the rocket did not deviate from its trajectory. Subsequently, all the remaining liquid oxygen in both strap-ons would have been dumped overboard to minimize the amount of dead weight carried up by the rocket and also to ensure that conditions at separation were close to the ones originally planned. The LOX could be released via a 600 mm diameter drainage channel, which exited the lower end of the LOX tank, situated some 15.5m above the engines. Kerosene, which comprised only one-third of the overall propellant mass in each booster, would not have been dumped overboard to prevent the formation of an explosive mix.

The return profile would have been very similar to that of a Return to Launch Site (RTLS) abort during Space Shuttle launches. The vehicle would have continued to fly downrange to expend excess propellant and would have performed a pitch- around maneuver to orient the stack to a heads-up attitude pointing towards the launch site. The core stage would then be separated, allowing Buran to glide to a landing on its cosmodrome runway. In order to improve Buran’s weight and center of gravity for the glide phase and landing, excess propellant for the ODU propulsion system was to be expended by simultaneously firing the two DOM engines and dumping liquid and gaseous oxygen overboard.

Yet another proposal came from Vladimir Myasishchev, whose Experimental Machine Building Factory was heavily involved in the Buran program after its incorporation into NPO Molniya in 1976. Myasishchev’s idea was to convert his old 3M long-range strategic bomber into a transport plane. Also known as the 201M, 103M, or M6 (with NATO designation Bison-B), the 3M had made its debut back in 1956 and was a modification of the original 2M or M4 (“Bison-A”). With a cargo capacity of just about 50 tons, the converted strategic bomber would not be able to transport a fully outfitted Buran or carry a complete Energiya core stage, leaving much of the final assembly work to be done at the cosmodrome itself. It was therefore only seen as an interim solution until a more capable aircraft came along. Many felt that Myasishchev’s plan was outrageous, especially given the fact that the 3.5 m wide 3M would be dwarfed by Energiya’s 8 m diameter core stage. Among the skeptics was none less than Minister of the Aviation Industry Pyotr Dementyev himself, but with no better solutions available in the short run, he eventually agreed, reportedly under pressure from Ustinov. Approval for the use of the 3M came in the party and government decree on Buran of 21 November 1977, which was followed by an official order from the Ministry of the Aviation Industry on 30 December 1977.

Even before this, several ways had been studied of adapting the 3M for its new role. The most radical was to widen the fuselage from 3.5 m to 10 m and only retain the 3M cockpit, wings, and engines, giving the plane an appearance reminiscent of a C-5 Galaxy. It would have to be outfitted with a twin-fin tail and unlike the basic 3M would have required a tricycle rather than a bicycle landing gear. Another idea was to transform the 3M into something that more or less resembled a Boeing 377 “Guppy”. In this configuration the nose section, mid fuselage, wings, engines, and landing gear of the 3M remained unchanged. Bolted on top of the mid fuselage would have been a cylindrical container that would be an integral part of the aircraft, with the aft section serving as the plane’s tail (with two fins). Cargo would have been loaded via the nose section of the container. Both versions were turned down because they essentially turned the 3M into a new airplane, taking many years to develop. Moreover, the orbiter could only be transported by these planes if its wings and vertical stabilizer were removed.

The next idea was to mount a 37.5 m long and 9 m wide removable container on top of the 3M. The big advantages of this approach were that the 3M itself required only minimal modifications (only the double fin) and that the cargo could be loaded into the container on the factory floor and off-loaded inside the assembly buildings at Baykonur. This is the configuration that was approved by the government decree on Energiya-Buran of 21 November 1977. A drawback of the design was that the container alone weighed 17.8 tons. Although by this time the core stage had been changed to a dual-section design with four propellant tanks, it would still take three ferry flights to transport all elements to the cosmodrome.

The following year, as the core stage returned to its original single-element configuration, engineers of the Myasishchev bureau decided to do away with the container and transport both Buran and elements of the core stage exposed to the open air on top of the 3M. Buran would have to be flown to the launch site in a stripped-down state and it would still take two flights to transport all the elements of the core stage, but it was the best solution at hand until a more capable aircraft came along. On 16 November 1978, MOM and MAP put forward a plan calling for the 3M to carry four types of payloads:

– OGT (mass 45.3 tons, later increased to 50.5 tons, length 38.45 m): a stripped-down Buran (among other things without the vertical stabilizer and ODU propulsion system).

– 1GT (mass 31.5 tons, length 44.46m ): the liquid hydrogen tank with forward and aft protective covers.

– 2GT (mass 30.0 tons, length 26.41 m): the liquid oxygen tank, the RD-0120 engine section, the instrument section, and a forward protective cover, with the tip of the LOX tank acting as the aft protective cover.

– 3GT (mass 15.0 tons, length 15.67 m): the protective covers for 1GT and 2GT. After the liquid hydrogen tank had been delivered to Baykonur, the forward and aft covers were taken off, joined together, and flown back to the manufacturer. Installed inside the two covers was the disassembled forward cover used to transport the liquid oxygen tank. The 3GT configuration could also have been used to transport Buran’s crew compartment.

After extensive wind tunnel tests of each configuration at TsAGI, the final go – ahead for modifying the 3M for its new role came in mid-1979. Selected for the job were three 3M aircraft that had earlier been modified as tanker aircraft (3MN-2). One (tail number 01504) was to be used only for static tests at TsAGI, while the other two (tail numbers 01402 and 01502) would enter service. Among the modifications were the replacement of the four VD-7B engines by the more powerful VD-7MD (with an afterburner for higher take-off thrust), the installation of a new, longer aft section with two horizontal and two vertical tails, and the use of improved flight control, navigation, and radio systems. Maximum crew size was reduced from eight to six. The refueling hardware was removed from the aircraft, but re-installed on 01402 in 1984 with the aim of canceling the refueling stop required during the long flights with the OGT payload from Zhukovskiy to Baykonur. Although some in-flight “dry” hook-up tests were performed in conjunction with a 3MN-2 tanker aircraft, it appears that the refueling system was never actually used. With a total length of 51.2m and a wingspan of 53.14 m, the aircraft weighed 139 tons at take-off (minus the payload). Maximum take-off weight (with the OGT payload) was 187 tons. The payloads were hoisted onto the aircraft and off-loaded with a mate-demate device known as PKU-50, which was available in Zhukovskiy, Kuybyshev, and at the Baykonur cosmodrome.

The name originally painted on the planes was 3M-T (“T” standing for trans­port), but since 3M was a secret designator, the name was changed shortly before one of the planes was demonstrated at a Moscow air show. The most straightforward change was to repaint the 3 as the Cyrillic equivalent of the letter V (“B”), resulting in the name VM-T. These also happened to be the initials of Myasishchev’s first name and patronymic (Vladimir Mikhaylovich). The planes were also called Atlant (Russian for “Atlas”, the Greek mythological figure who held the burden of Earth on his shoulders).

Before transporting actual flight hardware, the Atlant planes undertook numer­ous test flights from the Flight Research Institute in Zhukovskiy. These began on 29 April 1981 with the first in a series of 19 flights of Atlant 01402 without a payload. In October 1981 the same plane was loaded with a mock-up 1GT payload, which had been delivered from the Progress factory in Kuybyshev to Zhukovskiy by barge via the Volga, Oka, and Moscow rivers. After several taxi tests and take-off runs, the combination took to the skies on 6 January 1982 with a six-man crew commanded by Anatoliy Kucherenko, climbing to an altitude of 2 km before returning to its home base. To onlookers it seemed as if a giant cylinder was flying in the sky, with the “small” Atlant barely visible under it. After four more flights with the 1GT payload Atlant 01402 flew seven test flights with a mock 2GT payload between 15 March and 20 April 1982, revealing the need to fly this payload at a somewhat slower speed to prevent vibrations. This cleared the way for the first ferry flights of Energiya hardware (2GT and 1GT configurations) from Kuybyshev to Baykonur on 8 April and 11 June 1982.

Meanwhile, Atlant 01502 had begun its own autonomous test flights in March 1982 and flew the mock 1GT payload on 19 April. Both planes then underwent several months of modifications before 01502 flew to Baykonur in December 1982 for the first test flights with a 3GT payload. On 28 December the plane for the first time returned a 3GT from Baykonur to Kuybyshev.

In early 1983 Atlant 01502 was ready for the first test flights with a Buran test model. A total of eight test flights were flown between 1 March and 25 March. The final one ended with the VM-T skidding off the runway in an incident blamed on pilot error. Due to a mistake in the landing gear deployment sequence, the nose gear failed to lock and lost steering capability during the landing roll-out. High crosswinds and the aircraft’s own drag chute then pushed the combination off the runway, where it got stuck in the sand. Attempts to tow it back onto the runway caused serious damage to the aircraft’s fuselage, which took several months to fix. Eventually, the Buran model had to be removed from the aircraft with two big cranes before the aircraft could be pulled loose. The incident was apparently photographed by American reconnaissance satellites and reported by the American magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology less than a month after it happened.

In December 1983 and August 1984 the VM-T ferried the first orbiters from Zhukovskiy to Baykonur (the OK-ML1 and OK-MT full-scale models). The planes were declared operational by a government and party decree in November 1985, and the following month (on 11 December) one of them delivered the first flight vehicle to the cosmodrome. During delivery of the second flight vehicle on 23 March 1988, the aircraft had a close call during the final approach to the runway, when it lost both of its left engines because of a fuel leak and suffered a power blackout in the cabin. Increasing airspeed to compensate for the loss of the engines, pilot Anatoliy Kucherenko managed to safely land the VM-T on the runway, with the airplane coming to a stop after an unusually long landing roll-out.

In all, the VM-T Atlant planes flew more than 150 missions in support of the Energiya-Buran program. In the late 1980s and early 1990s they were also considered for other tasks, such as serving as a launch platform for experimental spaceplanes and rockets and performing ferry flights and drop tests of the European Hermes spaceplane, but these plans never came to fruition [7].

All cosmonauts mentioned so far were selected specifically to fly on Buran, even though a fair number were transferred to the Soyuz, Salyut, and Mir programs later. In addition to these, several other cosmonauts from both TsPK and NPO Energiya at one time or another conducted training either for flights aboard Buran itself or for Soyuz missions to Buran.

As the “prime contractor’’ for Buran, NPO Energiya assigned a number of engineers to the program. This was particularly the case for the 1978 class, for which possible flights on Buran were taken into consideration during the selection process, although this was not the sole purpose of their selection. Several of its members spent part of their initial time in the cosmonaut team studying and training for Buran.

Aleksandr Nikolayevich Balandin worked on and off on ergonomics and the design of Buran’s cockpit control panels between 1979 and March 1987. Aleksandr Ivanovich Laveykin was involved in Buran training from 1979 to 1984, accumulating 25 hours of flight time on L-29 aircraft and performing 46 parachute jumps. Musa Khiramanovich Manarov prepared for Buran flights from 1979 to 1982, clocking up more than 43 hours of flight time on L-39 aircraft.

There were also several NPO Energiya engineers from earlier and later selec­tions who became involved in the Buran program. They were Valentin Vitalyevich Lebedev (1972 class, assigned to Buran from 1983 to 1986), Aleksandr Sergeyevich Ivanchenkov (1973 class, assigned to Buran from 1983 to 1992), and Sergey Kon­stantinovich Krikalyov (1985 class, assigned to Buran from 1986 to 1988). Many of these engineers (plus Gennadiy Mikhaylovich Strekalov of the 1973 class) were even put forward by NPO Energiya to fly in the co-pilot seat on the very first piloted missions of Buran.

Also involved in the Buran program were several military engineers originally selected by TsPK in the 1960s and early 1970s. These were Yevgeniy Nikolayevich Khludeyev and Eduard Nikolayevich Stepanov of the 1965 TsPK intake and Nikolay Nikolayevich Fefelov and Valeriy Vasilyevich Illarionov of the 1970 class. All but Illarionov had spent most of their careers training for missions on Chelomey’s Almaz military space station and the TKS transport ships, but none of the four had ever flown in space or even received a back-up assignment.

Illarionov was active in the Buran program from 1984 until 1992, performing a multitude of engineering tests. These included tests of Buran equipment in simulated zero-g, pre-launch and post-landing evacuation exercises, vacuum tests of the airlock and the Docking Module, and tests of the Strizh pressure suit. The other three engineers were transferred to the Buran program in 1985/1986 after having been part of a training group to operate military instruments on the Kosmos-1686 TKS spacecraft. Khludeyev left the program in 1988, but Fefelov and Stepanov stayed until 1992 [28]. In 1990-1992 Illarionov, Fefelov, and Stepanov were in a training group for the aforementioned Soyuz mission to link up with an unmanned Buran in orbit.

Missing in the Buran cosmonaut team were people with scientific backgrounds. Although the Academy of Sciences had set up its own cadre of cosmonauts in 1967, their hopes of flying in space were soon dashed by the cancellation of the manned lunar program and also by the elimination of the third seat in the Soyuz spacecraft following the Soyuz-11 accident in 1971, limiting space station crews to a military commander and a military or civilian flight engineer. Then, when Soyuz regained a three-man capability with the introduction of Soyuz-T in the early 1980s, the third seat was usually reserved for brief visiting flights by foreign spacemen or other “guest cosmonauts”. All that could have changed if Buran had ever reached operational status. Especially, the long-duration Spacelab-type missions that were planned for Buran could have become a long-awaited blessing for Soviet scientists aspiring to fly in space. However, with the cancellation of the Soviet shuttle program, Russian scientist cosmonauts saw yet another opportunity to fly in space go up in smoke. Having said that, there were no significant additions to the Academy of Sciences team in the 1980s indicating that big numbers of scientists were going to fly on Buran anytime soon.

Finally, in the early 1990s French “spationauts” Jean-Foup Chretien, Michel Tognini, and Feopold Eyharts flew both the Tupolev Tu-154FF and MiG-25 Buran training aircraft in preparation for the European Hermes spaceplane program. There are no indications that they were considered to fly aboard Buran itself [29].

A further series of bench tests at the Energomash facilities in early 1985 finally paved the way for the first test flight of the Zenit rocket, which took place from the Baykonur cosmodrome on 13 April 1985 after a scrub the previous day. Although the second stage failed to place the mock-up payload into orbit, the RD-171 and the Zenit first stage performed brilliantly. Another launch with similar outcome was carried out on 21 June 1985. The first completely successful Zenit launch occurred on 22 October 1985, with the rocket placing into orbit a Tselina-2 electronic intelli­gence satellite, which would be its primary payload for many years to come. After another partial failure in December 1985 (not related to the first stage), the Zenit chalked up another five successful flights before Energiya’s maiden launch on 15 May 1987 (for the further history of the Zenit see Chapter 8).

By 1988, twelve years after the approval of the Energiya-Buran program, the stage was finally set for the Soviet space shuttle to make its orbital debut. While earlier test flights of piloted spacecraft had been prepared in utter secrecy and conveniently disguised under the all-embracing “Kosmos” label, the Russians no longer had the luxury of doing the same with Buran. Times had changed after General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachov’s rise to power in the spring of 1985. The new policy of glasnost was sweeping through all ranks of Soviet society, including the country’s space program.

Disclosing the existence of a Soviet equivalent to the US Space Shuttle in some ways must have been an embarrassing move for the Russians. Not only did the maiden flight of Buran come seven years after the first mission of the Space Shuttle, the Soviet media had always been very critical of the Shuttle program, portraying it as just another tool of the Pentagon to realize its ambition of militarizing space. This tradition began with the very first Shuttle launch on 12 April 1981, which entirely by coincidence overshadowed the 20th anniversary of the mission of Yuriy Gagarin. Reporting on the launch, Radio Moscow World Service said:

“The United States embarked on the Shuttle program some 10 years ago. Its military pin on the program far-reaching hopes for transferring the arms race to space. One of the main missions in the first few flights of the Shuttle will be testing a laser arms guidance system.’’

Even though the Shuttle eventually flew only a handful of dedicated Defense Depart­ment missions, no Shuttle flight went by without the Soviet media reminding the world of the ship’s military potential, the more so after President Ronald Reagan’s announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative in March 1983. Even when Challenger exploded in January 1986, Radio Moscow warned its listeners that:

“a similar failure in the SDI system the American Administration is so anxious

to create would cause a global disaster” [1].

Many Soviet space officials and cosmonauts had also denounced the Space Shuttle program as a wasteful effort, emphasizing that a fleet of expendable rockets was a much more economical way of delivering payloads to orbit. At the same time, some also stopped short of flatly denying that reusable space transportation systems were being studied, although no technical details or timelines were given. Until 1987 the Energiya-Buran program was a closely guarded state secret, requiring a cover-up operation comparable in scale with that for the Soviet manned lunar program in the 1960s and early 1970s.

However, as had been the case with the N-1 Moon rocket, there was no way the Russians could conceal Buran-related construction work and tests from the all-seeing eyes of US reconnaissance satellites. Long before the Russians opened the informa­tion floodgates, US intelligence had a very good understanding of the system’s configuration and capabilities, although some serious misjudgments were made as well, at least based on what has been declassified so far. Significantly, the information was publicly released on a much wider scale than it had been during the Moon race in the 1960s.

Post-landing operations on the runway included removal of residual LOX from the ODU propulsion system. After that, Buran was wheeled back to the MZK building,

where—among other things—residual kerosene in the ODU system and hydrazine for the Auxiliary Power Units were drained from the vehicle’s tanks. Buran was still in the MZK at the end of the month, when a French delegation headed by President Francois Mitterand visited the cosmodrome to watch the launch of “spationaut” Jean-Loup Chretien aboard Soyuz TM-7 on 26 November.

After Buran was towed back to its MIK OK processing building, engineers got down to a close inspection of the vehicle. Much attention was focused on the ship’s heat shield. Several dozen tiles were damaged, showing cracks or signs of erosion or melting, and seven were lost altogether (compared with sixteen on Columbia during STS-1). These were one black tile each on the vertical stabilizer, rudder/speed brake, and body flap, three black tiles on the underside of the left wing and one white tile near one of the overhead windows. The three black tiles were in an area bordering on one of the reinforced carbon-carbon panels on the leading edge of the wing. This is the only area where the underlying surface suffered major damage, fortunately without catastrophic consequences. There were also two missing blankets of flexible thermal insulation on the upper left wing and several gapfillers were missing on the vehicle’s underside.

With the launch having taken place in cold and wet conditions, much of the damage sustained by the thermal protection system is believed to have been caused by chunks of ice falling from the launch tower, Energiya’s core stage, and the orbiter itself. There was also some significant scorching of tiles on the vertical stabilizer and the aft fuselage of the vehicle. This was attributed not only to the thermal effects of re­entry, but also to exhaust gases impinging on the vehicle from the separation motors of Energiya’s strap-on boosters [57].

Little more has been revealed about post-flight analysis of Buran. Before thorough checks could be completed, the orbiter had to be readied for a series of test flights atop the new Mriya carrier aircraft in May 1989 in preparation for a flight to the Paris Air Show in June 1989 (see Chapter 4). By the time Buran returned to its hangar in Baykonur, there were already growing doubts about the program’s future. Moreover, since the second mission was to be flown by the second orbiter, there was no urgency in preparing Buran for its next flight.

In the mid-1980s NPO Molniya began building three more airframes intended for use in spaceflight-qualified vehicles (3K, 4K, and 5K). Talking about vehicle 3K in early 1990, Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy said it would be lighter and more reliable than the earlier orbiters thanks to the use of composite materials and an improved thermal protection system. He expected the spacecraft to be ready in 1992 [52].

Actually, vehicle 3K (airframe nr. 2.01) was only about 30 percent ready when the Buran program was canceled in 1993. It consisted of a complete fuselage, but apparently had very few internal systems installed. Pictures of the vehicle show that the crew compartment and the aft compartment were virtually empty. The fuselage was only partly covered with tiles and the payload bay doors were missing. Vehicle 3K remained at the Tushino Machine Building Factory near Moscow until October 2004, when the fuselage, wings, and vertical stabilizer were transported separately to a nearby berth on the Moscow River, the same one where earlier orbiters were loaded onto a barge for transportation to Zhukovskiy. It will either be turned into scrap metal or sold to a museum if anyone displays interest [53].

The airframes for vehicles 4K and 5K (nrs. 2.02 and 2.03) never reached com­pletion. Construction work was presumably halted after the Defense Council’s May 1989 decision to reduce the orbiter fleet from five to three vehicles. One report

suggests there were plans to turn one of the airframes into an underwater training mock-up for the neutral buoyancy facility at Star City, but that never happened [54]. Some elements of these airframes still lie in storage at the Tushino Machine Building Factory, but most parts have been turned to scrap.

With state orders for RD-170 and RD-171 engines running out, NPO Energomash began looking at international marketing opportunities for its engines in the early 1990s, setting its sights on America in particular. Realizing that the RD-170/171 thrust levels were beyond what was needed on American launch vehicles, the com­pany designed a two-chamber version of the engine called RD-180 that was tailored to the US market and was probably similar to a first-stage engine studied for the 11K55. In October 1992 Pratt & Whitney started working with Energomash to draw American customers to the RD-180 and a tripropellant engine known as the RD-701, and also to advise the Russian company on ways to implement a cost-accounting system [71]. The RD-180 was considered for use on a new two-stage Martin Marietta booster as well as an upgraded version of General Dynamics’ Atlas-II rocket [72].

In 1994 General Dynamics Space Systems was sold to Martin Marietta, which in turn merged with Lockheed in 1995 to become Lockheed Martin. The company continued looking at new engines to power its new Atlas-IIAR rocket (later renamed Atlas III) as well as a new generation of Atlas vehicles (Atlas V) being developed under the Air Porce’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) competition. In January 1996 Lockheed Martin’s choice fell on the RD-180, which beat the Aerojet – sponsored NK-33, a Russian engine originally developed for the N-1 Moon rocket,

and a derivative of Rocketdyne’s venerable MA-5A called the MA-5D. Just one nozzle of the RD-180 generates as much thrust as all three MA-5A nozzles combined on the older Atlas configuration.

The RD-180 essentially is an RD-170 “cut in half” with a new, less powerful turbopump driven by a single gas generator. About 75 percent of parts are identical to those of the RD-170. It has a sea-level thrust of 390 tons and a specific impulse of 311 s. The engine has several features that made it attractive to Lockheed Martin. It operates at much higher pressures than most other expendable booster engines, allowing the deep throttling capacity critical to effective engine use. The RD-180 can throttle over a 40-100 percent range, yet it remains flat in specific impulse throughout this range (losing just about a second of Isp), which is very important to fly the engine on both light and heavy-lift launch vehicles. The RD-180’s single-shaft turbine, liquid-oxygen pump, and single-stage propellant pump are all on one shaft, which cuts overall parts count, reduces cost, and translates to excellent reliability. Further­more, adoption of Russian seal and flange technologies virtually eliminated cryogenic system leaks that were accepted as normal on US boosters.

In early 1997 Energomash and Pratt & Whitney expanded their cooperation on the RD-180 into a joint venture called RD Amross LCC to build and market the engine. At the time the RD-180 accounted for 75 percent of Energomash’s business. In June 1997 Lockheed Martin announced it would purchase 101 RD-180 engines from Amross under a contract expected to be worth 1 billion dollars. In a move to allay concerns about relying on Russian technology for placing military and intelli­gence satellites into orbit, Lockheed Martin vowed that the US would set up its own production line at a new Pratt & Whitney facility in West Palm Beach, Florida, but those plans have run into numerous delays.

A prototype version of the RD-180 underwent an initial test firing at Energo­mash’s test facilities in Khimki in November 1996. The first test firing of a full-fledged engine followed in April 1997. Also applicable to the RD-180 were test firings of the RD-173, which had several new features that were incorporated into the RD-180. An RD-180 mated to an Atlas III thrust structure and tank simulator was first test-fired at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama in July 1998. The Atlas III debuted in a spectacular launch from Cape Canaveral on 24 May 2000, success­fully placing into orbit a Eutelsat communications satellite. It was a landmark event in US-Russian space cooperation, very illustrative of the new, post Cold War atmo­sphere. A US rocket that had evolved from an ICBM conceived to level Soviet cities was now powered by a Russian rocket engine that itself had its origins in a program once seen as a crucial part of the military space race.

The Atlas III was retired in 2005 after seven successful missions, clearing the way for the new Atlas V generation. In November 1997 the Air Force had decided to modify its procurement plans for the EELV program, splitting the work between a pair of finalists rather than going for a single winner-take-all award. One of the major reasons given for the redirection was to enhance US space launch competitiveness by keeping two rocket builders in business. The work would now be divided between Lockheed Martin with its Atlas V family and McDonnell Douglas (later Boeing) with its Delta-4 family.

The Atlas V family uses a Common Core Booster (CCB) first stage fitted with an RD-180 engine and flanked by up to five solid rocket boosters. The Centaur second stage is powered by either a single or two RLA-10A-4-2 engines and the payload is protected by either a 4 or 5 m diameter payload fairing. There were also plans for an

Atlas V Heavy featuring three CCBs coupled together, but Lockheed Martin is no longer actively pursuing development of this version.

Given the slightly different flight modes for the medium-lift and heavy-lift Atlas V versions, the RD-180 had to undergo separate certification programs for the two versions, although it is exactly the same engine as flown on the Atlas III. The impressive RD-180 test-firing program was completed in early 2002. Since the first test in 1996, the RD-180 averaged a full flight duration firing every 10 days, encom­passing 135 total development and certification tests in Khimki, comprised of 91 Atlas III class tests, 30 Atlas V Medium class tests, and 14 Atlas V Heavy class tests. All totaled, the RD-180 racked up an impressive 25,449 seconds of development and certification test firing in Khimki alone, equivalent to 110 nominal Atlas V missions. The inaugural flight of the Atlas V took place on 21 August 2002. The RD-180 may also fly on the first stage of a Japanese rocket called Galaxy Express, which is expected to use the first stage of the Atlas III [73].

The requirements stipulated for the new piloted spacecraft in the Federal Space Program were so obviously tailored to RKK Energiya’s Kliper that many wondered if the tender was no more than a formality. However, in January 2006 the Russian Space Agency decided to extend the tender, asking the three companies to bring their proposals in closer agreement with the tender specifications. Finally, in a rather embarrassing move, the agency’s head Anatoliy Perminov announced at the Farnborough air show in England in July 2006 that the tender had been canceled without a winner. Instead, Russia would join forces with ESA to build an Advanced Crew Transportation System (ACTS), with RKK Energiya serving as the prime contractor on the Russian side. This is expected to become a much upgraded version of Soyuz incorporating European technology. An earlier invitation to ESA to join the development of Kliper had been turned down at an ESA ministerial meeting in December 2005.

Despite cancellation of the tender, RKK Energiya is continuing work on Kliper using its own resources. It has the full backing of Nikolay Sevastyanov, who suc­ceeded Yuriy Semyonov as head of RKK Energiya in May 2005. Sevastyanov holds out hope Kliper will eventually receive government funding and be ready to fly in 2015. However, there are signs of growing rifts between RKK Energiya and the Russian Space Agency, which considers Energiya’s plans overly ambitious and way beyond affordable limits. Only time will tell if the differences can be resolved and if Kliper will become the country’s first new piloted space transportation system since Buran.

Although there was significant spaceplane research in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, it was still dwarfed by the effort the country put into its mainstream manned space program, the one that was visible to the outside world. In terms of successes, there were two distinct periods in the Soviet piloted space program in the 1960s. The first part of the decade was marked by amazing triumphs that stunned the whole world. There was the pioneering flight of Yuriy Gagarin in 1961, the first flight into space by a woman (Vostok-6 in 1963), the first three-man flight (Voskhod in 1964), and the first spacewalk (Voskhod-2 in 1965). Then things started going downhill in spec­tacular fashion. First, there was the death in January 1966 of chief designer Sergey Korolyov, the mastermind behind the Soviet Union’s early space triumphs. After a two-year gap in piloted space missions, the maiden manned flight of the Soyuz capsule ended in disaster with the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in April 1967.

Meanwhile, in August 1964 the Soviet Union had secretly decided to send men to the Moon in response to the Apollo program, kicked off three years earlier by President Kennedy’s announcement in May 1961. The Soviet piloted Moon program was to be carried out in two stages, beginning with manned circumlunar flights (using the L-1 capsules and the Proton rocket) and culminating in manned landings on the lunar surface (using the L-3 complex and the massive N-1 rocket). While the Russians came relatively close to beating America in the circumlunar race, they never stood a chance of upstaging the United States in putting a man on the Moon. Already months behind schedule, the L-3 lunar-landing program was thrown into complete disarray by the catastrophic failure of the first two test flights of the N-1 rocket in February and July 1969.

At the same time, the Soyuz program continued as an independent effort, with a couple of missions flown in 1968 and 1969 (albeit with mixed success). While Soyuz shared many features with the manned lunar craft, the Soyuz program, essentially a

remnant of a canceled circumlunar project of the early 1960s, lacked a clear sense of direction.

Realizing that the ailing Soviet manned space program needed a fresh impetus, a small group of engineers within the Korolyov design bureau started working out plans in mid-1969 for an Earth-orbiting space station (Long-term Orbital Station or DOS) that could be built relatively quickly using available technology and would use Soyuz as a ferry vehicle. By early 1970 they saw their plans approved with the release of a key government decree that would determine the course of the Soviet Union’s piloted space activities for the remainder of the century. After a herculean effort lasting just over one year, the space station, officially dubbed Salyut, rocketed into orbit in April 1971. Unfortunately, the three cosmonauts who boarded the station two months later died during the return to Earth.