THE ENERGIYA FAMILY

As had been Valentin Glushko’s original intention with the RLA rockets, the modular design of the Energiya rocket allowed it to be transformed into a wide variety of lighter and heavier launch vehicles. If all had gone according to plan, Russia could now have had an entire family of heavy-lift launch vehicles capable of orbiting payloads from just 30 tons to a mind-boggling 500 tons.

Vulkan

The Energiya version with eight strap-on boosters was known as Vulkan (“Vol­cano”). With the lower section of the core stage completely surrounded by strap – ons, the payload and upper stage were mounted atop the core stage as on a conventional rocket. The tanks of the strap-on boosters and core stage were stretched and the strap-ons did not have the parachute recovery systems of the standard Energiya. Vulkan would have required the development of a new adapter platform to place it on the launch table. Launches would only have taken place from the UKSS pad, which was built from the beginning with a view to supporting Vulkan launches in the future.

Two slightly different versions of Vulkan have been described in Russian litera­ture. One used the same RD-0120 and RD-170 engines as the standard Energiya and was capable of placing 170 tons into a low 50.7° orbit. Equipped with an 11D57M cryogenic upper-stage engine of the KB Saturn “Lyulka” design bureau (vacuum thrust 42 tons, specific impulse 460 s), it could inject a 28-ton payload into geostationary orbit [64].

The other version carried upgraded first and second-stage engines and the Vezuviy cryogenic upper stage, probably outfitted with the RO-95 engine of KBKhA. The upgraded first-stage engines were known as RD-172 or 14D20 and had a sea – level thrust of 784 tons (as compared with 740 tons for the RD-170). Also mentioned has been an even more powerful version called RD-179 with a reported sea-level thrust of 860 tons. The core stage engines retained the RD-0120 designator and had a vacuum thrust of 200 tons (as compared with 190 tons for the standard RD-0120). The following payload capacities are given: 200 tons to a low 50.7° orbit, 172 tons to a 97° orbit, 36 tons to geostationary orbit, 43 tons into lunar orbit, and 52 tons to Mars. Possibly, the first version was an early proposal that was later superseded by the more capable one [65].

The development of Vulkan seems to have been set in motion by a government decree released in July 1981, which called for making “technical proposals” for the rocket within the next five years. The “technical requirements” that formed the basis for these proposals were issued in July 1982. With a payload capacity of around 200 tons, Vulkan was seen by the Russians as a rocket that could play a crucial role in future manned missions to Mars and other planets of the solar system. It was the subject of further government decrees between 1983 and 1986, but timelines for its development remained vague as no concrete payloads were ever defined for it.