Russia’s next-generation crew-carrying space vehicle, the Rus-M, will have a wide range of capabilities and built-in adaptability to multiple roles. The design phase is well under way, but ambitious plans for the booster and its launch facilities face mounting challenges. From economic turmoil to technical glitches to workforce shortages, harsh realities will make achieving the vision an uphill battle. Perspectives on the Rus-M booster Rus-M family circa 2009, project courtesy Anatoly Zak.

fficial Russian plans for the transition touted Angara family of launch vehicles of human spaceflight to a new-gen - was expected to begin flight tests this year, eration spacecraft, launch vehicle, but these have now been delayed into O and launch site have been well pub - 2013-2014. A prototype first stage sold to licized, with extensive details released dur - South Korea for its own satellite launch ve - ing the past year. The replacement for the hicle failed on its second flight (the Rus - venerable Soyuz will be a 12-ton, six-per - sians blame the South Korean upper stage). son capsule with mission capabilities rang - The Soyuz launch pad at Kourou, French ing from space station crew transport (with Guyana, was to have begun operational one-year on-orbit stay time) to lunar access launches last year but has suffered repeated and return. delays. These have led to cancellation of all The new carrier for human crews will the originally slated payloads, and first be the Rus-M, a modular vehicle using new flight is now forecast for this fall. airframes with existing rocket engines. It In addition, development of the new- will also feature the first Russian use of liq - generation Bulava submarine-launched uid hydrogen fuel for human spaceflight. ICBM, a top-priority project supervised by The new launch site, a cosmodrome to be Russia’s Roskosmos space agency, until re - called Vostichniy (‘Eastern’), will be built cently has been bedeviled by substandard from scratch near the far eastern Pacific components from key factories. The intro - coast of Siberia. duction last December of an upgraded Block D3 fourth stage for the venerable Promises and problems Proton booster was made with inadequate President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Min - ground processing documentation and ister Vladimir Putin are among the top gov - practices; this led to an accidental overload - ernment officials who have promised that ing of the propellant that resulted in dump - the three parallel developments will reach ing the too-heavy stage into the Pacific initial operational capability by 2018. Ocean north of Hawaii. However, Russia’s recent track record Each of these setbacks can be officially on meeting booster development schedules blamed on inadequate funding, a problem by James Oberg has not been encouraging. The much- that allegedly has been remedied. But Contributing writer

Copyright ©2011 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics AEROSPACE AMERICA/OCTOBER 2011 37 space industry observers in Moscow have used, the RD-0146 was based on the Pratt voiced concern that even with enough & Whitney Rocketdyne RL10 engine origi - money, the rocket enterprises cannot hire nally built for Saturn and Centaur boosters enough skilled new employees to staff up more than 40 years ago. for the increased efforts. Another widely ac - The Makeyev Bureau at Miass will knowledged impediment to upgrades is the build the new rocket’s first stage. The facil - declining skill base of the Russian space ity has built liquid-fueled submarine- and missile industry: More and more com - launched missiles for almost 50 years but ponents, and in some cases even entire recently has undergone severe economic avionics and propulsion assemblies, must hardship. The first stage will use a core and be purchased from foreign suppliers. two strap-ons with a total thrust of 916,500 Meanwhile, the totally new Rus-M has kgf (almost twice that of the Soyuz); each been officially justified on the basis of the booster module is limited to a diameter of inadequacy of any further modifications to 3.8 m, the size that can be transported by existing booster families, whatever their re - rail from factory to launch site. The engine liability or fabrication economy has turned selected is the kerosene-burning RD-180, Zenit rockets are manufactured out to be. Soyuz upgrades that preserve the now built by Energomash in Moscow for primarily in Ukraine. classic frame have been marginal, but more export sales to the U.S., which uses it in the are still under way for commercial pay - Atlas-III. Rus-M will need a modified en - loads. The Proton has proven ecologically gine called the RD-180V with added diag - unsuitable because of the hypergolic fuels nostic sensors for abort detection. associated with its original mission as a su - Rus-M will be the first Russian space per-ICBM. The Zenit is powerful enough, booster specifically designed for human but it is manufactured mainly in Ukraine. spaceflight. The baseline design reference Angara is a small to medium-weight family mission is to carry a 23.8-metric-ton pay - focused on military payloads, and heavy-lift load (three times the mass of the current proposals suffer from the program’s inabil - Soyuz) into a 200-km orbit inclined 51.7 ity to actually deliver even the smaller ver - deg. Early this year, press reports stated that sions for flight. the payload was 1,660 kg overweight, and One factor may prove crucial to the fu - a design scrub was under way. ture of the Rus-M booster family and the On March 31, Gennadiy Raykunov, space projects that will depend on it: the general director of TsNIIMash (Central Ma - decades of experience Russian rocket man - chine-Building Research Institute), which ufactrers have had with upgrading and en - provides safety and quality reviews of Rus- hancing these rockets, which were origi - sian spacecraft, reported that the vehicle nally built for military missions and then was halfway through its design process. converted to spacelift. The Rus-M design, in “Design and detail documentation is being contrast, has been chosen from the begin - drafted, integrated experimental method ning not only to be useful in its first imple - programs are being compiled,” he told an mentation but also to be readily adapted to Interfax reporter. “At least, following this much more powerful clustered variants. To stage, the paperwork will end and the an even greater degree than the modular hardware, tests, and development will be - Angara family, the Rus-M is to benefit from gin,” he said. standardized ground processing interfaces “Optimization in terms of the engines in practically any upgraded configuration. and the control system continues, operating procedures go on until there are no kinks,” A closer look Raykunov added. After a two-year review, Roskosmos has A number of stringent safety measures settled on a Rus-M design that is also strong have been designed in from the start. For on classic components and familiar players. example, prelaunch processing would be The Progress Plant will be responsible for entirely automated or teleoperated. The de - the overall booster development. Located sign also requires single-engine-out capa - in Samara on the Volga River, the plant cur - bility from liftoff, to reach an abort zone rently fabricates Soyuz boosters. It will also over the Pacific. From late in first-stage as - build the Rus-M’s second stage, which will cent, the booster must provide an abort-to- use four RD-0146 engines originally devel - orbit capability. Ascent g-forces shall not Test flights of the Angara family oped in the 1990s by the Khimavtomatika exceed 4.0. of small to medium-weight Bureau at Voronezh. Made for the upper Detailed design work on launch sup - launch vehicles have been delayed into 2013-2014. stages of the Proton and Angara but never port structures will allow facilities to handle

38 AEROSPACE AMERICA/OCTOBER 2011 the Rus-M and all planned upgrades with Others significantly shifted their industrial minimal modifications. With a five-module production, terminating fabrication of key combination first stage, the upgraded spacecraft-related components. booster will be able to carry 60 tons into In a harsh assessment February 7 in the LEO. A mission architecture for a dual weekly Nasha Versiya , Aleksandr Stepanov launch and rendezvous in lunar orbit could wrote, “According to assessments of spe - support an Apollo-class manned lunar land - cialists, the Russian space industry has ex - ing. A single-launch vehicle with a 100-ton hausted its scientific-technical resource and payload has also been designed, but it has lost the capability to develop and man - would require significant new engine work. ufacture most of the instruments and as - semblies. Extending the service life for Other activities those remaining in space today is achieved The Progress Plant is also busy modifying largely by bringing in foreign technologies the standard Soyuz launch vehicle for flight and assemblies, and even the vaunted from French Guyana. In addition, the facil - GLONASS satellites are being assembled A modified RD-180 engine will ity is conducting an upgrade using all-Rus- with foreign parts for the most part.” serve as the first stage booster for the Rus-M family. sian guidance avionics for the Soyuz-2-1a, Roskosmos deputy head Sergei Pono - slated to be introduced as a carrier for the maryov confirmed that information last manned Soyuz spacecraft in about 2014. In March when he told Interfax that electronic direct competition with the supposedly components installed on Russian spacecraft ‘universal’ Angara family, the firm is also have been increasingly foreign made in re - developing a ‘Soyuz light’ booster with the cent years. “The proportion of those elec - four strap-ons removed and an NK-33 en - tronic components is between 27% and gine installed in the core stage, to carry a 46%, depending on the type of the vehicle,” 2,800-kg payload into a 200-km orbit. Ponomaryov told a roundtable at the Rus- The Moscow-based Khrunichev firm, sian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Yuriy which now manufactures Proton boosters Solomonov, chief designer of the Bulava and is responsible for developing the An - missile, concurred. In an April 20 interview, gara series, also bid on the Rus-M project he lamented, “Hundreds of unique tech - but received no contracts. Nevertheless it nologies have been lost. Many components remains busy fabricating profitable Proton are purchased overseas. Their manufacture rockets, and in April explicitly posted those here is now impossible.” plans on its Web site: “The Proton-M will No booster is useful without a launch continue forming the core of Russia’s fed - site, and the fact that the new Rus-M eral space program in the category of heavy booster is to fly from a site whose construc - launch vehicles for the next decade,” it tion has not even started yet is another wrote. This was in direct defiance of a quo - schedule threat. As of mid-2011, 24.5 billion tation attributed to Roskosmos chief Ana - rubles have been allocated for construction toliy Perminov stating that if the first Angara through 2013, but aside from some road launch is successful, “Proton rockets could signs, a stone obelisk, and a small visitors’ start to be taken out of service gradually.” pavilion for VIPs, nothing has been built. Khrunichev is also overseeing the com - Speaking to newsmen in Moscow on plex transfer of Angara engine production January 31, Perminov had described what and rocket body fabrication to two newly would be built first: “A 4.5-km railroad line, acquired subsidiaries in Perm and Omsk a road from the Amur federal highway, and that formerly made smaller military missiles a construction depot will be ready this and launch vehicles. And it is developing year,” along with repair work on old power plans for a pair of Angara pads at Vostoch- lines, he said. Housing for workers, a hotel niy and another at Baikonur. for visitors, and a headquarters for manage - ment staff will also be built before any The bigger picture work begins on launch pads and process - Assembling the industrial team that will ing facilities. produce the Rus-M took place against the Perminov elaborated a month later: backdrop of an ongoing government effort “Construction works will begin in June,” he to streamline and optimize the disparate ele - told an interviewer on Ekho Moskvi radio. ments of the Russian rocket/space industry. “First and foremost, we will build roads, Many entities vanished entirely following railroad tracks, energy and auxiliary facili - the collapse of the USSR and its mandated ties,” he said. Mission support construction subservience to central planning agencies. will require another 57 billion rubles in

AEROSPACE AMERICA/OCTOBER 2011 39 2014, he added. But as June came and went outcome here,” he noted. The vertical inte - there were no news reports of construction gration being implemented would steer all commencing. Energomash efforts to serving the engine Top Moscow political leaders have put needs of only a single rocket builder. “I their personal prestige behind the project. have no doubts this will be done at the ex - In January, Putin called the construction of pense of limiting the possibilities for devel - the cosmodrome “a new big nationwide opment of new models of engines that are project,” adding, “This will be a national required for the projects of other rocket en - cosmodrome meeting the highest interna - gineering corporations, which are rivals of tional standards and capable of dealing Energiya or can become rivals in the fu - with the whole range of space exploration ture,” he explained, adding: “The research tasks....[It] will guarantee Russia fully inde - and design schools will be destroyed.” pendent space activities, including the But Pakhomov’s lack of enthusiasm launch of all types of spacecraft, transport counted for nothing, and his company — and cargo vehicles, modules, and orbital with or without him at the top —is firmly in - stations,” Putin continued. He expects the serted into the project. site to be used for human flights to the Moon and Mars in the future, he said. Bitter nostalgia If activated, the base and the Rus-M A more scholarly, independent skepticism booster will rapidly change the distribution comes from Konstantin Bogdanov, a re - of space traffic in Russia. Up until 2015, spected specialist in the history of science. 64% of Russia’s satellite launches have been Now teaching in Germany, he wrote an es - from Baikonur, 30% from Plesetsk, and 6% say for Novosti in April on the 50th anniver - from lesser cosmodromes. By 2020 that dis - sary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight. tribution is supposed to shift to 45% from Bogdanov called his essay “Fallen giant: Vostochniy, 44% from Plesetsk, and 11% The Soviet space industry” and suggested it from Baikonur. would never be able to revive past glories like those being nostalgically celebrated Doubts and objections during the anniversary festivities. Inside Russia there are some who doubt “Its capacity for working miracles dis - that these vaulting ambitions can be real - appeared in the 1990s when the colossal ized, even if most of the promised funding monolith crumbled along with the system is delivered (always a big ‘if’). Even some that had spawned it, leaving a sea of bitter - of the Rus-M industrial team members have ness and grudges in its wake, as well as expressed reservations at being drafted into nostalgia for a lost paradise for engineers Construction is ongoing for the the grandiose project and consolidated into and technicians. The fall of the aerospace Soyuz launches in French Guiana. a larger space industry combine. Among industry was cruelly sobering after several Photographer: Aleksey Yakunin. them is the Energomash Research and Pro - decades of intoxication with the limitless duction Association, which is tasked to possibilities afforded under the Soviet build the rocket engines for the first stage space program. of the Rus-M. “The seeds of the Soviet space industry’s Dmitriy Pakhomov, general director of tragic downfall had been sown in its very Energomash, went public in June 2010 with creation,” wrote Bogdanov. “It could not have his objections to becoming a branch of a been otherwise. Without those fatal flaws it ‘Russian Space Corporation’ based on the would have never emerged, and would Energiya space facility in Moscow. He saw have failed to accomplish all those stunning it as an immediate threat to seize his firm’s feats that won respect [the] world over.” rocket sales profits for the relief of other Time will tell if the Russian space pro - firms that were deeply in debt. In an inter - gram retains the talent and the governmen - view, he pointed specifically to the demand tal support to surmount this chosen new that Energomash reduce the price of the challenge, the greatest it has faced in 50 RD-171 engine used in the Sea Launch pro - years. Dedication and history they clearly gram, to help that company —now wholly have in abundance, along with an inspira - owned by Energiya —work its way out of tional motto that got them through the dark bankruptcy. To help reduce Energiya’s in - days of privation immediately after the debtedness over Sea Launch, Pakhomov USSR’s collapse: “The difficulties ahead of complained, his company was supposed to us are less than those we have already lower its own profit margin. overcome,” workers told each other then. “It is impossible to count on a positive But is that enough?

40 AEROSPACE AMERICA/OCTOBER 2011