Launch Vehicle Overview 1976-1980
SOVIET LAUNCH VEHICLES OVERVIEW WORLD RECORD
In the Soviet Union as well as in the United States, the development of military long range missiles was the essential source of most of the space launch vehicles until such time as space needs for larger capacity rockets began to exceed missile capabilities.
However, there was one major difference in their approaches. The United States initially opted for a nonmilitary launch vehicle, the Vanguard, to orbit payloads planned for the International Geophysical Year (IGY). Developed by the Naval Research Laboratory from the scientific Viking and Aerobee sounding rockets, the first orbital attempt failed spectacularly 2 seconds after liftoff on December 6, 1957. Following the successful launch of Explorer 1 by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency on February 1, 1958, and a successful Vanguard launch in the following month, this country moved step by step from the modest-sized Redstone to the intermediate range missiles, the Jupiter and the Thor, before applying any ICBM's to orbital flights. Its small, solid-fuel Scout, like Vanguard, was not evolved from a military missile.
By contrast, the Soviet Union from the outset took its original ICBM and applied it to space work for the flights from 1957 on, and still uses this vehicle, although now with improved final stage or stages. Only after some years did the Soviet Union move down in size to use of medium-range and intermediate-range missiles as first stages for space launch vehicles. Also, an improved Soviet ICBM has been brought into the stable of space launch vehicles, but until recently has been reserved exclusively for limited types of military space payloads.
When both countries needed to exceed the capability of existing military missile first stages, they moved to create launch vehicles exclusively dedicated to space launches. In this country, these were the Saturn family, plus the hybrid Titan III vehicles which combined a modified military missile with large solid-fuel strap-on boosters. In the Soviet Union, the first larger vehicle was the Proton or "D" family, and, some believe, a new larger vehicle in the Saturn V class, the "G" family, which still has not yet flown successfully, is under development. The United States has carried out a series of landing tests of the reusable winged orbiter for its Space Transportation System (STS) leading to the successful orbital test flights of 1981. It was reported that the Soviet Union has also carried out drop-tests of a reusable delta-winged manned space vehicle from a Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bomber. (24) However, there has been no positive evidence of such a vehicle having been tested in Earth's atmosphere to date.
NOTES
1. This table is a count of launches which reached Earth orbit or flew to lunar distances or beyond to enter solar orbit. The total counts match other tables of this study, and match the COSPAR numbers as described in Table 14.
2. There are many variants of launch vehicles, partly through hardware improvements, and partly by combining different vehicle stages to create various total launch systems. This table has been simplified to tabulate flights grouped by the basic first stage rocket alone, without reference to the upper stages, or the use of various strap-ons to increase lift capacity.
3. Only a few Soviet launch vehicles are identified either by description or by photograph. They have been inferred to a reasonably high degree of confidence by analogy from known flights, and the repetitive use of certain launch inclinations. Apparently a common feature of Soviet launch procedures is to use a launch guidance technique that calls for the vehicle early in its flight to pass over a certain check point. Launch vehicles usually have specialized launch pads. Hence a launch of one vehicle aimed to pass over a fixed checkpoint will impart an inclination to the payload orbit which is slightly different from that of a different launch vehicle from another nearby pad aimed to send that vehicle over the same fixed checkpoint. Hence at Plesetsk, an "A" vehicle may attain a flight at 81.3 degrees inclination; a "B" vehicle at 82 degrees, a "C" vehicle at 83 degrees, and an "F" vehicle at 82.4 degrees.
4. The "A" vehicle first stage also served as the original Soviet ICBM, the SS-6 Sapwood. It now carries several upper stage combinations. The Thor was originally a U.S. IKBM, and now may carry Delta or Agena upper stages, as well as lesser stages. The "C" vehicle first stage is the SS-5 Skean IRBM. The Atlas was the first U.S. ICBM, and was used without added stages for the Mercury flights, and with Agena, Centaur, or other upper stages for other orbital and escape flights. The "B" vehicle first stage was the Soviet SS-4 Sandal MRBM. The Titan used for spaceflight is derived from the Titan II ICBM, and was used for Gemini, or with Agena and other upper stages, and also with solid strap-ons, for orbital and escape missions. The "F" vehicle first stage is that used for the SS-9 Scarp, and has various upper stage combinations on it for orbital missions. The Scout is an all-solid stages orbital or probe vehicle not directly derived from a military missile, but its Algol first stage was called Aerojet Senior, using a motor originally intended for an early version of the Polaris SLBM. The "D" vehicle may not have had a direct missile origin; it first was used for orbiting the Proton payloads, and subsequently has been given added stages for a variety of missions. The Saturn I first stage was not designed as a missile, but its engines were used in the Atlas, and its clustered tanks matched the diameters of the Jupiter and Redstone missiles. The Saturn V also did not have a missile background, and it was originally developed explicitly for the Apollo lunar program. The Japanese Mu rocket is a solid fueled rocket developed by the University of Tokyo, and has had several upper stage combinations.
The FB-1, related to the CSS-X4 may also be the Long March 2, and later with a high energy upper stage will become the Long March 3. The N rocket is a Japanese derivative of the Thor rocket built under license in Japan. Several upper stage combinations have been used or will be used, and also there are various booster strapons under development.
The Diamant B was an improved rocket whose first stage was called an Amethyste L-17. The Redstone was first an American missile follow on to the German V-2 (A-4), and was used with lengthened tanks for the suborbital Mercury flights, and with extra stages for orbital flights. It was also used by Australia for its Sparta stage orbital flight. The Jupiter first stage was an IRBM, and was given extra stages for orbital and escape flights. The Diamant first stage was Emeraude L-13, probably originally intended for the Force de Frappe missile, until the latter switched to solid fuels. The Vanguard was a non missile system derived from the Navy Viking sounding rocket, although the first stage motor came from the Hermes developmental missile system. The Chinese Long March 1 is an IRBM with added upper stages, and shows an ancestral link with the Soviet SS-3 Shyster. The Lambda was a University of Tokyo sounding rocket which with extra stages was turned into an orbital vehicle. The Black Arrow was a British launcher, successor to the Black Knight ballistics test vehicle.
The Ariane uses as a first stage a French L-140 rocket, the outgrowth of an evolving design well beyond the Amethyste stage mentioned above. The SLV-3 Indian rocket is a small solid propellant rocket, the outgrowth of a series of sounding rockets.
SOURCES.—The number of flights matches the number given COSPAR designators, and the totals carried in other tables of this study. The designation of launch vehicles has been found partly from press announcements, and often by analytical techniques described in the notes above. See appendix III of this study and also reports of the House Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. Civil Space Activities, and Worldwide Space Activities.
Table 15 (p. 56) summarizes the successful flights of basic classes of launch vehicles over the years by all countries, providing a perspective on their relative frequency of use. This table has deliberately been kept simple, and it does not reflect the great number of upper stages used with the basic vehicles.
The table shows that the Soviet original ICBM, Sapwood, or "A" remains the most used launch vehicle in the world, followed by the U.S. Thor. Use of the Sandal or "B" began in 1962 and continued through mid-1977, when it was phased out. The Skean or "C" came into use in 1964. The Scarp or "F" after its introduction in 1966 seems to have peaked early and was used only occasionally until 1980 when it was used for almost one-sixth of the Soviet launches. The Proton or "D" as a bigger vehicle is used less frequently, but its applications are growing. A first successful flight of the "G" very large vehicle is being awaited, so it does not appear in this table. Aviation Week and other publications claim there have been three flight failures of the "G vehicle since a first attempt in 1969. Even the "D" vehicle seems to have had many troubles in development. (25)
If current plans materialize the European Space Agency's Ariane, a new entrant in the table, will make steady progress up the table together with the STS, overtaking the Saturn’s by 1983.
LAUNCH VEHICLES
The summary of the characteristics of Soviet launch vehicles. Because of Soviet secrecy, it must be considered as highly provisional. This is especially true when irreconcilable differences exist in partial Soviet data made public, and when Western observers have not seen pictures of some models and disagree as to their possible performance.
David R. Woods, in correspondence with Sheldon in January 1976, made estimates of the dimensions of the C-l which differ only slightly from those of the table. Additional calculations by Phillip S. dark (some of whose analyses have been published in Spaceflight and are cited in the relevant sections later in this chapter) to appear in a book not yet in print, have been made available to Sheldon to make this table more complete, dark has also developed a more elaborate nomenclature system to describe launch vehicle variants than that used here. His overview of Soviet launch vehicles appeared in the February 1982 issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. (32) With this warning about uncertainties, perhaps the table at least gives some notion of the scope of launch vehicles, the relatively modest number of kinds, and about what their dimensions, power plants, fuels, and thrust approximate.
LIFTING CAPACITIES
which can be sent to different orbits, and trends over the years as these vehicles have evolved. It suffers the same uncertainties as other tables where the Soviet Government released only partial information, so must be considered provisional and subject to revision. Because the Russians do not publish graphs which show the effects of changes of orbital altitude or orbital inclination on the carrying capacity of their launch vehicles, Sheldon adopted the technique for developing some approximate and generalized curves which matched those for several common U.S. launch vehicles, even though there was not complete uniformity, depending upon the staging used by a particular vehicle. With the few data points available from Soviet sources, or best Western estimates, he applied interpolated or extrapolated generalized ratios to the limited Soviet data to fill the spaces on the chart reproduced as figure 7 and table 20. Due to the absence of any firm data points for the F vehicle no curve is shown for this vehicle ...
Great caution must be exercised when making use of the chart and the table. It should be remembered that the vehicles have not flown at all the altitudes listed and that in the few cases where Soviet data is available there is no guarantee that the launch vehicle was being used to its full capability. The end result is not precision, but at least an order of magnitude approximation which will help the user have a general sense of what to expect from particular Soviet launch vehicles. These numbers in turn make it possible to estimate the upper limits for particular classes of known payloads which may fly at different inclinations or altitudes, to make sure that such estimates do not exceed the estimated lift-capacities of the launch vehicle for some of the various orbits used for that class of payload. Commenting on the draft of the table, dark suggested that the capacity of the C-l should be reduced by an average of 50 percent since he had initially overstated the capacity in his Spaceflight review. However, Soviet space engineers talking informally with Swedish engineers at Kapustin Yar for the launch of Intercosmos 16 indicated that, although the mass of Intercosmos 16 was only 435 kg, its C-l launch vehicle had a payload capacity of 1,500 kg.
References:
A. SOVIET SPACE PROGRAMS: 1976-80, SUPPORTING VEHICLES AND LAUNCH VEHICLES, POLITICAL GOALS AND PURPOSES, INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN SPACE, ADMINISTRATION, RE-SOURCE BURDEN, FUTURE OUTLOOK PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF HON. BOB PACKWOOD, Chairman, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION, UNITED STATES SENATE, Part 1, Dec. 1982.
24. Covault, C. Soviets Build Reusable Shuttle, Aviation Week & Space Technology, vol. 108, No. 12, pp. 14-15, Mar. 20, 1978, and Soviets Developing Fly-Back Launcher, vol. 109, No. 19, pp. 19-20, Nov. 6, 1978.
25. Alsop, Stewart. Salt and Apollo 13. New York, Newsweek, Apr. 27, 1970, p. 112. He described a large number of failures of this vehicle.
32. Clark, P. S. Soviet Launch Vehicles: An Overview, J. Brit, Intel-plan. Soc., vol. 35, No 2, Feb. 1982, pp.51-58.
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