Spiral MiG 105-11 EPOS

The Molniya Scientific Production Association and the Zhukovskiy Central Aerohydro-dynamics Research Institute conducted a variety of programs focused on developing reusable winged spacecraft under the Spiral, EPOS, and BOR programs.

The famous triad of military goals in space was formulated by General Kamanin back in the mid-1960s: reconnaissance, interception and strike. Kamanin meant BOC "Spiral", but in fact MAKS is "this" Spiral "of our days".

In 1965 the theme of creating a two-stage air-orbital aircraft (in modern terminology - the aerospace system - AKS) received the "Spiral" index. The Soviet Union was seriously preparing for a large-scale war in space and from outer space. In the Soviet Union in 1966, work began on the project "Spiral" - a winged spacecraft (KK) starting horizontally. The flight was to begin with a disperse trolley moving along rails and reaching a speed of 400 km / h. Then a hypersonic accelerator with air-jet engines soared up to six speeds of sound (M = 6). From his back, at a height of 30 km, a two-stage rocket accelerator would start, which would launch a manned winged spacecraft, an air-orbital aircraft (VOS).

In accordance with the requirements of the customer, the designers undertook the development of a reusable two-stage VOS consisting of a hypersonic overclocker (GSR) and a military orbital aircraft (OS) with a missile accelerator. The start of the system was planned to be horizontal, using an accelerating trolley, the separation occurred at a speed of 380-400 km / h. After the necessary speed and altitude were set with the help of GSR engines, the separation of the OS took place and further acceleration occurred with the help of rocket engines of a two-stage accelerator operating on hydrogen fluoride (F2 + H2) fuel.

Thus, the OKB-155 Mikoyan team in the summer of 1966 began for the development of air-space plane, which is due to the peculiarities inherent design solutions and selected the scheme allowed the aircraft start to implement a fundamentally new properties for launch vehicles military loads into space:

• putting into orbit a payload that is 9% or more by weight of the take-off weight of the system;
• Decrease in the cost of putting one kilogram of useful cargo into orbit by 3-3.5 times in comparison with rocket complexes on the same components of fuel;
• the withdrawal of space vehicles in a wide range of directions and the possibility of rapid retargeting of the launch with the replacement of the necessary parallax due to the aircraft range;
• independent relocation of the aircraft-accelerator;
• minimization of the required number of aerodromes;
• rapid withdrawal of the combat orbital aircraft to any point on the globe;
• effective maneuvering of the orbital plane not only in space, but also at the stage of descent and landing;
• aircraft landing at night and in difficult weather conditions at a given or selected by the crew aerodrome from any of the three turns.

A single ten-ton BOC was designed in several versions: a day-time photo-scanner, a radar reconnaissance vehicle, an impact orbital aircraft - an aircraft carrier hunter and an interceptor fighter, to destroy enemy space stations, communication satellites and other military facilities in orbit. At take-off, the wings of the EOS folded behind their back, and on returning they occupied the usual "aircraft" arrangement, which allowed the spacecraft to sit like an ordinary plane. For flights to "Spiral" was created a detachment of astronauts headed by G. Titov - cosmonaut number 2. Since 1971 the detachment was headed by A. Filipchenko. Many well-known cosmonauts have passed through this detachment: V.Dzhanibekov, L.Kizim, J.Romanenko, V.Lyakhov and others.

The best specialists of the country were involved in the development of the "Spiral" system. In addition to the A.I.Mikoyan Design Bureau, the lead organization, the following projects participated in this project: AM Ljulki Design Bureau - development of a turbojet engine for a hypersonic overclocker; KB Korolyov Design Bureau - development of a two-stage rocket accelerator; KB VP Glushko-development of engines for an orbital aircraft and a rocket accelerator.

At the same time, designers at the stage of the advance project saw ways to further improve the system. First of all, it was planned to achieve a significant increase in the efficiency of the EOS by developing a reusable accelerator with a ramjet with supersonic combustion, which in the long term allowed the creation of a fully reusable complex.

It was not possible to create a hypersonic acceleration aircraft, at that level of technology development. Therefore, in 1969, the work was interrupted and resumed in 1974, but on another basis - a winged aircraft was launched into space by an ordinary ballistic missile. To conduct flight tests at subsonic speeds, an analogue of an orbital plane was created, in which, in 1976 - 1978, 7 flights were made. To test in space, analogues were created in a scale of 1: 2, which were launched with a two-stage ballistic missile. In 1982-1983 biometric analogues after the turn around the Earth were wrecked in the Indian Ocean. Two more vehicles launched in 1983-1984, were destroyed in the Black Sea.

By the government's decision, the work on the Spiral system was terminated and the whole team of developers headed by Chief Designer Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky switched to the development of a new winged ship, the Burana. Although by this time it became already clear that the cost of space flights from American Shuttles was higher than that of conventional missiles.