The energy of the Soviet past
"We showed the Americans: they will not have the technological advantage"
In 1977 – 1991, Vakhtang Vachnadze headed the Energia Scientific and Production Association. It was he who was responsible for the implementation of the Soviet project of a reusable space system. In a conversation with the “Military-Industrial Courier,” a veteran of the industry recalls that the Energy-Buran program brought the country what it could give and what we lost.
- Vakhtang Dmitrievich, it seems that the extra-heavy carrier Energia was made almost from scratch, without using any earlier developments ...
- In fact history the heavy carrier must be counted from the N-1, "Tsar-rocket", as it was called. It was created so that the first foot of the Soviet person set foot on the moon. We have lost this battle to America. The main reason can be considered the fact that the engines for the rocket were not made by Valentin Glushko, - the work was performed by Nikolai Kuznetsov's firm, which specialized in aviation engines.
- I heard the phrase "Glushko refused to make engines for the lunar program." But in my head it does not fit, as in the system in general, it was possible to refuse to do something for space. And actually, why did he refuse?
- At that moment, when the first grand successes of the Soviet cosmonautics were dizzy, from the leadership of the industry, everyone went on increasing. If these people in space could do this, then they will be able to do much on Earth. Dmitry Fyodorovich Ustinov headed the Supreme Council of the National Economy, the “second Council of Ministers”. Deputy Minister of Defense Industry Konstantin Rudnev became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers for Science and Technology and so on. And it turned out that there was no person capable of making everyone work in one team.
Of course, Glushko did not just refuse - he had a technical rationale, which they considered weighty. He said that such engines, which were required for H-1, cannot be created on kerosene and oxygen. He insisted on developing the engine on new high-energy fluorine-based components. And that his design bureau does not have the infrastructure necessary to create such engines. But technical differences were still the reason, not the reason for his refusal.
- It's no secret that Korolev and Glushko were not best friends. But after all, all the previous time, they very effectively collaborated ...
- They walked the same way for a long time, both were sent to Germany in a group of specialists who collected all the information about the missile weapons. But upon his return, the Queen was appointed chief designer of the missiles, and Glushko remained the chief designer of engines. But then he said that the engine - most importantly, tie it to the fence - and the fence will fly where necessary. In some ways he was right. If you take the first missiles - R-1 or R-2, then the engine was really the most difficult component there. But when the missiles became larger and more powerful, there were so many systems, the most diverse and very complex, that simply appeared, and it would take a lot of time. But both awards and titles both continued to receive in fact by one decree. Hero of Socialist Labor, twice Hero, Lenin Prize laureate, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and academician - everything is absolutely synchronous. But this continued until it came to space. And it turned out that Korolev, figuratively speaking, ascended, and Glushko with his engines - magnificent! - remained on the ground. Everyone applauded the Vostoks and Rises, but the glory, though not public, only in the leading circles of the USSR, went to the Queen. So there was a certain jealousy in Glushko.
- And become a successful Soviet lunar project, Korolev would have ascended even higher.
- The project was very hard. We entered the moon race, and many decisions were made in an emergency mode. Four launches were made and all failed - precisely because of the first stage. I note that the first two were made before the landing of Americans on the moon. At the beginning of the first stage was 27 engines, then thirty. When the Central Committee resolved the issue of the reasons for the failures, they voiced the opinion of Glushko. He wrote that three dozen engines could not operate simultaneously, and the abnormal operation of any of them leads to an accident - which, in fact, occurred in each of the launches performed. Work on the project had to be suspended. Guilty punished. They removed Academician Mishin, the former General Designer after Korolev, withdrew Karimov, the head of the 3-th chapter in Minoblast, who was directly involved in the program Х1-Л3.
My opinion: a rocket could bring or at least save all the developments.
By virtue of the enormous size, the tank of the I stage (product F14М) was made directly at Baikonur, where they created a branch of the Kuibyshev plant “Progress”. Funding was lame, Khrushchev allocated money and Korolev, and Chelomey was given a heavy carrier project - the situation was not simple, everyone was fighting for their own interests. It ended with the fact that at first the H-1 project was frozen and then destroyed up to the documentation. As if the rocket did not exist at all.
This is fundamentally wrong. For military space just need a heavy carrier. H-1 was quite possible to bring to mind, and what is important - to further increase the mass of the output load. Then I would not have to create a new product for the same tasks. Could, when need made, make only a spacecraft ... And they would be ahead of the Americans with the Space Shuttle program. H-1 was designed for 75 – 80 tons of output load, but already then there were solutions and developments on how to increase it to one hundred and more tons: hydrogen engines were made to the “G” and “D” blocks by the design offices of Arkhip Lyulka and Alexey Bogomolov .
- And then the Americans forced us again to take up the development of a heavy carrier, Energia ...
- The reason for the government resolution 1976 of the year, from which the project of the reusable transport system Energia-Buran began, was the information that Americans are developing their Space Shuttle program for use, including for military purposes. Keldysh wrote to the Central Committee that, according to calculations, the Shuttle, having a lateral 2200 maneuver of kilometers, may well, while on the atmospheric part of the flight, drop a nuclear charge on Moscow, and then safely fly to Vandenberg Air Base in California. Later, new potential threats were voiced, which also had to be taken into account.
The military industrial complex gathered specialists, they ask: have they gathered to destroy us, how will we answer? Then we had all sorts of projects on the topic of the war in space: electromagnetic guns, space-rocket rockets, Chelomey developed a fighter satellite capable of changing orbits ... But the decision was tough: with the Energy-Buran project to fend off all threats which arise with the appearance in the USA of a fundamentally new technical means, exclude any suddenness from its activities. All projects to close, to make a similar system according to the characteristics not lower than the “Space Shuttle”.
In 1979, Mstislav Keldysh informs the country's leadership that for weapons based on new physical principles (laser, accelerator and beam) for space warfare, it will be necessary to have an energy source in 250 – 850 tons in orbit. A little later, all these plans were somehow formulated in the Reagan concept of "Strategic Defense Initiative." It was also about laser weapons for various purposes, beam, high-frequency, kinetic. In fact, a full-fledged war in space. But then I wrote to the Central Committee a statement that the program announced by Reagan for the Americans today is not technically feasible. According to the scheme, they did not have a heavy carrier. The maximum payload of the shuttle is 28 tons. That is, the creation of giant space platforms for placing weapons using only the Space Shuttle is impossible.
However, Leonid Smirnov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers' Military-Industrial Commission, set the task of making changes to the project. All those who worked on the topic sent out an instruction: keep in mind that with further development of Energia’s carrier, payloads can be removed to 170 tons by increasing the number of side accelerators, and by expanding the volumes of the central unit tanks to 200 tons. That is, if we implement all the developments, we could output Keldyshev 800 tons in four launches.
But then the Americans set their sights on the war in space seriously, hoping to overtake us in this. When Reagan proclaimed the PIO program, a layered missile defense system, a Star Wars Directorate was created at the Pentagon. It was led by General James Abrahamsson.
- That is, we followed the Americans - do you need to have the same capabilities as they?
- We initially had a different question: to do at least as good as theirs, and preferably better. Even our ships differ in many ways. According to the scheme, the main engine and fuel tank of the Americans were installed on the ship, and its rise was carried out by two solid-fuel boosters. The “Buran”, on the other hand, was launched into space on a full-fledged heavy carrier with a 105 ton burden. "Energy" remained completely independent, capable, as I said, with the installation of additional side units to put into space any payload. In this, I believe, our project compares favorably.
Achievements of the project "Energy-Buran" can be listed for a long time. First, the most powerful engine to date, developed under the guidance of Valentin Glushko RD-170. They were equipped with each of the four side accelerators. Each sidewall is essentially a separate carrier, designed for the removal of 10 tons of cargo. The rocket, created as part of a joint project by order of the 1976 of the year and manufactured in the Dnepropetrovsk Yuzhnoye design bureau, later acquired the name Zenith and was widely used in commercial launches. We have developed a lightweight version of "Energy", it was called "Energy-M". This is a wonderful carrier - there was nothing new to do there. The Energia hydrogen tank is 7,7 meters in diameter and 34 meters in length is a ten-story house. We reduce by half the hydrogen and oxygen tanks, we put in the central block not four, but two oxygen-hydrogen engines RD-0120, and we reduce the number of side outboards from four to two. And we get a rocket from 25 to 40 tons of payload output. The niche of the currently used UR-500 (“Proton”) to 20 tons and everything above can be closed with our reduced “Energy”. The demand for such loads is very high. When I was the head of the central office in Minobmash, the general designer of satellite systems, Mikhail Reshetnev, persuaded me: give the opportunity to increase the weight output to the geostationary orbit, at least by two tons, we can then place such repeaters there that it will be possible to receive their signals with the smallest devices , - Orbit stations with huge antennas will not be needed.
So, if the Energy-M project were saved, now it would be very profitable. And now even hydrogen cannot be obtained in the required amounts, everything has been eliminated.
And there would be a production, there would be technologies, and pay off. As the need arises for super-heavy media - everything is there, everything is ready, build and run, a hundred tons - please, but you want two hundred. This is if we talk about possible lunar or Martian expeditions.
A separate conversation about the "bird", about the ship "Buran". Heat protection tiles with different characteristics ... There were so many problems with them. We, by the way, also flew tiles, but, fortunately, there were only three in those places where the heating did not exceed 900 degrees. Had it happened where the temperature reached 2000 degrees, the trouble would not be avoided, as happened with the shuttle Columbia.
- So the flight of the Buran is a lost victory or is it not?
- Actually, the main result of all our work on the Energy-Buran project can be considered the fact that we showed the Americans: they will not have the technological advantage, we are able to respond adequately. And six months after the automatic flight of the Buran, the Abrahamson administration was disbanded.
Maybe thanks to this space research came to the XXI century not in the form of military rivalry, but in the form of international cooperation.
A heavy carrier solves a lot of issues - and the exploration of near-Earth space, and flights into deep space, and asteroid safety, and energy, and even radioactive waste is not heated in the ocean, but burned in the Sun. It does not seem real now, but after some time it will certainly become relevant.
Today, all the issues of big energy in space remain. This is an electronic suppression, clearing the main orbits of debris, solving the issues of the raging climate of the planet. And we are not going anywhere from the creation of a super-heavy rocket, life will force it.
- Then the whole country worked on the project. Is co-operation of this magnitude at least possible now?
- And here is the cooperation. Now build another. There was a single fist, only centralized power could do this. And it was a developed industrial state. What is being built at the Vostochny Cosmodrome is ten times lighter than what we did, creating a launch facility for Energia. But we have made the starting position, and all the huge infrastructure in three years! On Earth, the cold war is on, and they fly together in space and are friends. So, we on Earth will be able to be friends and work together, not a single state will cope with the challenges that threaten our civilization.
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev said: "Never catch up - you will always be at the tail, and take on priority tasks." Today, the priority task can be to master the Moon for future use of its resources and energy, to master the transfer of energy by microwave and laser beams, including for charging spacecraft on electric motors. This project will stir up all scientific divisions and the Russian Academy of Sciences, many branches of the national economy and will drag the whole country to a new level with the help of electronics and robotics.
Monologue in the museum, or forgotten technology
Vakhtang Vachnadze in the RSC Energia Museum
What we have done, that technological reserve will last long enough. Hydrogen tank. It is made of hardened aluminum alloy. If all previous rockets were made from AMG-6 alloy, there is a maximum breaking force - 37 kilograms per square millimeter, the material of Energy tanks at normal temperature is 42 kilogram, and when pouring liquid hydrogen - 58. The tank itself is also the latest technology, its inner surface has a wafer structure to reduce weight and increase rigidity. And this is all milled automatically, specially developed machines. Another know-how is thermal protection of tanks. It should be strong and very light, consists of seven components, called ripore. We have it turned out better than the Americans.
Here is a cone - the tip of the “side”, where it adjoins the central part. Made of titanium, here are four welds of electron beam welding. It is performed in a vacuum, and special overhead cavities have been developed for working with large-sized elements, creating a local vacuum at the welding site. A lot of things have been preserved, but also lost. On one of the anniversaries of Energia-Buran, I was invited to make a report for the employees of the Ministry of Defense. During the break, they already say to me in a private setting: you insist that the project needs to be resumed, but this is impossible. Even the oil used in the steering drives of engines is no longer to be found, since the plant that made it, no longer exists. And so in many positions.
In 1977 – 1991, Vakhtang Vachnadze headed the Energia Scientific and Production Association. It was he who was responsible for the implementation of the Soviet project of a reusable space system. In a conversation with the “Military-Industrial Courier,” a veteran of the industry recalls that the Energy-Buran program brought the country what it could give and what we lost.
- Vakhtang Dmitrievich, it seems that the extra-heavy carrier Energia was made almost from scratch, without using any earlier developments ...
- In fact history the heavy carrier must be counted from the N-1, "Tsar-rocket", as it was called. It was created so that the first foot of the Soviet person set foot on the moon. We have lost this battle to America. The main reason can be considered the fact that the engines for the rocket were not made by Valentin Glushko, - the work was performed by Nikolai Kuznetsov's firm, which specialized in aviation engines.
- I heard the phrase "Glushko refused to make engines for the lunar program." But in my head it does not fit, as in the system in general, it was possible to refuse to do something for space. And actually, why did he refuse?
Photo: Yanina Nikonorova / RSC Energia
- At that moment, when the first grand successes of the Soviet cosmonautics were dizzy, from the leadership of the industry, everyone went on increasing. If these people in space could do this, then they will be able to do much on Earth. Dmitry Fyodorovich Ustinov headed the Supreme Council of the National Economy, the “second Council of Ministers”. Deputy Minister of Defense Industry Konstantin Rudnev became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers for Science and Technology and so on. And it turned out that there was no person capable of making everyone work in one team.
Of course, Glushko did not just refuse - he had a technical rationale, which they considered weighty. He said that such engines, which were required for H-1, cannot be created on kerosene and oxygen. He insisted on developing the engine on new high-energy fluorine-based components. And that his design bureau does not have the infrastructure necessary to create such engines. But technical differences were still the reason, not the reason for his refusal.
- It's no secret that Korolev and Glushko were not best friends. But after all, all the previous time, they very effectively collaborated ...
- They walked the same way for a long time, both were sent to Germany in a group of specialists who collected all the information about the missile weapons. But upon his return, the Queen was appointed chief designer of the missiles, and Glushko remained the chief designer of engines. But then he said that the engine - most importantly, tie it to the fence - and the fence will fly where necessary. In some ways he was right. If you take the first missiles - R-1 or R-2, then the engine was really the most difficult component there. But when the missiles became larger and more powerful, there were so many systems, the most diverse and very complex, that simply appeared, and it would take a lot of time. But both awards and titles both continued to receive in fact by one decree. Hero of Socialist Labor, twice Hero, Lenin Prize laureate, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and academician - everything is absolutely synchronous. But this continued until it came to space. And it turned out that Korolev, figuratively speaking, ascended, and Glushko with his engines - magnificent! - remained on the ground. Everyone applauded the Vostoks and Rises, but the glory, though not public, only in the leading circles of the USSR, went to the Queen. So there was a certain jealousy in Glushko.
- And become a successful Soviet lunar project, Korolev would have ascended even higher.
- The project was very hard. We entered the moon race, and many decisions were made in an emergency mode. Four launches were made and all failed - precisely because of the first stage. I note that the first two were made before the landing of Americans on the moon. At the beginning of the first stage was 27 engines, then thirty. When the Central Committee resolved the issue of the reasons for the failures, they voiced the opinion of Glushko. He wrote that three dozen engines could not operate simultaneously, and the abnormal operation of any of them leads to an accident - which, in fact, occurred in each of the launches performed. Work on the project had to be suspended. Guilty punished. They removed Academician Mishin, the former General Designer after Korolev, withdrew Karimov, the head of the 3-th chapter in Minoblast, who was directly involved in the program Х1-Л3.
My opinion: a rocket could bring or at least save all the developments.
By virtue of the enormous size, the tank of the I stage (product F14М) was made directly at Baikonur, where they created a branch of the Kuibyshev plant “Progress”. Funding was lame, Khrushchev allocated money and Korolev, and Chelomey was given a heavy carrier project - the situation was not simple, everyone was fighting for their own interests. It ended with the fact that at first the H-1 project was frozen and then destroyed up to the documentation. As if the rocket did not exist at all.
This is fundamentally wrong. For military space just need a heavy carrier. H-1 was quite possible to bring to mind, and what is important - to further increase the mass of the output load. Then I would not have to create a new product for the same tasks. Could, when need made, make only a spacecraft ... And they would be ahead of the Americans with the Space Shuttle program. H-1 was designed for 75 – 80 tons of output load, but already then there were solutions and developments on how to increase it to one hundred and more tons: hydrogen engines were made to the “G” and “D” blocks by the design offices of Arkhip Lyulka and Alexey Bogomolov .
- And then the Americans forced us again to take up the development of a heavy carrier, Energia ...
- The reason for the government resolution 1976 of the year, from which the project of the reusable transport system Energia-Buran began, was the information that Americans are developing their Space Shuttle program for use, including for military purposes. Keldysh wrote to the Central Committee that, according to calculations, the Shuttle, having a lateral 2200 maneuver of kilometers, may well, while on the atmospheric part of the flight, drop a nuclear charge on Moscow, and then safely fly to Vandenberg Air Base in California. Later, new potential threats were voiced, which also had to be taken into account.
The military industrial complex gathered specialists, they ask: have they gathered to destroy us, how will we answer? Then we had all sorts of projects on the topic of the war in space: electromagnetic guns, space-rocket rockets, Chelomey developed a fighter satellite capable of changing orbits ... But the decision was tough: with the Energy-Buran project to fend off all threats which arise with the appearance in the USA of a fundamentally new technical means, exclude any suddenness from its activities. All projects to close, to make a similar system according to the characteristics not lower than the “Space Shuttle”.
In 1979, Mstislav Keldysh informs the country's leadership that for weapons based on new physical principles (laser, accelerator and beam) for space warfare, it will be necessary to have an energy source in 250 – 850 tons in orbit. A little later, all these plans were somehow formulated in the Reagan concept of "Strategic Defense Initiative." It was also about laser weapons for various purposes, beam, high-frequency, kinetic. In fact, a full-fledged war in space. But then I wrote to the Central Committee a statement that the program announced by Reagan for the Americans today is not technically feasible. According to the scheme, they did not have a heavy carrier. The maximum payload of the shuttle is 28 tons. That is, the creation of giant space platforms for placing weapons using only the Space Shuttle is impossible.
However, Leonid Smirnov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers' Military-Industrial Commission, set the task of making changes to the project. All those who worked on the topic sent out an instruction: keep in mind that with further development of Energia’s carrier, payloads can be removed to 170 tons by increasing the number of side accelerators, and by expanding the volumes of the central unit tanks to 200 tons. That is, if we implement all the developments, we could output Keldyshev 800 tons in four launches.
But then the Americans set their sights on the war in space seriously, hoping to overtake us in this. When Reagan proclaimed the PIO program, a layered missile defense system, a Star Wars Directorate was created at the Pentagon. It was led by General James Abrahamsson.
- That is, we followed the Americans - do you need to have the same capabilities as they?
- We initially had a different question: to do at least as good as theirs, and preferably better. Even our ships differ in many ways. According to the scheme, the main engine and fuel tank of the Americans were installed on the ship, and its rise was carried out by two solid-fuel boosters. The “Buran”, on the other hand, was launched into space on a full-fledged heavy carrier with a 105 ton burden. "Energy" remained completely independent, capable, as I said, with the installation of additional side units to put into space any payload. In this, I believe, our project compares favorably.
Achievements of the project "Energy-Buran" can be listed for a long time. First, the most powerful engine to date, developed under the guidance of Valentin Glushko RD-170. They were equipped with each of the four side accelerators. Each sidewall is essentially a separate carrier, designed for the removal of 10 tons of cargo. The rocket, created as part of a joint project by order of the 1976 of the year and manufactured in the Dnepropetrovsk Yuzhnoye design bureau, later acquired the name Zenith and was widely used in commercial launches. We have developed a lightweight version of "Energy", it was called "Energy-M". This is a wonderful carrier - there was nothing new to do there. The Energia hydrogen tank is 7,7 meters in diameter and 34 meters in length is a ten-story house. We reduce by half the hydrogen and oxygen tanks, we put in the central block not four, but two oxygen-hydrogen engines RD-0120, and we reduce the number of side outboards from four to two. And we get a rocket from 25 to 40 tons of payload output. The niche of the currently used UR-500 (“Proton”) to 20 tons and everything above can be closed with our reduced “Energy”. The demand for such loads is very high. When I was the head of the central office in Minobmash, the general designer of satellite systems, Mikhail Reshetnev, persuaded me: give the opportunity to increase the weight output to the geostationary orbit, at least by two tons, we can then place such repeaters there that it will be possible to receive their signals with the smallest devices , - Orbit stations with huge antennas will not be needed.
So, if the Energy-M project were saved, now it would be very profitable. And now even hydrogen cannot be obtained in the required amounts, everything has been eliminated.
And there would be a production, there would be technologies, and pay off. As the need arises for super-heavy media - everything is there, everything is ready, build and run, a hundred tons - please, but you want two hundred. This is if we talk about possible lunar or Martian expeditions.
A separate conversation about the "bird", about the ship "Buran". Heat protection tiles with different characteristics ... There were so many problems with them. We, by the way, also flew tiles, but, fortunately, there were only three in those places where the heating did not exceed 900 degrees. Had it happened where the temperature reached 2000 degrees, the trouble would not be avoided, as happened with the shuttle Columbia.
- So the flight of the Buran is a lost victory or is it not?
- Actually, the main result of all our work on the Energy-Buran project can be considered the fact that we showed the Americans: they will not have the technological advantage, we are able to respond adequately. And six months after the automatic flight of the Buran, the Abrahamson administration was disbanded.
Maybe thanks to this space research came to the XXI century not in the form of military rivalry, but in the form of international cooperation.
A heavy carrier solves a lot of issues - and the exploration of near-Earth space, and flights into deep space, and asteroid safety, and energy, and even radioactive waste is not heated in the ocean, but burned in the Sun. It does not seem real now, but after some time it will certainly become relevant.
Today, all the issues of big energy in space remain. This is an electronic suppression, clearing the main orbits of debris, solving the issues of the raging climate of the planet. And we are not going anywhere from the creation of a super-heavy rocket, life will force it.
- Then the whole country worked on the project. Is co-operation of this magnitude at least possible now?
- And here is the cooperation. Now build another. There was a single fist, only centralized power could do this. And it was a developed industrial state. What is being built at the Vostochny Cosmodrome is ten times lighter than what we did, creating a launch facility for Energia. But we have made the starting position, and all the huge infrastructure in three years! On Earth, the cold war is on, and they fly together in space and are friends. So, we on Earth will be able to be friends and work together, not a single state will cope with the challenges that threaten our civilization.
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev said: "Never catch up - you will always be at the tail, and take on priority tasks." Today, the priority task can be to master the Moon for future use of its resources and energy, to master the transfer of energy by microwave and laser beams, including for charging spacecraft on electric motors. This project will stir up all scientific divisions and the Russian Academy of Sciences, many branches of the national economy and will drag the whole country to a new level with the help of electronics and robotics.
Monologue in the museum, or forgotten technology
Vakhtang Vachnadze in the RSC Energia Museum
What we have done, that technological reserve will last long enough. Hydrogen tank. It is made of hardened aluminum alloy. If all previous rockets were made from AMG-6 alloy, there is a maximum breaking force - 37 kilograms per square millimeter, the material of Energy tanks at normal temperature is 42 kilogram, and when pouring liquid hydrogen - 58. The tank itself is also the latest technology, its inner surface has a wafer structure to reduce weight and increase rigidity. And this is all milled automatically, specially developed machines. Another know-how is thermal protection of tanks. It should be strong and very light, consists of seven components, called ripore. We have it turned out better than the Americans.
Here is a cone - the tip of the “side”, where it adjoins the central part. Made of titanium, here are four welds of electron beam welding. It is performed in a vacuum, and special overhead cavities have been developed for working with large-sized elements, creating a local vacuum at the welding site. A lot of things have been preserved, but also lost. On one of the anniversaries of Energia-Buran, I was invited to make a report for the employees of the Ministry of Defense. During the break, they already say to me in a private setting: you insist that the project needs to be resumed, but this is impossible. Even the oil used in the steering drives of engines is no longer to be found, since the plant that made it, no longer exists. And so in many positions.
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