Russia Eyes Advanced Replacement for Soyuz Booster
Expedition 37 takes off for the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)
The Russian government owned Sputnik news service reports that officials are eyeing a replacement for the venerable Soyuz launch vehicle within seven years:
The first flying prototype of the new Soyuz-5 carrier rocket could be built by 2022, Alexander Kirilin, general director of Samara-based Progress rocket and space company, said.
“The Soyuz-5.1 is a medium-class carrier rocket with a launch weight of about 270 tonnes,” Kirilin said in an interview with RIA Novosti published Tuesday.
“It could replace the Soyuz-2 carrier rockets in the future,” he added.
Russia’s future Soyuz-5 carrier rocket will be equipped with advanced new engines using ecology-friendly fuel, according to Alexander Kirilin.
“One of the distinguishing features of the Soyuz-5 is the use of liquefied natural gas as fuel,” Kirilin said in an interview with RIA Novosti published on Tuesday.
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9 responses to “Russia Eyes Advanced Replacement for Soyuz Booster”
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Looks like they are chicken to design it to be reusable. Scared to pull out a clean sheet of paper.
Everyone is just letting Spacex own the highway to Space
They should add legs to the cluster and land it like spacex. Couldn’t they fire the center engine and do a controlled landing of the first stage too. A cluster like that would be much easier to land since it is so wide. I guess they would have to burn a bit more fuel before it goes through the atmosphere.
Could they keep that shape stable and up right?
What happened to the Russian guys with the reusable scissor wing design anyway.
Well, Soyuz-5.1 is not a clustered design. Its a design that uses a single stack for the first stage.
There is only one engine, a 280t thrust methalox engine, so unless they have managed to design it with an unprecedented ability to throttle it would have too much thrust to do a vertical landing like SpaceX.
And you do realise that the side boosters in an ordinary Soyuz are jettisoned before the core stage right? That’s pretty common knowledge. So there is absolutely no way of landing the whole cluster.
Didn’t know that thanks
They may try using the vernier engine for landing of lower stage blocks. But this is very much in the future still. No matter how shrewd Kirillin is, he cannot run with Elon’s speed, and he cannot pay for the R&D this massive from the TsSKB’s operating funds. I’m not convinced that this project has legs, although the design sketch looks impressive.
http://www.russianspaceweb….
http://www.space.com/18046-…
Wasn’t this one of the intended purposes of the Angara launcher family?
One of the intended purposes according to Krunichev, but the Russian government doesn’t like the idea of putting all their eggs in one basket. It would halt launches of all kinds in the event of a failure, it would be difficult to get the necessary flight rate with the limited number of Angara pads, and it would lead to a complete monopoly of launchers and boost engines.
They must only dislike “all eggs in one basket” and “complete monopolies” when it comes to rockets. Cuz their business sector is a WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY!
Developing Angara and restructuring and now this – replacing Soyuz. They are taking on more than they can handle considering their management and staffing issues, including corruption, and their slow progress with Angara and modest budget. This upgrade or replacement of Soyuz won’t happen any time soon.
It will be interesting to see what distinct changes take place after the arrival of NASA’s retiring Suffredini – joining Roscosmos. Suffredini is definitely an adventurous one after a long career. Or we could see him arrive and then leave in short order which would not be a good sign for Russia’s Roscosmos. Its very difficult to make substantive and sustainable changes to Russian infrastructure. The changes needed are going to leave Roscosmos reeling and ineffective during transition. Not only is the US Congress handing Russia US taxpayer dollars, they are putting American astronauts at risk.