Russia, Kazakhstan Sign Agreement to Build Soyuz-5 Launch Complex at Baikonur
TASS reports that Russia and Kazakhstan have agreed to construct a new launch complex for the Soyuz-5 and Soyuz-6 rockets at the latter’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. Kazakhstan will be responsible for ground infrastructure while Russia will develop the new launch vehicles.
The construction will take place at the Baiterek launch facility that previously was to be modernized for launching Zenit boosters. Zenit is a rocket largely built in Ukraine but had elements supplied in Russia. Cooperation on the Zenit program ended after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region and invaded the country.
Being developed by JSC Progress, the Soyuz-5 booster is designed to replace the Zenit-2 and Proton-M booster and serve as the base for a super heavy-lift launcher that will match the capabilities of the retired Energia rocket. Soyuz-5 will be capable of lifting satellites weighting 18 metric tons or crewed spacecraft weighing 15.5 metric tons to low Earth orbit.
There isn’t much public information available on the Soyuz-6 rocket. The new booster will apparently be a shortened version of the Soyuz-5 booster.
6 responses to “Russia, Kazakhstan Sign Agreement to Build Soyuz-5 Launch Complex at Baikonur”
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Hrm…
https://upload.wikimedia.or…
SLS delenda est
Soyuz V is really an all-Russian Zenit…RD-170 type engine and body this time. The Energia system should have replaced R-7 and Proton. Energia had enemies…and the collapse of the Soviet Union sealed its fate.
I’d still rather come back on something like Buran than Starship.
Energia strap-ons with upper stages. The four-nozzle RD-170 rivals F-1 in power…but the Energia core block’s RD-0120 that burned hydrogen/oxygen had less troubled development. They could at least have kept Energia-M
M-1 should have been developed.
It’s pretty clear the Russian space program has been running on fumes since the collapse of the Evil Empire. It’s all well to imagine what the newly independent nations should have done what remained from the dead Soviet-Union. But even during the heights of Soviet Union space power, they were managing to create greatness from immense weakness.
Could the impoverished remnants of the Soviet Union have hoped to do any better than they actually did? With all the grifters and tyrants getting in the way? If anything, I imagine Ukraine now regrets having ever given up the nuclear weapons that they inherited from the Soviet Union!
SLS delenda est
It was a downhill slide since Korolev died. Glushko made Energiya Buran work. He never let anything out of his hands….so I’ve read.
Another look backwards from our nostalgia correspondent.
I’m guessing this constitutes a tacit admission that Vostochny is both hopelessly late and will never constitute a path to the space autarky the Russians have been pursuing since the collapse of the USSR.