What hardships the creators of the last oxygen intercontinental rocket of the Soviet Union had to go through
Rocket R-9A on a pedestal at the Central Museum of the Armed Forces in Moscow. Photo from the site
In the long list of domestic intercontinental ballistic missiles, missiles created at OKB-1 under the leadership of the legendary designer Sergei Korolev occupy a special place. Moreover, all of them are united by a common property: each at one time was not just a breakthrough in its class, but a real leap into the unknown.
And it was predetermined. On the one hand, the Soviet missile engineers were unlucky: during the "dividing" of the German missile legacy, the Allies got a much more significant part of it. This applies to both documentation and equipment (one can recall in what horrifyingly destroyed condition the Americans left factory workshops and missile sites that ended up in the Soviet zone of occupation), and, of course, the German missile engineers themselves - designers and engineers. And therefore we had to comprehend a lot by experience, making all the same mistakes and getting the same results that the Germans and Americans did and received a few years earlier. On the other hand, this also forced the creators of the USSR's missile industry to go not the beaten path, but to take risks and experiment, deciding to take unexpected steps, due to which many results were achieved, which were perceived as impossible in the West.
We can say that in the rocket field, Soviet scientists had their own, special path. But this path had a side effect: the solutions found very often forced the designers to hold on to them to the last. And then paradoxical situations arose: products based on such solutions eventually reached real perfection - but by the time it was already clearly outdated. This is exactly what happened with the R-9 rocket - one of the most famous and at the same time unlucky missiles created at the Sergey Korolev Design Bureau. The first launch of this "product" took place on April 9, 1961, three days before the real triumph of the Soviet rocket industry - the first manned flight. And the "nine" virtually forever remained in the shadow of their more successful and successful relatives - both royal and Yangelevskaya, and Chelomeevskaya. Meanwhile, the story of its creation is very remarkable and worth telling about it in detail.
Rocket R-9 on a transport trolley at the Tyura-Tam test site (Baikonur). Photo from the site
Between space and army
It is no longer a secret to anyone today that the famous Vostok launch vehicle, which lifted Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut of the Earth, and with him the prestige of the Soviet rocket industry, was actually a conversion version of the R-7 rocket. And the G7 became the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile, and this was clear to everyone since October 4, 1957, from the day the first artificial Earth satellite was launched. And this primacy, apparently, did not give rest to the creator of the R-7, Sergei Korolev and his associates.
Academician Boris Chertok, one of Korolyov's closest associates, recalled this very openly and self-critically in his book "Rockets and People". And the story about the fate of the "nine" cannot do without extensive quotes from these memoirs, since little evidence remains from those who were directly related to the birth of the P-9. Here are the words with which he begins his story:
“To what extent should Korolev have developed a combat theme after brilliant victories in space? Why did we create difficulties for ourselves on the path to space that opened before us, while the burden of building a nuclear missile "sword" could be placed on others?
In the event of the termination of the development of combat missiles, our design and production capacities were freed up to expand the front of space programs. If Korolev had come to terms with the fact that Yangel, Chelomey and Makeev are enough to create military missiles, neither Khrushchev, let alone Ustinov, who in December 1957 was appointed Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers and Chairman of the military-industrial complex, would not force us to develop a new generation of intercontinental missiles.
However, having created the first intercontinental R-7 and its modification R-7A, we could not abandon the gambling race to deliver nuclear warheads to any end of the world. What will happen in the target area if we throw there a real charge with a capacity of one and a half to three megatons, none of us in those days especially thought. The implication was that this would never happen.
There were more than enough supporters of work on combat missiles in our team. Disconnection from the military theme threatened the loss of much-needed support from the Ministry of Defense and the favor of Khrushchev himself. I was also considered a member of the informal party of rocket hawks, led by Mishin and Okhapkin. The very process of creating combat missiles fascinated us much more than the ultimate goal. We experienced the natural process of losing the monopoly on the creation of intercontinental strategic missiles without enthusiasm. The feeling of jealousy was aroused by the work of our subcontractors with other principal ones."
Assembly shop for R-9 missiles at the Kuibyshev Progress plant. Photo from the site
R-16 steps on the heels of the Queen
In these very frank words of Academician Chertok, alas, there is also some guile. The fact is that space issues alone were clearly not enough in order to successfully develop and receive state subsidies and support at the highest level. In the Soviet Union, which ended a little more than ten years ago, the most terrible war in its history, everyone and everything had to work for defense. And the missilemen, in the first place, were assigned precisely defense tasks. So Sergei Korolev simply could not afford to switch from the topic of intercontinental ballistic missiles to exclusively space. Yes, space was also seen as an area of military interests. Yes, almost all manned flights of Soviet cosmonauts (like all others, however) had purely military missions. Yes, almost all Soviet orbital stations were designed as combat ones. But the first and foremost were the missiles.
So Sergei Korolev, whom his deputy Mikhail Yangel had left shortly before, to head his own rocket OKB-586 in Dnepropetrovsk, had every reason to worry about the fate of his team. The difficulties of personal relationships were superimposed here on the danger that the new competitor would become too strong a rival. And it was necessary not to stop, not to stop efforts to create not only space, but also intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“Yangel did not go to Dnepropetrovsk to improve Korolev's oxygen rockets,” writes Boris Chertok. - The R-12 rocket was created there in a very short time. On June 22, 1957, her flight tests began in Kapyar. It was confirmed that the missile's range will exceed 2000 km.
The R-12 rocket was launched from a ground launching device, on which it was installed unfuel with a docked nuclear warhead. The total preparation time for launch was more than three hours. A purely autonomous control system provided a circular probable deviation within 2, 3 km. This missile, immediately after being put into service in March 1959, was launched at the plant in a large series and became the main type of weapon for the Strategic Missile Forces created in December 1959.
But even earlier, in December 1956, with the direct support of Ustinov, Yangel achieved the release of a resolution of the Council of Ministers on the creation of a new R-16 intercontinental missile with the start of flight design tests (LCI) in July 1961. The first intercontinental R-7 has never flown yet, and Khrushchev has already agreed to develop another rocket! Despite the fact that a “green street” was opened for our G7 and we had no reason to complain about the lack of attention from above, this decision served us as a serious warning”.
The Desna N ground launch complex, created specifically for the R-9 missiles. Photo from the site
We need a long-lived rocket
The turning point was January 1958, when the commission was working with might and main to discuss the draft design of the R-16 rocket. This commission, headed by Academician Mstislav Keldysh, was assembled at the insistence of specialists from NII-88, which, in fact, was the same fiefdom of Sergei Korolev as his OKB-1, and where Mikhail Yangel worked until recently. At one of the meetings, the general designer of the new rocket OKB-586, who felt strong support from above, spoke out with very sharp criticism of Korolev and his commitment to liquid oxygen as the only type of oxidizer for rocket fuel. And judging by the fact that no one interrupted the speaker, this was not just Yangel's personal position. It was impossible not to notice this, and OKB-1 urgently needed to prove that their approach not only has the right to exist, but is the most justified.
To do this, it was necessary to solve the most important problem of oxygen rockets - an unacceptably long preparation time for launch. Indeed, in the filled state, taking into account the fact that liquefied oxygen at temperatures above minus 180 degrees begins to boil and evaporate intensively, a rocket on such fuel could be stored for tens of hours - that is, a little more than it took to refuel! For example, even after two years of intensive flights, Boris Chertok recalls, the preparation time for the R-7 and R-7A for the start could not be reduced by more than 8-10 hours. And the Yangelevskaya rocket R-16 was designed taking into account the use of long-term rocket fuel components, which means that it could be prepared for launch much faster.
With all this in mind, the designers of OKB-1 needed to cope with two tasks. Firstly, to significantly reduce the preparation time for the launch, and secondly, at the same time to significantly increase the time that the rocket could be in combat readiness without losing a significant amount of oxygen. And surprisingly enough, both solutions were found, and by September 1958, the design bureau had brought its proposals for the R-9 oxygen rocket with an intercontinental range to a draft design.
But there was one more condition that seriously limited the creators of the new rocket in approaches - the requirement to create a secure launch for it. After all, the main drawback of the R-7 as a combat missile was an extremely difficult and completely open launch. That is why it was possible to create only one combat launch station of the "sevens" (apart from the possibilities of a combat launch from Baikonur), having built the "Angara" facility in the Arkhangelsk region. This structure had only four launchers for the R-7A, and immediately after the US began to put into service the Atlas and Titan intercontinental ballistic missiles, it turned out to be almost defenseless.
Diagram of a Desna V-type silo launcher designed for R-9 missiles. Photo from the site
After all, the main idea of using nuclear missile weapons in those years, and many years later, was to have time to launch their missiles immediately after the enemy launches their intercontinental ballistic missiles - or to provide themselves with the opportunity to deliver a retaliatory nuclear strike, even if enemy warheads have already exploded on your land. At the same time, it was considered and is considered that one of the priority targets of the strike will certainly be the nuclear missile forces and the places of their deployment and launch. So, in order to have time to retaliate immediately, it was necessary to have excellent quality early warning equipment for a missile strike and such a system for preparing missiles for launch so that it took minutes, or even better, seconds. According to the calculations of that time, the attacked side had no more than half an hour to launch its missiles in response to the attack and make sure that the enemy's strike fell on empty launch sites. The second required protected launch sites that could survive a nearby nuclear explosion.
The combat starting position of the "Angara" did not correspond to either the first or the second requirements - and it could not correspond because of the peculiarities of the prelaunch preparation of the R-7. Therefore, in the eyes of the Soviet leadership, the Yangelevskaya P-16, which was much faster for preparation and much more long-lasting, looked so attractive. And therefore, OKB-1 had to offer its own rocket, not inferior to the "sixteenth" in all respects.
The way out is supercooled fuel
At the end of 1958, Soviet intelligence obtained information that the Americans were using liquid oxygen as an oxidizer in their latest Atlas and Titan ICBMs. This information has seriously strengthened the position of OKB-1 with its "oxygen" predilections (in the Soviet Union, alas, they did not get rid of the practice of looking back at the decisions of a potential enemy and following in their direction). Thus, the initial proposal for the creation of a new oxygenated intercontinental ballistic missile R-9 received additional support. Sergei Korolev managed to take advantage of this, and on May 13, 1959, the Council of Ministers of the USSR issued a decree on the beginning of work on the design of the R-9 rocket with an oxygen engine.
The resolution stipulated that it was necessary to create a rocket with a launch weight of 80 tons, capable of flying at a range of 12,000-13,000 kilometers and at the same time having an accuracy within 10 kilometers, provided that a combined control system (using autonomous and radio engineering subsystems) and 15 kilometers was used - without her. Flight tests of the new rocket, according to the decree, were to begin in 1961.
Launch of the R-9 rocket from the Desna N-type test site at the Tyura-Tam test site. Photo from the site
It would seem that here it is, the opportunity to break away from competitors from Dnepropetrovsk and prove the advantage of liquid oxygen! But no, the top, apparently, were not going to make life easier for anyone. In the same decree, as Boris Chertok recalls, “in order to accelerate the creation of the R-14 and R-16 missiles, it was ordered to release OKB-586 from developing missiles for the Navy (with the transfer of all work to SKB-385, Miass) and to stop all work on the subject of S. P. Queen.
And again on the agenda was the question of what other ways can be improved, to improve the future R-9. And then, for the first time, the idea arose to use not just oxygen as an oxidizer, but supercooled oxygen. “At the very beginning of the design, it was clear that there could not be an easy life, which we allowed ourselves when distributing the mass on the G7,” wrote Boris Chertok. - Fundamentally new ideas were needed. As far as I remember, Mishin was the first to express the revolutionary idea of using supercooled liquid oxygen. If, instead of minus 183 ° С, close to the boiling point of oxygen, its temperature is lowered to minus 200 ° С, and even better - to minus 210 ° С, then, firstly, it will take up a smaller volume and, secondly, it will sharply decrease evaporation losses. If this temperature can be maintained, it will be possible to carry out high-speed refueling: oxygen, getting into a warm tank, will not boil violently, as it happens on all our rockets from R-1 to R-7, inclusive. The problem of obtaining, transporting and storing supercooled liquid oxygen turned out to be so serious that it went beyond the purely rocket framework and acquired, at the suggestion of Mishin, and then Korolyov, who was involved in solving these problems, all-Union national economic importance.
This is exactly how one of those simple and at the same time very elegant solutions was found that ultimately made it possible to create the R-9 rocket, which, with all the advantages of using liquid oxygen as an oxidizer for rocket fuel, had all the necessary capabilities for long-term storage and quick launch. Another advantage of the "nine" was the use of the so-called central drive: a missile control system using the deflection of the main engines. This solution turned out to be so successful and simple that it is still used even on heavy rockets of the Energia type. And then it was simply revolutionary - and greatly simplified the R-9 scheme, and most importantly, it eliminated the need to install additional steering motors, which made it possible to lighten the mass of the rocket.
