For a newcomer, the launch of the world's most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, the SS-18 Satan, invariably turns into a disappointment.
For half a day you shake the passing transport "board" to Baikonur. Then you dance for a couple of hours at the observation post, trying to warm up under the piercing Kazakh steppe wind (45 minutes before the start, the security service completely blocks traffic on the roads of the range, and after that you can't get there). Finally, the pre-start countdown is complete. Far at the edge of the horizon, a tiny "pencil" jumps out of the earth, like a devil from a snuff-box, hangs for a split second, and then rushes upward in a shining cloud. Only a couple of minutes later, you are covered with the echoes of the heavy roar of the main engines, and the rocket itself is already sparkling at its zenith with a distant star. A yellowish cloud of dust and unburnt amylheptyl settles over the launch site.
All this cannot be compared with the majestic slowness of the launch of peaceful space launch vehicles. In addition, their launches can be observed from a much closer distance, since oxygen-kerosene engines, even in the event of an accident, do not threaten the destruction of all living things around. With "Satan" it is different. Again and again looking at the photos and videos of the launch, you begin to understand: “My mom! It's absolutely impossible!"
Jumping "Satan"
So the creator of the "Satan" designer Mikhail Yangel and his fellow rocket scientists at first reacted to the idea: "So that 211 tons" jump out "of the mine ?! It's impossible!" In 1969, when Yuzhnoye, headed by Yangel, began work on a new heavy rocket R-36M, a "hot" gas-dynamic start was considered the normal way of launching from a silo launcher, in which the rocket's main engine was turned on already in the silo. Of course, some experience has been accumulated in the design of "products" using a "cold" ("mortar") start. Yangel himself experimented with it for almost 4 years, developing the RT-20P rocket, which was never accepted for service. But the RT-20P was "ultralight" - only 30 tons! In addition, it was unique in its layout: the first stage was solid-fuel, the second was liquid-fuel. This eliminated the need to solve the puzzling problems of guaranteed ignition of the first stage associated with the "mortar" start. Developing the R-36M launcher, Yangel's associates from the St. Petersburg Central Design Bureau-34 (now the Spetsmash Design Bureau) at first categorically rejected the very possibility of a "mortar" launch for a liquid-fuel rocket weighing more than 200 tons. decided to try.
It took a long time to experiment. The developers of the launcher were faced with the fact that the mass of the rocket did not allow the use of conventional means for its depreciation in the mine - giant metal springs on which its lighter brothers rested. The springs had to be replaced with powerful shock absorbers using high-pressure gas (while the shock-absorbing properties should not have decreased over the entire 10-15-year period of the missile's combat duty). Then it was the turn of the development of powder pressure accumulators (PAD), which would throw this colossus to a height of at least 20 m above the upper edge of the mine. Throughout 1971, unusual experiments were carried out at Baikonur. During the so-called "throw" tests, the "Satan" model, filled with a neutral alkaline solution instead of nitrogen tetroxide and asymmetric dimethylhydrazine, flew out of the mine under the action of PAD. At a height of 20 m, gunpowder boosters were turned on, which pulled the pallet off the rocket, covering its sustainer engines at the time of the "mortar" launch, but the engines themselves, of course, did not turn on. "Satan" fell to the ground (in a huge concrete tray specially prepared next to the mine) and smashed to smithereens. And so nine times.
And all the same, the first three real launches of the R-36M, already under the full program of flight design tests, were emergency. It was only for the fourth time, on February 21, 1973, that Satan managed not to destroy its own launcher and flew to where it was launched - to the Kura training ground in Kamchatka.
Rocket in a glass
Experimenting with the "mortar" launch, the designers of "Satan" solved several problems. Without increasing the launch mass, the energy capabilities of the rocket were increased. It was also important to reduce the vibration loads inevitably arising during a gas-dynamic start on a rocket taking off. However, the main thing was still to increase the survivability of the entire complex in the event of the first nuclear attack by the enemy. The new R-36Ms put into service were housed in mines in which their predecessors, the R-36 (SS9 Scarp) heavy missiles, were previously on alert. More precisely, the old mines were partially used: the gas outlet channels and grids required for the gas-dynamic launch of the R-36 were useless for Satan. Their place was taken by a metal power "cup" with a depreciation system (vertical and horizontal) and launcher equipment, into which a new rocket was loaded directly in the factory transport and launch container. At the same time, the protection of the mine and the missile in it from the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion increased by more than an order of magnitude.
The brain is passed out
By the way, "Satan" is protected from the first nuclear strike not only by its mine. The missile device provides for the possibility of unhindered passage through the zone of an air nuclear explosion (in case the enemy tries to cover the P-36M's positional basing area with it in order to take Satan out of the game). Outside, the rocket has a special heat-shielding coating that allows it to overcome the dust cloud after an explosion. And so that the radiation does not affect the operation of the onboard control systems, special sensors simply turn off the "brain" of the rocket when passing through the explosion zone: the engines continue to work, but the control systems are stabilized. Only after leaving the danger zone, they turn on again, analyze the trajectory, introduce corrections and lead the missile to the target.
An unsurpassed launch range (up to 16 thousand km), a huge combat load of 8, 8 tons, up to 10 MIRVs plus the most advanced anti-missile defense system available today, equipped with a false target system - all this makes Satan terrible and unique weapon.
For its latest version (R-36M2), even a breeding platform was developed, on which 20 or even 36 warheads could be installed. But according to the agreement, there could not be more than ten of them. It is also important that "Satan" is a whole family of missiles with subspecies. And each can carry a different set of payloads. One of the variants (R-36M) contains 8 warheads, covered with a figured fairing with 4 protrusions. It looks like there are 4 spindles fixed on the rocket nose. Each contains two warheads connected in pairs (bases to each other), which are already bred over the target. Starting with the R-36MUTTH, which had improved guidance accuracy, it became possible to put warheads weaker and bring their number to ten. They were attached under the head fairing dropped in flight separately from each other on a special frame in two tiers.
Later, the idea of homing heads had to be abandoned: they turned out to be unsuitable for strategic ballistic carriers due to problems with entering the atmosphere and for some other reasons.
The many faces of "Satan"
Future historians will have to puzzle over what Satan really was - a weapon of attack or defense. The orbital version of its direct "progenitor", the first Soviet heavy missile SS-9 Scarp (R-36O), put into service in 1968, made it possible to throw a nuclear warhead into low-earth orbit in order to strike the enemy at any orbit. That is, to attack the United States not across the pole, where American radars constantly monitored us, but from any direction unprotected by tracking and missile defense systems. It was, in fact, an ideal weapon, the use of which the enemy could only know when nuclear mushrooms were already rising over his cities. True, already in 1972, the Americans deployed a satellite missile attack warning group in orbit, which detected not the approach of missiles, but the moment of launch. Soon, Moscow signed an agreement with Washington to ban the launching of nuclear weapons into space.
In theory, "Satan" inherited these capabilities. At least now, when it is launched from Baikonur in the form of the Dnepr conversion launch vehicle, it easily launches payloads into low-earth orbits, the weight of which is slightly less than the warheads installed on it. At the same time, the missiles arrive at the cosmodrome from the combatant regiments of the Strategic Missile Forces, where they were on alert, in the standard configuration. For space programs, only the engines for breeding nuclear warheads of individual guidance work abnormally. When launching payloads into orbit, they are used as the third stage. Judging by the advertising campaign deployed to promote Dnepr on the international market of commercial launches, it may well be used for short-range interplanetary transportation - delivery of cargo to the Moon, Mars and Venus. It turns out that, if necessary, "Satan" can deliver nuclear warheads there.
However, the entire history of the modernization of Soviet heavy missiles that followed the removal from service of the P-36 seems to indicate their purely defensive purpose. The very fact that when Yangel created the R-36M, a serious role was assigned to the survivability of the missile system, confirms that it was planned to use it not during the first or even during a retaliatory strike, but during a "deep" retaliatory strike, when enemy missiles would already cover our territory. The same can be said about the latest modifications of "Satan", which were developed after the death of Mikhail Yangel by his successor Vladimir Utkin. So the recent announcement by the Russian military leadership that Satan's service life would be extended for another decade was not so much a threat as concern over American plans to deploy a national missile defense system. And the regular launch from Baikonur of the conversion version of Satan (the Dnepr missile) confirms that it is in full combat readiness.
