Just days before Elon Musk’s mighty Falcon Heavy roared into the skies, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on Russia's next great rocket. Rocosomos, the country's space agency, had been waiting years for this Kremlin decree, which gives the go-ahead for developing something known as “supertyazh.” Translated from Russian engineer jargon, that means a "really big rocket."
Without much fanfare, Roscosmos posted a small announcement Friday saying Putin had signed the document “this week” for the development of the rocket in the super-heavy class, which will be based at the nation’s brand-new Vostochny Spaceport. Here's what we know about Russia's big dreams for a big rocket.
A Behemoth Reborn
Roscosmos said that RKK Energia corporation, the company responsible for Russia's human spaceflight, would be the prime developer of the rocket. RKTs Progress, based in the southern city of Samara (where Soyuz rockets are made), will serve as a key contractor in the project.
These are essentially the same companies behind the development of the Soviet N1 moon rocket and the mighty Energia super rocket in the 1980s. Unlike the ill-fated, crash-prone N1, the Energia made two largely successful flights in 1987 and 1988.
The second of those lofted the Buran orbiter, the Soviet copy of the Space Shuttle. The unpiloted 100-ton glider then made a fully automated landing on the runway, becoming the final achievement of the Soviet space program before the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
Ever since the Soviet collapse, Russian space engineers have dreamed of rebuilding the mighty Energia—or designing an even better rocket. They came close to restarting the project in early 2014, when, in the warm afterglow of the Sochi Winter Olympics, an ambitious lunar exploration program was expected to become a new big national goal.
A few weeks later, conflict brewed in eastern Ukraine. That unfolding war, combined with a falling ruble and Western sanctions, put the rocket dream on hold.
The New Heavy Rocket Dream
While Russia was in rocket limbo, the world kept building. SpaceX developed the Falcon Heavy and has plans to build the even larger BFR. NASA continues working on the SLS and China also has a growing interest in large rockets. Now the Kremlin decided the time is right to revisit its own big rocket ambitions.
Putin's sign-off on the super-heavy booster coming on the eve of the Falcon Heavy launch is probably a coincidence. Even so, it underscores Moscow’s desire to catch up with the emerging space race. Putin’s bold and costly move comes at a low point in the Russian space program, where the unending string of failures, years-long project delays, and corruption scandals show signs of continuous dysfunction within the Russian space industry.
So far, all the efforts to repair the situation have produced mixed results, and there are signs that the crisis is actually deepening, especially as Russia faces an uphill battle on the international launch market. Building the super-heavy rocket is a controversial way to resolve the problem.
Although a high-profile expensive project would invigorate the troubled industry, its successful completion is far from certain, even with Russia's deep well of experience in going to space.
Moon or Bust
To avoid biting off more than Roscosmos can chew, the strategy calls for a gradual roadmap to the super rocket.
First, a medium-class launcher known as Soyuz-5 will be developed by 2022 using off-the-shelf engines. The next step is putting multiple booster stages from Soyuz-5 together to form a basis of the huge rocket. If everything goes as planned, the big rocket would blast off around 2028, Roscosmos says.
This space leviathan would be able to haul 90 tons of cargo to the Earth’s orbit and send at least 20 tons into a lunar orbit. By comparison, NASA's SLS will reportedly have a capacity of 70 tons with future upgrades planned to bump up that number to 130 tons.
This brings up another question: Just what will Russia launch on such a monster? The rocket will be too big for any commercial or military role, so without an ambitious and expensive human space flight undertaking, the super rocket could share the fate of its Soviet predecessors.
That’s why Russian engineers are currently tinkering with designs of a lunar base, and international cooperation could help to spread expenses among different partners. But under the current political climate, that is far from certain. Currently, the Russian space strategy hopes to land its new rocket on the surface of the moon around 2030.
