The Entire History of Soviet Rocket Engines

This is a great compilation, very cleanly presented. If you&#x27;d like to learn more, in a much more verbose format, the &quot;Rockets and People&quot; four volume series of books by Boris Chertok (Korolev&#x27;s right hand man) has been translated, courtesy of Nasa, and is available on archive.org<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;search.php?query=creator%3A%22Chertok%2C+Boris%22" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;search.php?query=creator%3A%22Chertok%2C...</a><p>Vol 4, The Moon Race: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;history.nasa.gov&#x2F;SP-4110&#x2F;vol4.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;history.nasa.gov&#x2F;SP-4110&#x2F;vol4.pdf</a><p>They provide tremendous insight into running such ambitious development programs in a complex political, human and economic landscape.<p>The aerospace industry in the URSS was privileged beyond belief. They were top of the list for scarce resources, including housing, materials and even people. Hard to recruit engineers and workers to a new launch site to be built from scratch in the middle of nowhere in remote Kazakhstan ? Triple the pay, convince the wives by adding an extra room to their state-provided apartments for life, and setting up an airline to Moscow with free tickets every month and private entry to the best department shops. There, done.

The three main &quot;classical&quot; engine design companies in USSR were Energomash, headed by Valentin Glushko, KBKhA, headed initially by Semyon Kosberg, and KBKhM, headed by Alexey Isayev. Of course there is Kuznetsov&#x27;s bureau, but that was doing many different things, like aircraft engines and later gas pumping machines for natural gas pipes. This video shows works of Energomash and KBKhA, but no works of Isayev&#x27;s KBKhM are shown - they concentrated on spacecraft engines - and that&#x27;s a pity, as KBKhM had a lot of results in pushing the envelope in rocket engines technology.<p>So... waiting for the next chapter?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gazeta.ru&#x2F;science&#x2F;2021&#x2F;08&#x2F;27_a_13919672.shtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gazeta.ru&#x2F;science&#x2F;2021&#x2F;08&#x2F;27_a_13919672.shtml</a> Here is an article in Russian about the effects of sanctions on RD-180 engines (these were powering the Atlas rockets run by ULA). it mentions a few interesting details: Energomash is loosing a third of its income, they will likely have to close down production of that engine, and that they won&#x27;t be able to resume production of the engine in the future. This means that we, as a space faring species, are likely to loose the know-how for the RD-180, just like we lost the know-how for the F-1 engine of the Saturn-V.

The really interesting stuff is the metallurgy necessary to have an oxidizer-rich pre-burner run the turbopumps without having the hot oxidizer burn through the engine. Western engineers thought it was pure fiction when they first heard about it.

Popularizing astroengineering means kids watching YouTube today are going to be making rockets in the future. It&#x27;s exciting to see the enthusiasm for moonshot industries reach a wide audience. Enough people sharing a wild dream slowly turns the impossible into reality.

Fantastic work by Tim here, a true labour of love over 2 years.

I heard that originally the Russians wanted to fuel their rockets with pure alcohol. But they abandoned that when they discovered the fuel would too often disappear before launch...

Maybe of interest to others, I&#x27;m building up a spreadsheet of Rockets, focused on new space ventures but just added a placeholder to move in Tim&#x27;s work:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;13VikMGN0WsVOKp43W-1MDKa6Z0dpHU6ii0dDYCmu6rs&#x2F;edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;13VikMGN0WsVOKp43W-1M...</a><p>Comments welcome and interested in potential collaborators!

The famous problem with the N1 was plumbing all of those engines to the fuel tanks without leaks. But SpaceX uses a similar design (lots of small engines) - how have they solved the plumbing problem?