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R-12 Dvina
The R-12 Dvina was a theatre ballistic missile developed and deployed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Its GRAU designation was 8K63 (8K63U or 8K63У in Cyrillic for silo-launched version), and it was given the NATO reporting name of SS-4 Sandal. The R-12 rocket provided the Soviet Union with the capability to attack targets at medium ranges with a megaton-class thermonuclear warhead and constituted the bulk of the Soviet offensive missile threat to Western Europe. Deployments of the R-12 missile in Cuba caused the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. A total of 2335 missiles were produced; all were destroyed in 1993 under the START II treaty. As well as the single-stage ballistic technology, the R-12 Dvina had a two-stage capability that allowed payloads to be placed into low Earth orbit. The Iranian Shahab-4 missile is likely an offshoot of the R-12 Dvina. History Beginning OKB-586 formed from a spin-off of portions of Sergei Korolev's OKB-1 production infrastructure u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kapustin Yar
Kapustin Yar () is a Russian military training area and a rocket launch complex in Astrakhan Oblast, about 100 km east of Volgograd. It was established by the Soviet Union on 13 May 1946. In the beginning, Kapustin Yar used technology, material, and scientific support gained from the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Numerous launches of test rockets for the Russian military were carried out at the site, as well as satellite and sounding rocket launches. The towns of Znamensk, Astrakhan Oblast, Znamensk and Kapustin Yar (air base), Kapustin Yar were built nearby to serve the missile test range. Name The nearby village, Kapustin Yar, was used as the operations base in the early days of the testing site. The name can be translated as "cabbage ravine". In public opinion, Kapustin Yar has been compared to as the "Russian Roswell UFO incident, Roswell"; the place where the USSR discovered, investigated or captured alien ships (UFOs). Due to its role as a development site fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thermonuclear Warhead
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits. Characteristics of nuclear fusion reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel, thus allowing more efficient use of scarce fissile material. Its multi-stage design is distinct from the usage of fusion in simpler boosted fission weapons. The first full-scale thermonuclear test (Ivy Mike) was carried out by the United States in 1952, and the concept has since been employed by at least the five recognized nuclear-weapon states and UNSC permanent members: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, and France. The design of all thermonuclear weapons is believed to be the ''Teller–Ulam configuration'', in which a fission bomb primary stage's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liquid Oxygen
Liquid oxygen, sometimes abbreviated as LOX or LOXygen, is a clear cyan liquid form of dioxygen . It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which is ongoing. Physical properties Liquid oxygen has a clear cyan color and is strongly paramagnetic: it can be suspended between the poles of a powerful horseshoe magnet. Liquid oxygen has a density of , slightly denser than liquid water, and is cryogenic with a freezing point of and a boiling point of at . Liquid oxygen has an expansion ratio of 1:861 and because of this, it is used in some commercial and military aircraft as a transportable source of breathing oxygen. Because of its cryogenic nature, liquid oxygen can cause the materials it touches to become extremely brittle. Liquid oxygen is also a very powerful oxidizing agent: organic materials will burn rapidly and energetically in liquid oxygen. Further, if soaked in liquid oxygen, some materials su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R-7 (missile)
The R-7 Semyorka (, GRAU index: 8K71) was a Soviet missile developed during the Cold War, and the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 made 28 launches between 1957 and 1961. A derivative, the R-7A, was operational from 1960 to 1968. To the West it was unknown until its launch (later it would get the NATO reporting name SS-6 Sapwood). In modified form, it launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit, and became the basis for the R-7 family which includes Sputnik, Luna, Molniya, Vostok, and Voskhod space launchers, as well as later Soyuz variants. Various modifications are still in use and it has become the world's most reliable space launcher. Description The R-7 was long, in diameter and weighed ; it had a single stage with four strap on boosters powered by rocket engines using liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene and capable of delivering its payload up to , with an accuracy ( CEP) of around . A single thermonuclear warhead could be ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valentin Glushko
Valentin Petrovich Glushko (; ; born 2 September 1908 – 10 January 1989) was a Soviet engineer who was program manager of the Soviet space program from 1974 until 1989. Glushko served as a main designer of rocket engines in the Soviet program during the heights of the Space Race between United States and the Soviet Union, and was the proponent of cybernetics within the space program. Biography Valentin Glushko was born on 2 September 1908 (21 August according to the old calendar) in Odesa to a Ukrainian cossack father and a Russian peasant mother. At the age of fourteen he became interested in aeronautics after reading novels by Jules Verne. He is known to have written a letter to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1923. He studied at an Odessa trade school, where he learned to be a sheet metal worker. After graduation he apprenticed at a hydraulics fitting plant. He was first trained as a fitter, then moved to lathe operator. During his time in Odessa, Glushko performed experiment ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nitric Acid
Nitric acid is an inorganic compound with the formula . It is a highly corrosive mineral acid. The compound is colorless, but samples tend to acquire a yellow cast over time due to decomposition into nitrogen oxide, oxides of nitrogen. Most commercially available nitric acid has a concentration of 68% in water. When the solution contains more than 86% , it is referred to as ''fuming nitric acid''. Depending on the amount of nitrogen dioxide present, fuming nitric acid is further characterized as red fuming nitric acid at concentrations above 86%, or white fuming nitric acid at concentrations above 95%. Nitric acid is the primary reagent used for nitration – the addition of a nitro group, typically to an organic molecule. While some resulting nitro compounds are shock- and thermally-sensitive explosives, a few are stable enough to be used in munitions and demolition, while others are still more stable and used as synthetic dyes and medicines (e.g. metronidazole). Nitric acid is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R-11 Zemlya
The R-11 Zemlya (), GRAU index 8A61 was a Soviet tactical ballistic missile. It is also known by its NATO reporting name SS-1b Scud-A. It was the first of several similar Soviet missiles to be given the reporting name Scud. Variant R-11M was accepted into service, with GRAU index 9K51 (9К51). Origin The R-11 originated from a 1951 requirement for a ballistic missile with similar performance to the German V-2 rocket, but half its size. With the Wasserfall, an anti-aircraft version of the V-2, as a model the R-11 was developed by engineer Victor Makeev, who was then working in OKB-1, headed by Sergey Korolyov. The two men agreed on the use of RG-1 as the fuel, but disagreed over which oxidizer to use, with Korolev favouring the use of liquid oxygen, while Makeev advocated the use of a storable but toxic oxidizer. Makeev's version, that first flew on 18 April 1953, was fitted with an Isayev engine using RG-1 and nitric acid. On 13 December 1953, a production order was passed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R-5 Missile
The R-5 Pobeda (Побе́да, "Victory") was a medium range ballistic missile developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The upgraded R-5M version, the first Soviet missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, was assigned the NATO reporting name SS-3 Shyster and carried the GRAU index 8K51. The R-5 was developed by OKB-1 as a single-stage missile with a detachable warhead reentry vehicle. The R-5M was a nuclear armed missile with greater payload and weight entered service in March 1956, was deployed along the western and eastern Russian borders, and in 1959 was installed in East Germany, the first Soviet nuclear missile bases outside the USSR. The missile was retired in 1967, superseded by the R-12. In 1958, R-5A rockets were used to launch pairs of dogs to altitudes above . Description The R-5 was a single-stage Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) with a range of . Using 92% ethanol for fuel and liquid oxygen as an oxidizer, the rocket had a dry weight of (fue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mikhail Yangel
Mikhail Kuzmich Yangel (; 7 November 1911 – 25 October 1971), was a Soviet people, Soviet engineer born in Irkutsk who was the leading designer in the missile program of the former Soviet Union. Biography Yangel was the grandson of a Russian political prisoner who had been deported to Siberia by the Tsarist regime. Yangel's career started as an aviation engineer, after graduating from Moscow Aviation Institute in 1937. He worked with famous aircraft designers Nikolai Polikarpov and later, Artem Mikoyan. Then he moved to the field of ballistic missiles, where he first was in charge of guidance systems. As Sergei Korolev’s associate, he set up a rocket propulsion centre in Dnepropetrovsk in UkSSR which later formed the basis of his own OKB-586 design bureau in 1954. At first, Yangel’s facility served to mass-produce and further develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in which area Yangel was a pioneer of storeable Hypergolic propellant, hypergolic fuels. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sergei Korolev
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (14 January 1966) was the lead Soviet Aerospace engineering, rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. He invented the R-7 Semyorka, R-7 Rocket, Sputnik 1, and was involved in the launching of Laika, Sputnik 3, the first luna 2, human-made object to make contact with another celestial body, Soviet space dogs#Belka and Strelka, Belka and Strelka, the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into space, Voskhod 1, and the first person, Alexei Leonov, to conduct a Voskhod 2, spacewalk. Although Korolev trained as an aircraft designer, his greatest strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning. Arrested on a false official charge as a "member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization" (which would later be reduced to "saboteur of military technology"), he was imprisoned in 1938 for almost six years, including a few months in a K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yuzhnoye Design Bureau
The ''Pivdenne'' Design Office (), located in Dnipro, Ukraine, is a designer of satellites and rockets, and formerly of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), established by Mikhail Yangel. During the Soviet era, the bureau's OKB designation was OKB-586. The company is in close co-operation with the PA Pivdenmash multi-product machine-building company, also situated in Dnipro. Pivdenmash is the main manufacturer of the models developed by Pivdenne Design Office. Directors * 1954–1971 Mikhail Yangel * 1971–1991 Vladimir Utkin * 1991–2010 * 2010–2020 Products Current Ballistic missiles * Hrim-2 Orbital launch vehicles * Zenit rocket family ** Zenit-2 **Zenit-2M ** Zenit-3F ** Zenit-3SL ** Zenit-3SLB *Antares first stage core, in cooperation with Orbital Sciences Corporation * Dnepr, converted R-36 ICBM * R-36 ICBM, NATO reporting name SS-18 'Satan' Rocket engines *Main engines ** RD-843 ** RD-853 ** RD-859 ** ** RD-861K ** RD-866 ** RD-868 *Steeri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shahab-4
The Shahab-4 (, meaning "Meteor-4") (a.k.a. IRIS) was an unbuilt Iranian rocket, derived from the Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile. According to Iran it was intended to be a space launch vehicle, after a slip by the Defense Minister in which he acknowledged it as a "more capable ballistic missile than the Shahab-3". According to Western observers, it was intended to be part of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile. History The IRIS/''Shahab-4'' project was initiated in 1988, but according to some sources, it never went beyond the drawing board. The design heritage of the IRIS was later incorporated into the Safir. b14643.de In 1997, an American satellite captured evidence of a Shahab-4 test facility in Parchin. In 1999, it w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
