The R-56 were five proposed rockets developed by the OKB-586 design bureau under

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 Russ ...

. No formal terms for the five different designs have been discovered resulting in Bart Hendrickx writing in the Journal of the

British Interplanetary Society The British Interplanetary Society (BIS), founded in Liverpool in 1933 by Philip E. Cleator, is the oldest existing space advocacy organisation in the world. Its aim is exclusively to support and promote astronautics and space exploration. St ...

referring to the initial two designs as the Small and Big versions. Hendrickx referred to the later three designs as “Monoblock”, “first polyblock” (similar to the Big R-56) and “second polyblock” (similar to the Small R-56). The monoblock version was considered for use in the Soviet lunar program.

History

The idea for the R-56 seems to have comes from a desire to build a missile that could carry

Tsar Bomba The Tsar Bomba (code name: ''Ivan'' or ''Vanya''), also known by the alphanumerical designation "AN602", was a Thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear aerial bomb, and by far the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. The Soviet phy ...

type nuclear weapons. By February 1962 the concept was described in a presentation to

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

as being an

ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range (aeronautics), range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more Thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear warheads). Conven ...

suitable for 50 tonne weapons as well as being able to launch space stations. Formal design work, initially mainly focusing on the small R-56, took place between April 1962 and June 1964. By this point the R-56 was being treated almost entirely as a space launcher although some work was done exploring its potential as a

Multiple reentry vehicle A multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) is an exoatmospheric ballistic missile payload containing several warheads, each capable of being aimed to hit a different target. The concept is almost invariably associated with ...

carrier. The designs at this stage were meant to use the

RD-253 The RD-253 () and its later variants, the RD-275 and RD-275M, are liquid-propellant rocket engines developed in the Soviet Union by Energomash. The engines are used on the first stage of the Proton launch vehicle and use an oxidizer-rich staged ...

engine. In August 1963 it was decided that the Small R-56 has too small a payload capacity and three new designs (“Monoblock”, “first polyblock” and “second polyblock”) using were produced with the monoblock being selected for further development. It was designed to be used in both two and four stage versions depending on the mission profile: two for

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

, four for geostationary and beyond. In its 4-stage version it was 67.8 m high. It was planned to transport the rocket to its launch site by sea. The R-56 program was formally ended on 19 June 1964 with the stated purpose of focusing on the N-1 Rocket design.

Proposed uses

Earth orbit

It was suggested that the R-56 be used to place heavy (~40 tonne) military satellites into low Earth orbit as well as six tonne satellites into geostationary orbit.

Lunar missions

Proposed lunar missions included lunar satellites for photographic surveys of the Moon and a crewed flight around the Moon. The possibility of using the R-56 for crewed lunar landings (perhaps using a pair of launches to assemble the craft in low Earth orbit) was tentatively considered.

Engine

The rockets were designed to use the

as their main engine. In late 1962 it was suggested that the rocket switch to the more powerful

RD-270 RD-270 (, GRAU index: 8D420) was a single-chamber liquid-fuel rocket engine designed by Energomash (USSR) in 1960–1970. It was to be used on the first stages of the proposed heavy-lift UR-700 and UR-900 rocket families, as well as on the N1 ...

. While this was never formally adopted the idea remained under consideration.

Model

A model of the R-56 survived in the collection of the

Yuzhnoye Design Office 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 de ...

References

{{reflist Rockets and missiles