MOSCOW, December 15. /TASS/. A Russian super-heavy carrier rocket must be developed using principally new technical solutions, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos Head Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday.
"The super-heavy complex is a chance to find a shorter way; the subject must give the sector a strong impetus to development. That is why, I would not start creating a super-heavy complex based on existing solutions, even if they are still good and competitive," the Roscosmos chief wrote on Facebook.
This carrier needs a principally new propulsion system that makes it possible to achieve "hot sparing" and multiple use, Rogozin stressed.
"It is necessary to create it broadly using additive technologies to make serial production cheaper," he said.
It also has to be borne in mind that a super-heavy carrier rocket will not fly as frequently as medium-class "workhorse" rockets, the Roscosmos chief said. "That is why, the work on universal rocket modules of a super-heavy carrier must lead us to creating a medium-class rocket prototype for the full-fledged replacement of our legendary and beloved Soyuz-2 launch vehicle," Rogozin specified, adding that this was due to take place in the next decade.
Super-heavy carrier rocket
The work on developing the Yenisei super-heavy rocket will cost Russia about 1 trillion rubles (around $12.8 billion), Roscosmos Chief Rogozin said in an interview with Andrei Vandenko in a TASS special project Top Officials in October.
The Yenisei will be fifteen times more powerful than the medium-class rocket of the Soyuz-2 type but it will need its own launch pad at the Vostochny spaceport, Rogozin said.
The Yenisei rocket is scheduled to blast off in 2028 in accordance with the presidential decree, he specified.
Roscosmos Chief Rogozin earlier said the Yenisei new super-heavy carrier rocket would be assembled using the principle of a technological building kit where each part of the launcher should be an independent flight element. Under the designers’ plans, the rocket is intended to deliver more than 70 tonnes of cargo into the low near-Earth orbit at the first stage.
Russia intends to use the new super-heavy rocket for missions to the Moon, including the landing of Russian cosmonauts on the surface of the Earth’s natural satellite. In Roscosmos’ estimates, the Yenisei will be able to deliver a 27-tonne payload to the Moon’s orbit.