Author Topic: R-7 missile launches  (Read 30624 times)

Offline Nicolas PILLET

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Re: R-7 missile launches
« Reply #60 on: 09/20/2024 04:29 pm »
but it's obviously the Resurs failure from '88

No, the launch pad is not the good one.
Nicolas PILLET
Kosmonavtika : The French site on Russian Space

Offline WallE

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Re: R-7 missile launches
« Reply #61 on: 09/22/2024 02:47 am »
The Jul 1958 flight of missile B1-4 is reported (Spaceflight 38, 51)  to have been a suborbital test flight of the 8K72, using the 8K71/III packet with a dummy third stage; it would have tested stage separation had failure not intervened. I haven't seen confirmation of this in more recent sources.

http://sm.evg-rumjantsev.ru/des3/prudnikov-ivan-savelievich.html
https://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/01/3u/luna/luna-prioritety.html

I present these two links which confirms that the 5/24 and 7/10 launches both had battleship Blok Es on them. It also says that the 7/10 launch did not crash next to the pad as is commonly reported, but that after the Blok D broke off the stack at liftoff, the rest of the rocket took off and kept flying, and made it 41 miles downrange before finally losing stability and crashing.

It also seems that the unfortunate Chaika and Lischika were not destined to come back from the 7/28/60 flight even if it had succeeded and that the capsule was a prototype like Korabl-Sputnik 1 without a heat shield. Although Chertok's memoirs claim the dogs were intended to be recovered, a 6/4/60 Central Committee document speaks of two Vostok 1k spacecraft with no heat shields and the well-known film of the 7/28 launch taken from the side of the pad (shown in the link and erroneously labeled as Vostok 1) shows a descent module that lacks the heat shield material. The inference is that the 7/28 launch was an expedited test to prove living organisms could survive in a weightless environment and that Chertok bent history a bit as he was reluctant to admit the dogs were intended to burn up in the atmosphere on reentry. The faulty Blok G strap-on is the one closest to the camera and the malfunction occurred just after it was out of camera view.

The early RD-107 engines had combustion instability issues, a lot like the couple of times this happened on Atlas launches; these wrecked the 7/10/58 launch and the 7/28/60 launch and probably the Luna launch on 4/19/60 as well. It was fixed during 1960 but the 7/28 launch was using the old model of the engine, so no corrective action was needed. There was a poster on the novosti-kosmonavtiki forum who remarked that in the film clip the Blok G appears to be "sagging" and is not properly lined up with the other strap-ons, suggesting the problem was already developing.

It appears the decision to launch the first two Vostoks without heat shields was for political rather than technical reasons as secrecy-obsessed officials would not approve launching them until the APO destruct system, which would blow the descent module up if it landed outside the USSR, was used. The APO was not ready yet; according to Konstantin Feoktistov, a compromise was made to fly them without heat shields.

« Last Edit: 09/23/2024 12:46 pm by WallE »

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