UR-700 and UR-900 interplanetary/lunar space rockets

[VDD1991]

Everyone has heard of the ill-fated N1 moon rocket, but most haven't thought too much about the UR-700 and UR-900 proposals by Vladimir Chelomei for taking cosmonauts to the moon, Mars, and other planets. The UR-700, like the R-7, had strap-on boosters on the first stage. The UR-900 was basically a more powerful rocket with 15 RD-270 engines that would have powered the first and second stages. The UR-700 lost out to the N1, and the UR-900 remained a paper project only.

Info about the UR-700 and UR-900 is available at these links:

http://www.astronautix.com/u/ur-700.html
http://www.astronautix.com/u/ur-900.html

[neph]

I'm new to the forums, so I might be wrong, but shouldn't this be in the Historical section?

[Vahe231991]

I'm new to the forums, so I might be wrong, but shouldn't this be in the Historical section?

Yes.

[Dmitry_V_home]

One of the first variants of UR-700

[Dmitry_V_home]

UR-700

[Dmitry_V_home]

UR-700

[Dmitry_V_home]

UR-700M
N1 + UR-700+UR-700M

[Jer]

It never had a chance. The Soviets were moving away from putting people on top of hypergolic fuelled rockets.

[LittleBird]

It never had a chance. The Soviets were moving away from putting people on top of hypergolic fuelled rockets.

As, I guess, the US did by 1969 with the demise of MOL and it's Titan IIIM. Was that before or after this ?

[Jer]

MOL dying had nothing to do with the type of propellant that Titan was using. If Titan was capable of carrying the Apollo CSM to LEO it would've been used to do so.

[AmigaClone]

It never had a chance. The Soviets were moving away from putting people on top of hypergolic fuelled rockets.

Unlike the Americans and later the Chinese, the Soviet Union/Russia never launched crewed mission on top of hypergolicly fueled rockets. While all Chinese crewed launch vehicles have used hypergolic fuels, and the Americans have used a combination of hypergolic, kerolox (RP-1/LOX), hydrolox, and solid fuel stages, all Soviet/Russian crewed launch vehicles have used only RP-1/LOX or synthetic kerosene stages.

[Lunarmodule15]

It never had a chance. The Soviets were moving away from putting people on top of hypergolic fuelled rockets.

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Unlike the Americans and later the Chinese, the Soviet Union/Russia never launched crewed mission on top of hypergolicly fueled rockets. While all Chinese crewed launch vehicles have used hypergolic fuels, and the Americans have used a combination of hypergolic, kerolox (RP-1/LOX), hydrolox, and solid fuel stages, all Soviet/Russian crewed launch vehicles have used only RP-1/LOX or synthetic kerosene stages.

Well, it's because all of them used the same good old rocket: the R-7 !!! 

Zond was to use Proton, but of course it never flew manned.

Overall, the propellants below the capsule are not really significant. Lot of manned spaceship just "borrowed" an ELV: Mercury, Atlas, Vostok to Soyuz: the R-7, Gemini: Titan II. Apollo: Saturn IB, then the bigger one.
Peculiar case was the Shuttle, but it needed LH2 for max performance. SRBs, on the other hand, were not necessary in absolute: could have been press-fed with different props, or S-IC with kerolox...

[Vahe231991]

UR-700M
N1 + UR-700+UR-700M

More details and specifications for proposed UR-700 variants utilizing nuclear propulsion but also the UR-700M can be found here:
https://www.russianspaceweb.com/ur700a.html
http://www.astronautix.com/u/ur-700m.html

With respect to the UR-900, the Secret Projects forum mentions that UR-900 was applied by Boris Chertok to the UR-700M for which Yeteyev's work "Operezhaya vremya" gives specific information, and that Valentin Glushko provisionally used the designation UR-1000 for what was to become the UR-700.