Proton: la pacífica vida de un cohete militar

Video from the channel SkyShips en Español about Proton, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 21:05. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

Spanish-language version of a story about the heavy launch vehicle UR-500, known as Proton, developed in the 1960s as a ballistic missile and turned into the main Soviet and Russian heavy space launcher. It covers its three major versions, the basic model, the Proton-K and the Proton-M, and its planned successor, the Angará family.

The story starts with the race for the hydrogen bomb: following the Teller-Ulam design and the Ivy Mike and RDS-37 tests, thermonuclear bombs grew in power and size, to the point that the Tsar Bomba, 8 m long and over 26 t, required a Tu-95 to be modified to carry it. More capable carriers than the R-7 were needed. Among the proposals from the design bureaus of Korolev, Yangel and Chelomei, the one from Vladimir Chelomei's OKB-52 proposed a family of unified universal rockets, UR-100, UR-200, UR-500 and UR-700, which could be built from the same components. In 1961 his project was chosen, and the UR-500 was meant to carry a 150-megaton bomb. Its dimensions were constrained by rail transport from Moscow to Baikonur, its only launch site.

By the mid-1960s the idea of ultra-powerful bombs lost momentum and the military dropped the UR-200 in favor of the R-9. The UR-500, designed from the start with possible civilian use in mind, was converted into a launcher; its first payload, in 1965, was the Proton 1 satellite, which ended up giving the rocket its name.

The first stage combines a central unit holding the oxidizer with six side units carrying fuel and RD-253 engines, which run on unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide — simple but highly toxic propellants; the side units do not separate. The second stage carries three RD-0210 engines and one RD-0211 and separates hot. The basic version placed 8.4 t into low orbit. The Proton-K, with three stages or four with the Block D, reached space in 1967, entered service in 1978 after more than 60 launches, reached 21 t to low orbit, launched the Zarya module of the International Space Station in 1998, and was retired in 2012 after 310 launches. The Proton-M, from 2001, introduced a new control system, the Briz-M stage and RD-276 engines; it is just over 58 m tall, weighs 705 t and places 23.7 t into low orbit. Since 1967 it has totaled more than 400 launches, 49 of them failures.