Credit: © Mark Wade. 1,332 bytes. 53 x 298 pixels.
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| YaRD ICBM - YaRD Nuclear-powered ICBM Credit: © Mark Wade. 1,332 bytes. 53 x 298 pixels. |
Single-stage nuclear-powered ICBM designed by OKB-1. This variant used a Glushko nuclear engine heating ammonia as a propellant. Perhaps coming under the heading of 'inadvisable rocket science', test launches would have been into an artificial reservoir in the target area to limit contamination by having the reactor crash into water at the end of its trajectory. While reentering nuclear reactors at the end of the ICBM trajectory may have been not considered on great consequence during global thermonuclear war, the consequences of missing the reservoir during peacetime tests were evidently too gruesome to consider. Further development of the engine was discontinued. Interestingly American spy Penkovskiy reported development of this rocket in 1962, but the story was not believed. Only in 1996 was the program revealed.
Payload: 4,000 kg. to a: 14,000 km trajectory. Liftoff Thrust: 128,000 kgf. Total Mass: 84,400 kg. Core Diameter: 3.3 m. Total Length: 25.0 m.
Central Committee of the Communist Party and Council of Soviet Ministers Decree 'On the Creation of pockets With Engines on the Basis of Nuclear Energy Applications--work on a draft project for rockets with nuclear engines' was issued. Competing engine designs were in development by Glushko�s OKB-456 and Bondaryuk�s OKB-670. Both designs used existing available reactors in cyldindrical housings, with the reactors operating at 3000 degrees K. The propellant was heated in the reactor and exhausted through four expansion nozzles. The Glushko engine operated with ammonia, while the Bondaryuk engine used a mixture of ammonia and alcohol. With such propellants a specific impulse of 430 seconds was achieved.