May 15, 1987, Soviet rocket engineers launched the world's most powerful space booster, and world engineers have yet to develop a more powerful rocket.
The Energia rocket has four rocket engines in the main core fueled by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, and four strap-on boosters fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene. The main body stands 197 feet tall and has a diameter of 26 feet. Each of the strap on boosters, 13 feet in diameter, has its own control system and could carry a payload within itself.
The Energia could power 110 tons into orbit, 10 tons more than the giant American Saturn V and five times more weight than the Proton rocket that fired Soviet first, second and third generation space stations into orbit. With triple the lifting power of the US shuttle, Energia is highly versatile. The Soviet rocket could lift a Soviet shuttle, manned craft, unmanned pods, enormous satellites, or even a new space station with the capacity to hold 12 cosmonauts. And Energia was designed to be reusable! When the rocket has exhausted its fuel, it separates into seven sections that drop by parachute back to Earth where they can be collected, cleaned and reused.
The United States had created a reusable shuttle with reusable solid rocket boosters but nothing could match the power and flexibility of Energia. The main core and attached boosters could be used together in a number of combinations producing heavy and superheavy boosters with varying power.
Energia, with its superpower, flexibility, reusability and its emergency systems (fire and explosion prevention and backup parts and circuits), is indeed a major technological achievement, but it could become another casualty of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Commonwealth of Independent States and the Energia Scientific Industrial Company are searching for ways to salvage this most advanced of rocket technologies. International cooperation is one avenue they are investigating to help keep Energia active.
