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Mir Hardware Heritage

Figure 1-3. Vostok rocket. This is a two-and-a-half-stage derivative of the one-and-ahalf-stage rocket which launched Sputnik 1 (1957). Its original ancestor was the SS-6 “Sapwood” ICBM. It served as the basis for the Soyuz launcher (figure 1-7), in service today. Weight of payload launched to 200-km, 51° circular orbit is 4730 kg.	and a service module. In orbit the L1 was to be joined tail-on to the top of a stack of propulsion modules to create a circumlunar ship (figure 1-2). The L1 and each of the propulsion modules were to be launched separately on Vostok launch vehicles (figure 1-3). The same prospectus described a manned spacecraft called Siber (or Sever) (“north”). This was a threeperson vehicle meant to deliver crews to a space station.[1] 1.2.2 Second Prospectus for Circumlunar Travel (1963) On May 10, 1963, Korolev approved a second prospectus, “Assembly of Vehicles in Earth Satellite Orbit.” In this prospectus, the “Soyuz complex” consisted of spacecraft designated A, B, and C. Soyuz-A (figure 1-4) corresponded to the L1 vehicle of the 1962 prospectus. Soyuz-B was an unmanned propulsion module launched dry with a detachable fueled rendezvous	propulsion unit. Soyuz-C was an unmanned tanker for fueling the propulsion module in orbit. Only Soyuz-A was to be manned. The Soyuz complex (figure 1-5) required five or six launches of the Vostok launch vehicle to carry out a circumlunar mission. The Soyuz-B booster, with an attached rendezvous propulsion unit, was launched first. Up to four Soyuz-C tankers were then launched to fuel the booster. Soyuz-A, with three cosmonauts aboard, then docked nose-to-nose with the booster. The Soyuz-B rendezvous propulsion unit was discarded, and the booster fired to push Soyuz-A around the Moon on a free-return trajectory. The Soyuz A-B-C complex had a total mass of about 18,000 kg. The Soyuz-A manned spacecraft accounted for 5800 kg of that mass (Soyuz-TM masses about 7070 kg). Total length of the complex was about 15 m. The Soyuz-A was 7.7 m long (compared to 6.98 m for Soyuz-TM).[2][3]
	Figure 1-4. Soyuz-A manned spacecraft concept (1963). It was to have been part of the Soyuz A-B-C circumlunar complex.

1. I. B. Afanasyev, “Unknown Spacecraft (From the History of the Soviet Space Program),” What’s New In Life, Science, and Technology: Space Program and Astronomy Series, No. 12, December 1991. Translated in JPRS Report, Science & Technology, Central Eurasia: Space (JPRS-USP-92-003), May 27, 1992, p. 6.
2. Afanasyev, 1991, p. 6
3. Phillip Clark, The Soviet Manned Space Programme, Salamander Books Limited, London, U.K., 1988, pp. 23-25.