Soviet KGB General discloses value of solid fuel intel
 

Former KGB agent (Major General Oleg Kalugin) re-discloses on CSPAN (Reagan Library, Intelligence and the end of the cold war 11-2-11) that solid fuel technology was disclosed through an "asset" at Thiokol in the 50's and was one of the largest benefits achieved in the cold war.

Scared crapless Jerry (in retrospect to the 50's when I was born)

Thieves!
 

To my understanding, the Russians stole whatever technology they could from the U.S.(easier and cheaper than developing thier own) and depended on American greed to assist them.

In his opinion, apparently.

Yes, the US did have a very large early lead in solid propellant technology, which for military missiles is obviously superior to liquid propellant technologies, as evidenced by the fact that virtually every ballistic missile being manufactured nowdays is solid propellant. The early LOX and kerosene fueled missiles, like the Atlas and Titan and SS-6 were VERY vulnerable due to their long preparation times and rather exposed and non-hardened fixed launch site and support facilities, as well as their large size. The advent of missiles powered by storable liquid propellants, especially hypergolics like nitrogen tetroxide/hydrazine fueled missiles like the Titan II and most subsequent Soviet ICBM's greatly reduced the preparation time for launch and increased their survivability. Titan II came along at a time when the size/ease of handling/safety issues showed that solid propellant was a superior alternative, especially for submarine based SLBM's and coupled with miniaturized warheads, for silo-launched land-based missiles like Minuteman. Titan II endured for a LONG time due to it's superior throw-weight capabilities and storable propellant leading to short preparation and readiness times, but the toxic nature and safety concerns were the double edged sword that also led to Titan II's retirement, especially after the silo explosion in Arkansas.

The Soviets developed the SS-13 Savage, their first solid propellant ICBM, but it had a lot of problems and they were phased out after a fairly short operational lifetime. Most Soviet ICBM's have been hypergolical storable liquid fuel powered-- yes the safety issues are bigger (highly toxic fuel vapors and risk of fire from spills/leaks) but the readiness levels and preparation time is almost as good as solid propellant missiles, and the performance is actually better from an ISP standpoint. Even early Soviet submarine based SLBM's were hypergolic fueled, though this was VERY risky because of the toxic vapors in the enclosed spaces and the risk of fire aboard a sub. The Soviets continued to develop liquid-fueled ICBM's for many years, even as they improved and perfected solid-fueled SLBM's for their subs...

It's only been in the last generation or two of ICBM's that solid fuel has completely overtaken the liquid fueled missile designs in the Soviet and now Russian arsenal. Virtually all modern missiles are going to mobile basing schemes, either road or rail mobile on transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) or rail mobile, or on subs. India, for example, came to the ICBM party so late that they never fielded a silo-based missile. AFAIK, all the current and planned Russian ICBM designs are road/rail mobile. The greatly reduced warhead size and improved accuracy, especially post-boost manuevering and accuracy (including MARV manuevering warheads which Russia, India, and China are pursuing with a vengeance now to offset US missile-shield technology) coupled with improved missile design and propulsion efficiency is leading to smaller and more mobile missiles, which are FAR more survivable... silo missiles are passe-- they're increasingly vulnerable to these newer, smaller, more accurate, and more mobile latest generation missiles. (which is rather disturbing seeing how the US has continued to rely on silo basing of its ICBM's, which is rapidly becoming antiquated-- of course I guess this is partially offset by our increasing focus on high accuracy SLBM's).

Later! OL JR :)

All the SDI "calibration" rockets we made were solid. Despite being a solid zealot I offered hybrids and liquids and they were not at all interested.

The "systems" delivered did have burning times from 30 to 60 seconds however.

Decades ago now.

Just Jerry

The most important secret they stole from us was the implosion method of detonating an atomic bomb.

At the time (early 40s), physicists were fairly certain they could get uranium to go boom "assembling" two subcritical masses by shooting one into the other. This was the gun design used in the Little Boy device dropped on Hiroshima.

The other approach being studied was to implode a hollow shell of nuclear material or even compressing a subcritical amount until it becomes dense enough to go critical. The problem was creating in inward force which was both sufficiently intense and uniform. Not fast enough and the material flies apart from generated heat without going critical. Not uniform and the material squirts out through weak spots in the field. Klaus Fuchs and several others working as scientists or technicians at Los Alamos passed on designs which allowed the Soviets to build an essential clone of our Fat Man bomb much sooner than anyone expected.

These secrets proved to be extremely valuable because we have since learned that plutonium cannot be detonated using the gun assembly approach. It is too reactive and cannot be smashed together fast enough. Uranium weapons are limited because U235, the reactive isotope needed for a weapon, is very rare and expensive to purify whereas large quantities of plutonium can be made in nuclear reactors.

Furthermore, the implosion technology is essential to making smaller and more efficient bombs along with the fact that it lends itself well to initiating a thermonuclear (hydrogen fusion) reaction.


Bill

Well, yeah... for "calibration" rockets and small sounding rockets and such solids are DEFINITELY superior... even for large rockets needing "instant readiness" and small size and "easy" safe handling, like ICBM's/SLBM's, solids are superior. The Chinese ICBM/SLBM programs have mirrored the earlier Soviet developments, but they've switched to solids and are phasing out whatever liquid fueled missiles remain in their inventory, again for obvious reasons.

The only big users of liquid propellant ballistic missiles anymore are the so-called "rogue" states-- places like Iran, North Korea, etc. and places that just don't have the access to the developed solid fueled technologies, like Pakistan (which is basically flying their Ghauri 5, a North Korean upscaled/updated versions of the old Soviet Scud anyway, same as the Iranian Shahab 3). Everybody else designing and building "modern" missiles are using solid propellant.

Interestingly enough, there was a LOT of solid propellant vehicle proposals back in the earliest days of the moon race... I summarized some of these proposals over in the scale modeling section... such as the all-solid JPL version of NOVA and the various proposals by various companies like Grand Central Rocket Company, among others... Von Braun and others were very opposed to using SRM's on a human-carrying rocket for obvious safety reasons. I read that one of the Apollo engineers who was working on the shuttle program quit when the decision was made to use SRB's in the design, convinced (rightly it turns out) that "they're gonna kill somebody". The US leveraged its lead in advanced large solid rocket technology for the shuttle and for SRB's for various other liquid fueled space launchers like Delta, which has caused them to become quite engrained into the US space program-- so much so that many have trouble conceiving of heavy lift vehicles without them. While solid rockets can provide large amounts of raw thrust for liftoff augmentation, they do it with poor ISP and considerable pollution, and with MASSIVE attendant infrastructure and support costs. That's why the Air Force, when they retired Titan IV, retired the big SRM's with them, and developed the EELV program using the "common core" liquid fueled rocket booster principle instead of carrying over the large solids. The small solids still have their place, both in the space program and for the Air Force satellite launches, but their costs and impacts are much less for the thrust augmentation they provide-- IE they're more cost-efficient than large solids-- more bang for the buck...

The Soviet/Russian space program has very very little in the way of solid propellant utilization in their vehicles. Virtually all of their primary propulsion is either LO2/RP-1 (kerosene) or hypergols... virtually all liquid propulsion. Most of their booster rockets are liquid propellant as well. While we've gone down what has basically ultimately proven to be a dead end WRT large segmented solid propellant booster rockets, the Soviets and later Russians have developed world-beating LOX/kerosene propellant rocket engines, and are in fact years if not decades ahead of the US in this regard.

Later! OL JR :)

When you launch them within temperature constraints for a segmented design they are fine. The SU motors I have made have been operated is VERY wide temperature scenarios Including Adak, AK!!

Jerry

Heads up Horsey!

This link was posted on the TRA mailing list the other day. It's a video narrated by Chet Huntley called "Solid Punch" from the early 60's.

I love to watch these kind of documentaries

Folks, don't forget to watch part two!

BTW, here's a color film with much of the live fire footage in the Solid Punch film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGKa...feature=related

Hey Leo, I love watching them too.
When you are done with these, search for "The Big Picture US Army". There's a boatload of stuff there to watch!