Energia II

Energia II, named "Uragan" ( _ru. ураган, meaning Hurricane), was a rocket planned to be fully reusable and would be able to land on a conventional airfield. Unlike the Energia, which was planned to be semi-reusable (like that of the U.S. Space Shuttle), the "Uragan" design would have allowed the complete recovery of all Buran/Energia elements, like that of the original totally reusable Orbiter/Booster concept of the U.S. Shuttle. The Energia II core would be capable of re-entering and gliding to a landing, presumably using technology developed for the Buran.

Although this design never flew, the U.S., prior to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, looked at replacing the present-day four-segment Solid Rocket Boosters, which caused the Challenger Disaster in 1986, with either a liquid-fueled "fly-back" booster based on the "Uragan" booster (but using either an Atlas V or Delta IV Common Core Booster with RD-180 engine) or a five-segment SRB. After Columbia, the fly-back booster was scrapped as the new Ares I rocket will use a modified form of the five-segment booster, although the previous Mars Direct boosters (now the Ares V) would have used the fly-back booster design.

External links

*(Russian) [http://www.buran.ru/htm/41-3.htm Article about a planned Energia II ("Uragan") rocket]