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An artist's conception of the Buran Soviet space shuttle lifting off atop the immense Energia booster.

The Energia (or Energiya, Энергия in Russian, meaning Energy) rocket was a Soviet rocket that was designed by NPO Energia to serve as a heavy-lift expendable launch system as well as a booster for the Buran Space Shuttle. It had the capacity to place around 100 metric tons in Low Earth orbit (LEO), although it could have been (but never was) upgraded for heavier payloads comparable to (or even greater than) the LEO capacity of the Saturn V.

Polyus satellite on Energia launch vehicle.

The Energia was first test-launched 15 May 1987 21:30 with Polyus (UKSS military payload), where the Energia itself functioned well, but the Polyus did not reach orbit due to a mishap of its own attitude control system after separation from Energia. The only other flight to orbit has been the successful mission in which the unmanned Buran orbiter (space shuttle) was brought to orbit, in 1988. Both the Energia and Buran programs were designed to maintain strategic parity between the two superpowers.

Work on the Energia/Buran system began in 1976 after the decision was made to cancel the unsuccessful N1 rocket. The cancelled N1 rocket-based Manned Lunar Launch Facilities and Infrastructure were used for Energia (notably the huge horizontal assembly building) - just as NASA reused infrastructure designed for the Saturn V in the Space Shuttle program. Energia also replaced the "Vulkan" concept, which was a design based on the Proton rocket and using the same toxic hypergolic fuels, but much larger and more powerful. The "Vulkan" designation was later on given to a variation of the Energia which has eight boosters and multiple stages.

Three major variants were planned after the original configuration, each with vastly different payloads. The Energia M was the smallest design configuration. The number of Zenit boosters was reduced from four to two, and instead of four RD-0120 engines in the core, it had only one. It was designed to replace the Proton rocket, but lost the 1993 competition to the Angara rocket. The Energia-2 was designed to be completely reusable. While the Zenit boosters were always designed to be reused, the core would be expended in each launch. With the Energia-2, the core would be capable of re-entering and gliding to a landing, presumably using technology developed for the Buran. The final unflown configuration was also the largest. With eight Zenit booster rockets and an Energia-M core as the upper stage of it, the "Vulkan" (which was interestingly the same name of another Soviet heavy lift rocket that was cancelled years earlier) or "Hercules" (which is the same name designated to the N-1 rockets) configuration could have launched a stunning 175 tonnes into orbit.

Production of Energia rockets ended with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Buran shuttle project. Ever since, there have been persistent rumors of the renewal of production, but given the current political realities, that is highly unlikely. While the Energia is no longer in production, the Zenit boosters are still in production and in use.

There is much debate in the space enthusiast community about which was the better or more powerful booster, the Energia or the Saturn V. In its most powerful configuration, the Energia was equipped with eight Zenit strap-on boosters and a high energy H2 upper stage; this configuration exceeded the LEO payload capability (175 metric tons vs. 120 metric tons) of the Saturn V, although it never flew. In the configuration it did fly in (four Zenit strap-ons, single core) the Energia LEO payload was only 80 metric tons, though this is still far and away the only vehicle comparable to the Saturn V to have successfully launched. Both vehicles had a reliability of 100%, though the Energia only flew twice.

The Energia and Saturn V vehicles are easily the most powerful and reliable large boosters that ever successfully flew (if you include unsuccessful flights, N-1 will need to be added). In all categories: takeoff thrust, launch mass, payload mass, etc. the Saturn V and the Energia are at the top of the list in some order, and every other launch system (with the possible exception of the STS) being a distant third. It is interesting to note that both vehicles were developed using tremendous resources and effort to make them as good as they were, only to be abandoned shortly after the considerable capital investment made in them. This makes the Energia and Saturn V co-title holders in a more ignominious category: The most expensive and impressive vehicles to have been abandoned so rapidly after proving they worked so well. Had either launch system been maintained in production and had the space agencies enough resources to build and operate these launchers, the current state of human affairs in space could be considerably different. For instance, the time to lift the International Space Station could have been shortened by a decade and accomplished in just two or three launches. Arguably, the main reason for abandoning such heavy lifters is the lack of tasks which they should solve, as humanity still doesn't visit Moon often, and new spacestations are rarely created.

Energia II ("Uragan") rocket was planned to be completely reusable and would be able to land on a conventional airfield.

Energia II, named "Uragan" ("Hurricane" in Russian), 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 resuable Orbiter/Booster concept of the U.S. Shuttle.

Although this design never flew, the U.S., prior to the Columbia accident 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.

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The grounding of the United States Space Shuttles in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster caused many to wonder whether the Russian Energia launcher or Buran shuttle could be brought back into service. However, all of the equipment for Energia and Buran, including the vehicles, had either fallen into disuse or been repurposed after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Energia lives on, in a sense. The four strap-on liquid-fuel boosters, which burned kerosene and liquid oxygen, were the basis of the Zenit rocket which used the same engines. The engine is the RD-170: a powerful, modern, and efficient design. It is still used on the Baikonur-launched Zenit and on the Sea Launch floating launch platform system, which is built around the Zenit. A half sized derivative of the engine, the RD-180, powers Lockheed Martin's Atlas V, one of the two new U.S. EELV rockets (the other being the Boeing Delta IV). The quarter size derivate of the engine, the RD-190 would be used in the Russian Angara rocket. The proposed unmanned Ares V cargo launch vehicle, a heavy-lift launch vehicle based on the U.S. Space Shuttle, will somewhat resemble the heavy-lifting version of the Energia, but will use two five-segment Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster rockets, burned in conjunction with five RS-68 cryogenic-fueled rocket engines, with the upper stage using a single uprated J-2X motor.

The company S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia is one of the leaders of space industry in Russia.

The Khrunichev enterprises proposed the Angara 100, a heavy lift vehicle version of the Angara rocket that is quite comparable to the previous Energia design. However unlike the Energia, its core's fuel will use the more compact and heavier kerosene instead of hydrogen, and it will primarily carry cargo on the top of its core rather than at its side.

• Encyclopedia Astronautica: Energia
• Official energia.ru page
• Detailled site about Energia
• K26 Energia page
• (Russian) A page about Energia rocket on a site about Buran spacecraft
• Article about a planned Energia II ("Uragan") rocket

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List of expendable launch vehicles

Current:	Ariane 5 · Atlas V · Cosmos-3M · Delta II · Delta IV · Dnepr · Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle · H-IIA · Long March · Minotaur · Molniya · Pegasus · Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle · Proton · Rockot · Shavit · Soyuz (U, 2) · Taurus · Tsyklon · Zenit
Planned:	Angara · GX · H-IIB · Vega · GSLV III
Historical:	Ariane 1 · Ariane 2/3 · Ariane 4 · Atlas ICBM · Atlas II · Atlas III · Black Arrow · Delta III · Diamant · Energia · Europa · H-II · J-I · Juno I · M-V · N1 · R-7 Semyorka · Saturn I · Saturn IB · Saturn V · Saturn INT-21 · Scout · Thor · Titan (I, II, III, IIIB, IV) · Vanguard · Voskhod · Vostok

v • d • e  RD-170 rocket engine family
	Main Article: RD-170
	Derivatives: RD-171 | RD-180 | RD-191
	Technologies: Bipropellant | LOX | RP-1 | Staged combustion cycle
	Historic rockets: Atlas III (RD-180) | Energia (RD-170)
	Current rockets: Atlas V (RD-180) | Zenit (RD-171)
	Future rockets: Angara (RD-171/RD-191) | GX (RD-180)
	Other LOX & RP-1 Engines: F-1 (Saturn V) | Kestrel (Falcon 1)