Merkur (spacecraft)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Merkur, from a Russian word for the planet Mercury, was the name of a Soviet manned spacecraft whose design had features absent from other Soviet designs but found on the three early American projects.
Its name was cognate with that of the US Project Mercury, although the shape of the capsule was very much like that of the Command Module of Project Apollo. Inside, Merkur was completely different from the CM, though it also could carry a crew of three. Like either of these spacecraft, it had a Launch Escape System, a rocket bolted to its nose. Unlike them, however, this launch escape rocket went into space with the capsule to be used as the retro-rocket.
But in its purpose Merkur was more like certain planned military derivatives of the spacecraft of Project Gemini. Like the USAF's Gemini B, planned in the 1960s to carry crew to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory which would be orbited by the same rocket just below the capsule itself, Merkur had a small circular hatch in the heat shield.
Merkur was to be launched by the Proton rocket either as part of the Soviet equivalent to MOL, "Almaz," or as part of a ferry to Almaz with a smaller laboratory segment. That system was called "TKS," and it was launched to dock with Salyut 7 in the 1980s, although with no crew aboard. A Gemini ferry similar to TKS was also a USAF plan of the 1960s.
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov called Merkur "our Apollo," though as a military program, it had no connection to the Soviet manned lunar program.
[edit] See Also
[edit] External links
[edit] Sources
|
|
||
|---|---|---|
| Active: | Soyuz - ISS (joint) |  |
| In Development: | Kliper | |
| Past | Vostok, Voskhod, Salyut, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (joint), Mir, Shuttle-Mir Program (joint) | |
| Cancelled | Zond (lunar Soyuz 7K-L1) - N1-L3 (Moon landing program) - Spiral - Almaz (incorporated into Salyut program) / TKS spacecraft - Energia / Buran | |
| Salyut Program |  |
|---|---|
| Salyut 1 | Salyut 4 | Salyut 6 | Salyut 7 | |
| Almaz Program | |
| Salyut 2 | Salyut 3 | Salyut 5 | |
