RD-270

From Spacefaring

Q4386506




RD-270 was a single-chamber liquid-fuel rocket engine designed by Energomash (USSR) in 1960–1970. It was to be used on the first stages of the proposed heavy-lift UR-700 and UR-900 rocket families, as well as on the N1. It has the highest thrust among single-chamber engines of the USSR, 640 metric tons at the surface of Earth. The propellants used are a hypergolic mixture of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) fuel with dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. The chamber pressure was among the highest considered, being about 26 MPa. This was achieved by applying the full-flow staged combustion cycle for all the incoming mass of fuel, which is turned into a gas and passes through multiple turbines before being burned in the combustion chamber. This allowed the engine to achieve a specific impulse of 301 s (2.95 km/s) at the Earth's surface.