Universal Rocket

Did You Know?

• The UR-500 ICBM, cancelled as a missile, was reworked into the Proton carrier rocket, still in service as of 2026.
• The UR-200 made nine test flights between 4 November 1963 and 20 October 1964 before cancellation.
• The UR-900, proposed in 1969, would have used 15 RD-270 modules in its first two stages.

UR-700

The UR-700 was a heavy-lift rocket designed by Vladimir Chelomei for the Soviet effort to reach the Moon. It was intended to send cosmonauts directly to the lunar surface using the LK-1 spacecraft. The project never progressed beyond the design stage, as the competing N1 booster from Sergei Korolev, along with the Soyuz 7K-LOK and LK lander, was selected instead. The UR-700 would have been capable of lifting 151 metric tons to low Earth orbit. Its layout followed the common Soviet pattern of a central core with strap-on boosters, but it had a unique feature: the first stage engines drew propellant from the boosters’ tanks during the initial ascent. This meant that when the boosters were discarded, the core still had full tanks, reducing wasted weight and increasing payload. A nuclear-powered variant, the UR-700A, was planned with a 250-ton capacity to LEO, enough for a lunar landing mission with up to seven crew. Another version, the UR-700M, was even larger, with a 750-ton payload to LEO, placing it among the biggest rockets ever conceived. It would have used kerosene and liquid oxygen for its first two stages and hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the third, supporting a crewed Mars mission by assembling a spacecraft in orbit over two to four launches.