SA-214, the Last Cluster Booster

Pat Flannery wrote:

The Peenemunde team was working on a very large motor for the A-10
first stage for the two-stage A-9/A-10 ICBM project. They examined two
approaches to it; a very large single-chamber rocket engine:
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/a9a10_xray_1.jpg
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/a/a9a10.jpg
...and a simpler approach of having six V-2 motors exhaust into a
single combustion chamber and expansion nozzle.


I dug up some more information; the earlier six chamber engine was to
develop a total of 165,000 kg. thrust and the later single chamber one
200,000 kg. thrust.
The six chamber one used a toroidal hydrogen peroxide tank mounted
above the motor to drive the turbopumps, just as the RD-107/RD-108 used:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/r/r78k71.jpg
The four strap-ons of the R-7 ICBM were based on a design called the
"Peenemunde Arrow" that the Germans worked on in the last days of the
war as a successor to the V-2.
The story of how the Soviets used German rocket engineers to get design
input for their postwar missile work is an interesting one, and some of
the designs can be seen he http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/earsiles.htm

Pat