The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

450 Tucker, George
three-stage vehicle designed for multiple payload launches
of Strela-class satellites and single payload launches of
the Tselina-D ELINT (electronic intelligence) and Meteor
weather satellites. By using an S5M third stage, the new
rocket would have a low-Earth-orbit capacity 4 tons
greater than that of the Tsyklon-2, combined with
improved orbital injection accuracy. Later, the Tsyklon 3
was also used to launch AUOS scientific and Okean-O
radar satellites.
With the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the
early 1990s, the Ukrainian manufacturer of the Tsyklon
ended up in a different country—an unacceptable situation
for a rocket intended for launching national security
payloads. Consequently, existing stocks of the vehicle
were used, but no new ones were built. (See table, “Comparison
of Tsyklon-2 and -3”)
Tucker, George (1775–1861)
A science fiction writer (pseudonym: Joseph Atterley)
and chairman of the faculty of the University of Virginia
while Edgar Allan Poe was a student. In A Voyage to the
Moon with Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science
and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other
Lunarians 14 (1827), he describes a trip to the Moon
involving a spacecraft coated with the first antigravitic
metal in literature, a forerunner of H. G. Wells’s
Cavorite. See antigravity.
The Tsyklon Family
Recent
Name
Manufacturer Index Western Base Rocket Payload
Tsyklon-1 11K64 — R-16 —
Tsyklon-2A 11K67 SL-11, F-1-m R-36 IS ASAT
Tsyklon-2 11K69 SL-11, F-1-r R-36 US-A, -P, -PM
Tsyklon-3 11K68 SL-14, F-2 R-36 Meteor, Okean, Tselina-D
Comparison of Tskylon-2 and -3
Tsyklon 2 Tsyklon 3
Number of stages 2 3
Length 35.5–39.7 m 39.3 m
Diameter 3 m 3 m
Liftoff mass 11.6 tons 12.1 tons
First launch Oct. 27, 1967 Jun. 24, 1977
tunneling
A phenomenon in quantum mechanics in which a jump
can take place from one allowed energy state to another
across a barrier of intermediate states that is forbidden by
energy conservation in classical physics.
Tupolev, Andrei (1888–1972)
A Soviet aircraft designer. Since 1922, the design bureau
that he founded and that now bears his name has built
more than 100 different military and civilian aircraft,
including the workhorse of the Aeroflot fleet, the Tu-
154. In one of the more bizarre stories of the Great
Purges, Stalin had the entire Tupolev design bureau
arrested as “enemies of the people” in 1938. Nothing
changed in their work, except that they were now all prisoners
in the Gulag and that Tupolev’s name was not
mentioned in public until his release in 1943. Tupolev
played an important role in the official rehabilitation of
Sergei Korolev.
turbopump
A component of some high-thrust liquid-propellant
rocket engines. The turbopump increases the flow of propellant
to the combustion chamber to increase performance.