The launch vehicle Soyuz is a 3 stage middle class rocket. It can set into space 8,25 tons of payload – it is a space craft itself.
The height of the rocket is 51 m, the gross lift of weight of the rocket is 20 tons, in fully fueled state the weight is 310 tons. The weight of the fuel is 290 tons (kerosene + liquid oxygen). Our rocket is man controlled. This fact presupposes the emergency escape system.
The launch vehicle consists of 4 tanks of the first stage, the 2nd stage or the core stage, the 3rd stage, payload fairing which protects the space craft from the high heat flows while passing through the dense atmosphere layers (2,5k — 3000 c Celsius) and the emergency escape system.
As the result of chemical reactions the engines of the first (RD-107) and the second stage (RD-108) start to work. And the rocket lifts off and begins its movement. The emergency escape system is used in case of an incident when the rocket is still on the Earth or during the first seconds of flight. For other stages of flight there are different methods to save cosmonauts, that is why the emergency escape system is jettisoned from the launch vehicle and falls down at the 115th second of flight.
In the 118 second of flight the 4 tanks of the first stage are jettisoned as they have already run out of fuel. The fuel consumption at this moment is 1,5 ton per second. The tanks fall down back onto Earth in the exclusion zone in Kazakhstan.
The speed of the launch vehicle is 640 km/s, the height is 40 km, the distance from the launch pad is 350 km. At jettisoning the 1st stage the maximum g force is 4G.
The payload fairing is jettisoned at the 158 sec of flight.
In the 287 sec of flight the 2nd stage is running out of fuel (fuel consumption is 0,9 ton/sec). It is jettisoned and falls back down onto earth at the special restricted area of the exclusion zone in Siberia in the Altai region. The speed is 13250 km/h, the altitude is 170 km, the distance from the launch pad is 530 km.
At the 529 sec of flight the 3rd stage is running out of fuel, the stage is jettisoned, but it is not falling down onto Earth, it burns at the dense atmosphere layers during reentry. The speed is 28000 km/h, the altitude is 210 km, the distance from the launch pad is 1640 km.
That`s it. There is no rocket any longer. We have set a payload into space. Only about 9 minutes (or 529 sec) have passed (since the lift off).
After that our space craft will open its antennas, solar batteries and will hit the space road to the international space station.
