RD-170

The RD-170 (РД-170, Ракетный Двигатель-170, Rocket Engine-170) is the world's most powerful liquid-fuel rocket engine, designed and produced in the Soviet Union by NPO Energomash for use with the Energia launch vehicle. The engine burns the Russian equivalent of RP-1 fuel and LOX oxidizer in four combustion chambers, all supplied by one single-shaft, single-turbine turbo pump rated at 170 MW in a staged combustion cycle.

Shared turbopump

Several Soviet and Russian rocket engines use the approach of clustering small combustion chambers around a single turbine and pump. During the early 1950s, many Soviet engine designers, including Valentin P. Glushko, faced problems of combustion instability while designing bigger thrust chambers. At that time they solved the problem by using a cluster of smaller thrust chambers.

Variants

RD-151

The RD-151 is the RD-191 with thrust reduced from 196 to 170 tonnes. This engine was test-fired on July 30, 2009. The first flight test of this engine was conducted on August 25, 2009 as part of the first launch of South Korean Naro-1 rocket. The first stage of the Naro-1 rocket is made of the Universal Rocket Module (URM) from the Angara rocket.