Kuznetsov Rocket Engines
In 1959, Sergey Korolev ordered a new design of rocket engine from the Kuznetzov Bureau for the Global Rocket 1 (GR-1) Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which was developed but never deployed. The result was the NK-9, one of the first staged-combustion cycle rocket engines. The design was developed by Kuznetsov into the NK-15 and NK-33 engines in the 1960s, and claimed them to be the highest-performance rocket engines ever built, which were to propel the N1 lunar rocket -- one that was never successfully launched. As of 2011, the aging NK-33 remains the most efficient (in terms of thrust-to-mass ratio) LOX/Kerosene rocket engine ever created.
Read more about this topic: Kuznetsov Design Bureau
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