Soyuz-V

Soyuz-V, designated 11K, was a Soviet uncrewed tanker spacecraft designed in the early 1960s and cancelled in 1964. It was part of the December 1962 Soyuz draft project, in which a Soyuz B (9K) rocket acceleration block would be launched into a 225 kilometre orbit and then refuelled in space. One to three Soyuz-V tankers, depending on the mission, were to rendezvous and dock automatically with the 9K block and pass over up to 22 metric tons of propellant between them. Only after that would a crewed 7K spacecraft be launched to dock with the block and be pushed onto its path, either a circumlunar flight in a Soyuz A or a satellite intercept in a Soyuz P. Each Soyuz-V tanker had a gross mass of about 5,900 kilograms. Development was authorised for a subcontractor, but the Soyuz A and Soyuz P were cancelled soon afterwards, and the tanker never flew. Its docking and propellant transfer ideas probably fed into the later Progress resupply craft.