Father of the Soviet "shuttle"
For the space shuttle "Buran" Valentin Glushko created the most powerful in stories liquid jet engine
Valentin Petrovich Glushko - Odessa: he was born in the "Pearl of the Sea" in 1908 year. As a teenager, he read out Jules Verne's novels, although the idea of traveling to the moon in the early 1920s even seemed to his keen peers to be nonsense: why dream of space when there are enough white spots on earth! Peers were inspired by the exploits of the brave pilots and harsh sailors, and the boy, following Verniy, discovered the works of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: while sitting in the cold building of the Odessa public library, he made extracts in a notebook. There was only one work by the Kaluga Dreamer in the library; in order to read the others, Valentine sent the idol a letter asking him to send his other books. Tsiolkovsky responded, and correspondence began, which lasted seven years. In the 16 years, Glushko wrote his own “scientific” work - a work under the serious title “The Problem of Using Planets”, which nonetheless the publishers did not take: the author’s fantasies about mastering Mars and Venus seemed too naive. It is curious that in the book as the main justification for the need to develop astronautics, the depletion of the Earth’s resources appeared - an idea on which the plots of dozens of science fiction works (for example, the Hollywood film Interstellar) would be built: than humanity ultimately puts itself at risk of the collapse of both its civilization and its existence. The way out of the looming crisis is to replenish drying out reserves of energy and matter from the outside, from the depths of world space, from other bodies. It is quite natural now to place our neighboring planets in the same position as previously unknown to us continents. Colonizing new planets, organizing operational parts on them to supply the Earth, is becoming quite natural and understandable step of the expanding industry and the power of human intelligence. ”
Valentin Glushko. Photo: Valentin Cheredintsev / TASS
And nevertheless to publish, and regularly, Glushko began: his popular science articles about the creation of stations on the Moon and near-earth orbit appeared in newspapers and magazines. Then he managed to make his dream a little closer - to enter the Leningrad State University in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Glushko remained faithful to the dream throughout his studies: his thesis work was the project of the interplanetary ship "Helioketoplan" with electric rocket engines.
While he was studying, a lot has changed in the country: the defeated universities again received funding, the government stopped seeing rocket science as a marginal and interesting area for enthusiasts only. After graduating from the University, Glushko was accepted into the staff of the Gas-Dynamic Laboratory (GDL), the first Soviet research and development laboratory. Here he began to work on the creation of the first domestic liquid-propellant rocket engine (LRE) ORM-1. During his time at the laboratory, Glushko designed several missiles of various series, and also tested ORM series engines on kerosene nitric acid.
A talented engineer was noticed at the People's Commissariat of Defense and in 1934 was transferred to Moscow, having appointed the head of the sector of the Rocket Research Institute. Here he finished work on his second book, “Missiles: Their Design and Application,” which, unlike his first brainchild, saw the light and was highly appreciated by his colleagues. However, the work that Glushko was engaged in at the Rocket Research Institute was primarily practical: for example, in 1936, under his leadership, official bench tests of the LRE-65 LPR up to 175 kg on liquid fuel for the RPN-318 rocket and 212 cruise missile designs by Sergey Korolev.
Prisoner scientist
Like most of the prominent scientists of his era, Glushko had a chance to work in a "sharashka": in March 1938, he was arrested. It took the Lubyanka investigators only two days to get a confession: “I am a member of an anti-Soviet organization in the defense industry, on whose instructions I was conducting sabotage subversive work. In addition, I was engaged in espionage work in favor of Germany. " True, once in the Butyrka prison, Glushko immediately disagreed with the unfounded accusations and began writing letters to state prosecutor Vyshinsky, and then Yezhov and Stalin himself, asking him to reconsider his case.
No one was going to answer: Glushko became a cog in the system of slave scientific work. With a special meeting at the NKVD, he was convicted for eight years, and until 1940, he worked as part of the design team of the 4 Special Section of the NKVD at the Tushino Aircraft Engine Plant. Here, the scientist led a group that was developing a project for an auxiliary unit with a liquid-jet engine for the C-100 twin-engine fighter. The use of rocket engines in the design of the aircraft significantly increased the speed of its rise. The same rocket launcher was planned to equip and bomber long-range "Steel-7", which would increase its speed when lifting by one third.
Valentin Glushko. Photo from the NKVD archive
The work of the Glushko group, carried out under conditions comparable to the working conditions of serfs at Petrovsky factories, was highly appreciated by the Air Force Technical Committee, and the scientist was even offered a choice: to continue development work, stay in Moscow, move to Leningrad or Kazan to be built aviation engine building plant. "Prisoner Glushko" chose Kazan, because there was more freedom for research. He was even given the right to choose employees. Of course, from among the same “sitters”: having compiled a list of former colleagues whom he was going to give work, Glushko was horrified to find that most of them had already been shot. However, even with a team recruited from those who survived, Glushko during the war managed to complete the development of auxiliary rocket engines for military aircraft. Incidentally, it was precisely at the request of Glushko that the Queen was transferred to Kazan in 1942.
The prison odyssey Glushko became the time when a liquid jet engine took its rightful place in Soviet rocket production. During the war years, Pe-2, Yak-3, Su-7 and La-7 aircraft were equipped with rocket launchers with LRE, thereby increasing their speed to 200 km / h. For his contribution to the development of the USSR military industry, Glushko was "awarded": on August 27 1944, he was released early by the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Council. True, the scientist was rehabilitated only in 1956, after the death of Stalin and the Twentieth Congress. Glushko did not leave his comrades in misfortune: soon after he was released, he handed Stalin a list with the names of the 30 specialists, on whose early release he insisted. When, in 1945, Glushko headed the department of jet engines at the Kazan Aviation Institute, most of the engineers released at his request remained to work with him.
In the composition of the “magnificent six”
After the war, Glushko among the special commission went to Germany to study the German V-2 missiles. The successes of the Germans in the field of rocket technology, as is well known, spurred the development of space programs in the USSR and the USA. Upon the return of the designers from Germany, Glushko joined the "magnificent six" of the founding fathers of the Soviet rocket and space program. He was transferred to the aircraft factory number 456 in Khimki (later, in 1970, on the basis of this enterprise, the famous NPO Energia was created), converted to produce liquid rocket engines. And in September, 1948, the launch of the first rocket R-1, equipped with rocket engine. In 1953, Valentin Petrovich was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1957, the Higher Attestation Commission awarded him the degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences without defending a thesis.
As a member of the informal board of chief designers, Glushko took part in the preparation of all the major Soviet launches: his team developed and improved the engines for the Vostok and Soyuz manned spacecraft, Progress cargo ships. In 1960 – 1970 years he was the initiator of the most ambitious projects for the study and development of other planets. Many of them he hatched from his student days. So, even in the articles published in 1920, Valentin Petrovich talked about an observatory placed on a natural satellite of our planet: “An observatory built on the Moon, during the 354 hour of an hour that replaces the same lasting day, would give a lot of invaluable observations ... What enormous discoveries could give long-term observations and studies, spectral analysis, photometry, photography and other tools for studying the mysteries of the universe of a modern astronomer when conducting consistent studies of our companion. " In 1960, Glushko made (together with Korolev) one of the initiators of the construction of the station on the moon: in the design bureau of academician Barmin they even began to design models of the lunar settlement. Alas, most of the bold ideas proposed by Valentin Petrovich (among them, manned flights to Mars, Venus and the asteroid belt) were not carried out. Nevertheless, some of the ideas presented in his early opus “Problems of exploiting planets” found application in the Soviet cosmonautics: for example, it talked about “observation stations” constantly in orbit — this was the role played by the orbital complexes Salyut and "World", in the development of which Glushko took part. In total, under the leadership of an outstanding designer, more than fifty LREs were used, which were used in 17 models of combat and space rockets.
Shuttle Cosmonautics
In 1972, a program was developed in the United States to develop space "shuttle" that could perform multiple flights into space. The authors of the program were guided by the possibilities of launching with an unprecedented frequency. In the USSR, the problem of the domestic reusable space system was discussed in the same year: at a meeting of designers headed by Glushko, the main issues of building such a system were identified. The main problem, paradoxically, was that our space program could do perfectly well without “shuttles” - launching disposable missiles were more efficient and less costly. However, analytical studies conducted by the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and NPO Energia showed that after the launch of the Space Shuttle program, the United States will have the advantage in terms of delivering a preemptive nuclear strike on the territory of our country. This resolved the matter: in the year 1976, the strictly secret Energy-Buran program was approved. It is estimated that about a million people took part in its development, directly and indirectly. Note that the cost of creating a reusable launch system turned out to be much lower than the American development: 16 billion rubles versus $ 160 billion. For the new launch vehicle, the Glushko team built the most powerful LRE ever created (this honorable “title” engine holds and our days) - RD-170. Its capacity was about 20 million horsepower: this is enough to provide energy to a city with a population of up to a million inhabitants. As a result, the Buran not only did not yield to the shuttle, but surpassed them in a number of technical parameters.
15 November 1988 of the year when the weather was stormy, the first launch took place: having separated from the launch vehicle, the ship “Buran” went into a circular orbit and, having completed two full turns around the planet, landed in automatic mode on the Baikonur runway. Despite the complete success of the project, the first launch of Buran, alas, was the last one: the program fell victim to the destruction of the USSR, in 1992, it froze due to lack of funding. The legendary developer did not live to see the infamous collapse of an outstanding program: he died in 1989, at the age of 80. Five years later, the International Astronomical Union decided to perpetuate the memory of Valentine Glushko, calling his name a crater on the moon - where the Soviet base was supposed to be.
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