The most important and most famous missiles produced by the Soviet Union came to life with the help of the general designer, whose name is in history along with the most important for the country. This is academician Glushko, who created many dozens of the most powerful jet engines. Valentin Petrovich, despite his many hobbies, he determined the most important thing in his life in his childhood.
Start
The future academician Glushko was born in Odessa in 1908, and in 1924 he graduated from the Trotsky Metal vocational school. At fifteen, he was already in a lively, eight-year-long correspondence with Tsiolkovsky himself, who sent the boy all his new works. This ingenious young man, far from his age of majority, had already published articles on space exploration and enthusiastically wrote a book about the problems of planetary exploitation. In the twenties of the twentieth century, when the bulk of the population did not see airplanes either! And in 1925, the young Glushko went to Leningrad to study there at the university, because he needed knowledge to realize all his dreams.
Studying at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics is difficult! And the time in the country was difficult - recovering from a monstrous devastation. But the future academician Glushko did not complain about lack of money, he was not unloading wagons as a student, but he was engaged in scientific work. Hunger, cold and other deprivations against this background worried him little. And this, of course, paid off: already in 1933, Glushko Valentin Petrovich became the head of the department of the rocket research institute, and three years later - the chief designer of jet engines.
Away from prying eyes
Since 1933, liquid-propellant jet engines created by an ingenious designer have grown in number of modifications. At the same time, the famous OPM-65 engine was born, which was planned to be installed on aero-torpedoes as an aircraft weapon, and as a prototype of modern missiles, for rocket-planes. In 1938, the future academician Glushko was already appreciated.
They hid him, condemning "for wrecking," as all the leading engineers and designers of the country. We were sentenced to eight years in the camps and sent to "sharashka", that is, a closed design bureau for further development. First, in Tushino, at aircraft factory No. 82, where Valentin Petrovich developed jet installations that were installed on aircraft. Actually rocket science, in its pure form, has not yet been considered a useful thing, but soon everything changed.
Before the Victory
Glushko Valentin Petrovich was released in 1944. He immediately stood at the head of an experienced, or, better, a special design bureau in Kazan, where special engines were developed. In 1946, he was among those who studied German rocket science in Germany.
Having returned from there with new ideas, Glushko is already working in the converted OKB-456 at the Khimki aircraft plant, where by 1948 the first RD-100 engine for a rocket appeared, and then a huge number of them for a wide variety of flying objects. Glushko Valentin Petrovich, whose biography is completely and completely connected with jet engines, just then became the undisputed leader in their creation.
Merits
In 1974, a completely new organization began, headed by Academician Glushko, the NPO Energia, which included OKB-456 and OKB-1. The general designer changed the course of the enterprise entrusted to him radically. That is why all Russian cosmonautics, including modern, owes to this person almost everything. It was he who designed the engines of the Vostok spacecraft - from the first flight into space to the creation of stations in orbit. Without it, our cosmic achievements would be completely different. Perhaps they would not exist at all.
That is why a monument to Valentin Glushko was erected in Odessa, on a beautiful avenue, also named after this "secret" person. And on the Cosmonauts Alley in Moscow there is also such a monument. However, his merits to the fatherland cannot be overestimated. Valentin Petrovich Glushko - Hero of Socialist Labor (twice), he has five Orders of Lenin, as well as the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and the October Revolution, many medals. He is a laureate of the Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR.
Korolev
Even in OKB-1, remarkable specialists worked with an outstanding designer, whom he recruited in the bureau on his own (imagine how much this prisoner was appreciated, who was allowed this). These are legendary people: Umansky, Zheltukhin, Liszt, Vitka, Strakhovich, Zhiritsky and many others. In 1942, at the request of the chief designer Glushko, the most legendary man who had conquered space was already transferred to Kazan.
Glushko Valentin Petrovich and Korolev Sergey Pavlovich together developed the very military equipment that brought victory to the country. Missile engines were installed on the Pe-2, and immediately its speed became higher by 180 kilometers per hour. Tests were conducted with fighters Yak-3, La-7, Su-7. The speed increase was impressive - up to two hundred kilometers per hour. Thus, with the help of a liquid jet engine, the very fate of rocket technology changed.
Relations with the authorities
Stalin ahead of schedule “freed” Glushko and withdrew his criminal record in 1944. But in the life of the designer, practically nothing has changed from this decision. He always, regardless of the courts, was a secret person and protected from the rest of his life by the huge wall of creative work that the country needs and which the soul and heart require. But Glushko correctly used this Stalinist gesture. He handed the leader a list of thirty people who also needed to be released ahead of schedule and left to work in the design bureau. And so it happened. Most of these people linked their destiny with Glushko forever.
And since 1945, this man, who had been sentenced for many years, began to head the department at the Kazan Aviation Institute, where he was engaged in jet engines and trained worthy assistants for himself and his design bureau. Even more interesting: yesterday, a convict "for sabotage" spent a year and a half studying rockets in Germany (1945-1947), while on a business trip. Trophies - German rocket science - the designer, of course, impressed. But this incident also told a lot about the relationship between the authorities and the creative contingent. Glushko had four lengthy personal meetings with Stalin, where Russian rocket science was discussed. The leader asked questions smart, sensible, qualified.
Space
In 1953, Glushko was elected to the Academy of Sciences as a corresponding member, and in 1957, without defending a dissertation, the Higher Attestation Commission awarded him a doctorate. The time has come for the realization of their childhood dreams. Valentin Petrovich developed extensive programs for manned orbital stations, even lunar settlements, with his light arm reusable spaceships appeared. He seriously dealt with the development of Venus and Mars, planned flights to asteroids.
And many of his dreams, carried through his whole life, have come true. The launch of the first satellite into orbit of the planet pushed the country to the rapid development of rocket science. Communication with the Earth began to support the Mir, Salute orbital complexes through the Soyuz manned spacecraft and the Progress transport spacecraft, which were developed by Valentin Petrovich Glushko. But much has not come true, so far.
Moon
Glushko led the development of the lunar station, on which people would constantly be. The signature stamp of the “top secret” work did not allow the public to inspire this idea, and therefore, when the lunar program was closed after unsuccessful launches of the N-1, no one grieved for this except the general designer. And even all the great things that happened could not comfort him to the end. What happened? More than fifty modifications of liquid engines, which are now used on seventeen models of space and military missiles. It was under his leadership that the created launch vehicle engines launched automatic stations to Mars, Venus and the Moon, they were also installed on the Soyuz and Vostok manned spacecraft, and how many artificial satellites of the Moon and Earth were put into orbit with their help!
And the Buran spacecraft, developed under the direction of Glushko, is a spacecraft that easily took on the functions of an airplane, with the latest heat-shielding materials, with computer calculations of tens of thousands of drawings, and with the engine, the most powerful today - RD-170 LRE, the brainchild of Glushko, not inferior, but superior in many respects even to the Shuttle! The device is truly impeccable! But ... apple trees do not bloom on Mars, there are no traces of ours on the lunar paths. Valentin Petrovich did not wait. He died in 1989, and the crater on the visible side of the moon was named after him by the International Union of Astronomers. Maybe it’s just the one who got this great and active dreamer to himself at night.
Women
Glushko Valentin Petrovich also loved women very much. Therefore, his family was far from alone, in spite of his "secrecy", his long imprisonment in "sharashka" and his inhuman employment. The first time he married at the age of nineteen, being a student at Leningrad University. He did not unload the wagons, but when he was especially hungry, he worked a little bit by apartment renovation, where the former Odessa girl Susanna Georgievskaya, the future writer, was discovered. What happened between the spouses, why they divorced, remained a mystery. But the circumstances are amazing. Valentine was shot with a gun. He said that the reason was careless handling. Then followed a divorce.
A new woman appeared, whom he did not have time to marry - Tamara Sarkisova. However, the daughter of Eugene managed to be born. The arrest of Glushko Tamara was very frightened and renounced all relations. Therefore, when the opportunity arose, Glushko did not return to her - he did not forgive. In Germany, he had a teacher, whose name was Magda, and children were born - Yuri and Elena. Then there must have been something else that history is silent about. Glushko the man was extremely interesting and purely outwardly, and the halo of genius above him shone unbearably. But in 1959, when the designer turned fifty-one, Lidia Naryshkina, a girl of eighteen years old, who worked in his Design Bureau Energomash in Khimki, with whom he lived the remaining twenty-eight years, raising a beautiful son, appeared in his life.