What can be said about the space program of the USSR? It lasted a little longer than half a century and was extremely successful. Over its 60-year history, this, first of all, secret military program has been responsible for a number of innovative achievements in space flight, including:
- the first in the world and in history intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7);
- first satellite ("Sputnik-1");
- the first animal in Earth’s orbit (Laika dog on Sputnik-2);
- the first person in space and earth orbit (cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in Vostok-1);
- the first woman in space and earth orbit (cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in Vostok-6);
- the first ever human exit into space (cosmonaut Alexei Leonov at Voskhod-2);
- the first image of the far side of the moon ("Moon-3");
- unmanned soft landing on the moon ("Moon-9");
- the first space rover (Lunokhod-1);
- the first lunar soil sample is automatically extracted and delivered to Earth ("Moon-16");
- The world's first known space station (Salyut-1).
Other notable achievements: the first interplanetary probes Venera-1 and Mars-1, which flew past Venus and Mars. The reader will learn briefly about the space program of the USSR from this article.
German scientists and Tsiolkovsky
The program of the USSR, initially strengthened thanks to the help of captured scientists, collaborators of the advanced German missile program, was based on some unique Soviet and pre-revolutionary theoretical developments, many of which were invented by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He is sometimes called the father of theoretical astronautics.
Contribution Queen
Sergey Korolev was the head of the main project team; his official title sounded like "chief designer" (the standard name for similar posts in the USSR). Unlike its American rival, which NASA had a single coordinating body, the Soviet Union program was divided between several competing bureaus headed by Korolev, Mikhail Yangel, as well as such outstanding but half-forgotten geniuses of their field as Chelomei and Glushko . It was these people who made it possible to send the first man into space in the USSR, this event glorified the country throughout the world.
Failures
Due to the program’s secret status and propaganda value, mission announcements were delayed until success was determined. In the era of the publicity of Mikhail Gorbachev (in the 1980s), many facts about the space program were declassified. Significant failures include the death of Korolev, Vladimir Komarov (as a result of the Soyuz-1 shipwreck) and Yuri Gagarin (during a regular mission on a fighter), as well as failure to develop a giant N-1 rocket designed to power a manned lunar satellite. She exploded shortly after launch on four unmanned trials. The cosmonauts of the USSR in space eventually became true pioneers in this field.
Heritage
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine inherited this program. Russia created the Russian Aerospace Agency, now known as the State Corporation Roscosmos, and Ukraine - the NSAU.
Background
The theory of space exploration had a solid foundation in the Russian Empire (before the First World War) thanks to the works of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), who expressed a number of completely revolutionary ideas in the late XIX and early XX centuries, and in 1929 introduced the concept of a multi-stage rocket. A large role was played by various experiments conducted by members of research groups in the 1920s and 1930s, including such geniuses and desperate pioneers as Sergei Korolev, who dreamed of flying to Mars, and Friedrich Zander. On August 18, 1933, Soviet testers launched the first Soviet Gird-09 liquid fuel rocket, and on November 25, 1933, the first GIRD-X hybrid rocket. In 1940-1941 another breakthrough occurred in the area of ​​jet propulsion systems: the development and mass production of the Katyusha reusable missile launcher.
1930s and World War II
In the 1930s, Soviet missile technology was comparable to German, but Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge seriously damaged its development. Many leading engineers were killed, and Korolev and others were imprisoned in the Gulag. Although Katyusha was very popular on the Eastern Front during WWII, the advanced state of the German missile program struck Soviet engineers, who examined its remains in Peenemuende and Mittelwerk after the end of all battles for Europe. The Americans secretly transported most of the leading German experts and about a hundred V-2 missiles to the United States during Operation Paperclip, but the Soviet program benefited greatly from captured German records and scholars, in particular drawings from V-2 production sites.
After the war
Under the leadership of Dmitry Ustinov, Korolev and others examined the drawings. With the support of the rocket scientist Helmut Grottrup and other captured Germans, until the early 1950s, our scientists created a complete duplicate of the famous German V-2 missile, but under its own name R-1, although the dimensions of Soviet warheads required a more powerful launch vehicle. The work of the Design Bureau OKB-1 Koroleva was devoted to cryogenic liquid fuel rockets, with which he experimented in the late 1930s. As a result of this work, the famous R-7 rocket ("seven") was developed, which was successfully tested in August 1957.
The Soviet space program was tied to the five-year plans of the USSR and from the very beginning depended on the support of the Soviet military. Despite the fact that he was “unanimously driven by the dream of space travel,” Korolev, as a rule, kept this a secret. Then the priority was the development of a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the United States. Many ridiculed the idea of ​​launching satellites and manned spacecraft. In July 1951, animals were first launched into orbit. Two dogs were found alive after reaching a height of 101 km.
This was the next success of the USSR in space. Due to its enormous flight range and large carrying capacity of approximately five tons, the R-7 was not only effective in delivering nuclear warheads, but also an excellent basis for building a spacecraft. The United States statement in July 1955 about its plan to launch the satellite helped the Queen to convince the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to support his plans to surpass the Americans. A plan was approved for launching satellites in Earth orbit ("Sputnik") to gain knowledge about space, as well as the launch of four unmanned Zenit military reconnaissance satellites. Further planned developments required a manned flight into orbit by 1964, as well as an unmanned flight to the moon at an earlier date.
The success of Sputnik and future plans
After the first satellite was successful from a propaganda point of view, the Queen, known publicly only as an anonymous "chief designer of rocket and space systems," was instructed to expedite the Vostok manned spacecraft production program. Still under the influence of Tsiolkovsky, who chose Mars as the most important target for space travel, in the early 1960s, a Russian program led by Korolev developed serious plans for manned flights to Mars (from 1968 to 1970).
Militarism factor
In the West, it was believed that the curator of the USSR space program Khrushchev ordered all missions for propaganda purposes and was in unusually close relations with Korolev and other chief designers. Khrushchev himself actually focused on rockets, not space exploration, so he was not very interested in competing with NASA. The Americans' perceptions of their Soviet colleagues were greatly clouded by ideological hatred and competition. Meanwhile, the history of the space program of the USSR was approaching its stellar era.
Systematic mission plans, conceived for political reasons, were created very rarely. A peculiar exception was the entry into outer space of Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space in the USSR) on Vostok-6 in 1963. Soviet power was more interested in using space technology for military purposes. For example, the government in February 1962 suddenly ordered a mission involving two Vostoks (simultaneously) in orbit launched “in ten days” to break the record for Mercury Atlas-6, launched the same month. The program could not be implemented until August, but space exploration in the USSR continued.
Internal structure
Organized by the USSR, space flights were very successful. After 1958, the Design Bureau OKB-1 Korolev faced increasing competition from Mikhail Yangel, Valentin Glushko and Vladimir Chelomei. Korolev planned to move forward with the Soyuz spacecraft and the N-1 heavy accelerator, which would become the basis of a permanent manned space station and manned exploration of the moon. Nevertheless, Ustinov instructed him to focus on near-Earth missions using the highly reliable Voskhod spacecraft modified by the East, as well as on interplanetary unmanned flights to nearby planets - Venus and Mars. In short, the space program of the USSR went very smoothly.
Yangel was the assistant to Korolev, but with the support of the military in 1954, he was given his own design bureau to work mainly on the military space program. He had a stronger team of rocket engine developers, they were allowed to use hypergolic fuel, but after the Nedelin disaster in 1960, Yangel was instructed to focus on developing ICBMs. He also continued to develop his own designs of a heavy accelerator, similar to the Korolev’s N-1, both for military applications and for space flights during the construction of future space stations.
Glushko was the chief designer of rocket engines, but he had personal friction with Korolev, and he refused to develop the large single-chamber cryogenic engines that Korolev needed to create heavy accelerators.
Chelomei took advantage of the patronage of the USSR space program curator Khrushchev, and in 1960 he was entrusted with the development of a rocket to send a manned spacecraft around the moon and a manned military space station.
Further development
The success of the American shuttle Apollo alarmed the main developers, each of whom advocated their own program. Several projects received government approval, and new proposals jeopardized already approved projects. Due to Korolev’s “special perseverance,” in August 1964, three years after the Americans declared their ambitions loudly, the Soviet Union finally decided to fight for the moon. He set the goal of landing on the moon in 1967 - on the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. At one stage in the 1960s, the Soviet space program actively developed 30 projects for launchers and spacecraft. With the removal from power of Khrushchev in 1964, the Queen was given full control over the space program.
Korolev died in January 1966 after colon surgery, as well as from complications caused by heart disease and severe bleeding. Kerim Karimov oversaw the development of both manned vehicles and drones for the former Soviet Union. One of Kerimov’s greatest achievements was the launch of Mir in 1986.
The OKB-1 leadership was entrusted to Vasily Mishin, who was supposed to send a man to fly around the moon in 1967 and land a man on it in 1968. Mishin lacked the political power of the Korolev, and he still faced competition from other chief designers. Under pressure, Mishin approved the launch of the Soyuz-1 flight in 1967, although the device was not successfully tested in an unmanned flight. The mission started with structural flaws and culminated in the fall of the car to the ground, killing Vladimir Komarov. This was the first death in the history of the space program of the USSR.
Fight for the moon
After this disaster and under increased pressure, Mishin had a problem with alcohol. The number of new achievements of the USSR in space was significantly reduced. The advice was beaten by the Americans when sending the first manned flight around the moon in 1968 with Apollo 8, but Mishin continued to develop the problematic superheavy N-1 in the hope that the Americans would fail, which would provide enough time to make the N-1 "workable and put man on the moon first. There was a successful joint flight of the Soyuz-4 and Soyuz-5 ships, during which the methods of rendezvous, docking and transfer of the crew, which will be used for landing, were tested. LK Lander has been successfully tested in Earth orbit. But after four unmanned tests of the "N-1" failed, the development of the rocket was completed.
Security
The USSR space program hid information about its projects that preceded the success of Sputnik. The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) had the right to announce all the successes of the space program, but only after the successful completion of the missions.
The achievements of the USSR in space exploration have long been unknown to the Soviet people themselves. The secrecy of the Soviet space program served as a means of preventing information leakage outside the state, and to create a mysterious barrier between the space program and the Soviet population. The program was so secret that an ordinary Soviet citizen could imagine only a superficial picture of its history, current activities or future efforts.
Events in the USSR in space encompassed the whole country with enthusiasm. However, due to secrecy, the Soviet space program was faced with a paradox. On the one hand, officials tried to promote the space program, often linking its successes with the power of socialism. On the other hand, the same officials understood the importance of secrecy in the context of the Cold War. This emphasis on secrecy in the USSR can be understood as a measure of protection of its strengths and weaknesses.
Recent projects
In September 1983, the Soyuz rocket, launched to deliver astronauts to the Salyut-7 space station, exploded at the site, as a result of which the Soyuz spacecraft capsule release system worked, saving the crew’s life.
In addition to this, there were several unconfirmed reports of lost astronauts whose deaths were allegedly hidden by the Soviet Union.
The Buran space program has launched the space shuttle of the same name based on the third in the history of the Energia superheavy launch device. "Energy" was to be used as a base for a manned mission to Mars. The Buran was intended to support large space military platforms as a response, first to the US space shuttle, and then to Reagan’s famous space defense program. In 1988, when the system was just beginning to work, strategic arms reduction treaties made Buran unnecessary. On November 15, 1988, the Buran and the Energia rocket were launched from Baikonur, and after three hours and two orbits went to land a few miles from the launch pad. Several vehicles were built, but only one of them made an unmanned test flight into space. As a result, these projects were considered too expensive, and they were curtailed.
The beginning of radical economic transformations in the country worsened the situation of the defense industry. The space program also found itself in a difficult political situation: formerly serving as an indicator of the advantages of the socialist system over the capitalist system, with the advent of publicity, it found its flaws. By the end of 1991, the space program ceased to exist. After the collapse of the USSR, its activities were not resumed either in Russia or in Ukraine.