Academician Glushko Valentin Petrovich - chief designer of missile systems: biography, family, awards, memory

The most important and most famous missiles produced by the Soviet Union came into being with the help of a general designer whose name stands in history along with the most important for the country. This is academician Glushko, who created many dozens of powerful jet engines. Valentin Petrovich, despite many of his hobbies, the main thing in his life was determined as a child.

Start

The future academician Glushko was born in Odessa in 1908, and in 1924 he graduated from the vocational school "Metal" named after Trotsky. At the age of fifteen, he was already in a lively, eight-year-long correspondence with Tsiolkovsky himself, who expelled all his new labors to the boy. This brilliant young man has already far to his age already published articles on the exploration of outer space and enthusiastically wrote a book on the problems of exploitation of the planets. In the twenties of the twentieth century, when the majority of the population did not even see the planes! And in 1925 the young Glushko went to Leningrad to study there at the university, for his knowledge was necessary for the embodiment of all dreams.

It is difficult to study at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics! And the time in the country was difficult - recovery after the monstrous devastation. But the future academician Glushko did not complain about the lack of money, he already unloaded the students in the student body, and did scientific work. Hunger, cold and other hardships on this background worried him a little. And this, of course, has borne fruit: in 1933 Glushko Valentin Petrovich became 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 jet engines, created by a brilliant 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 air torpedoes as aircraft armament, but as a prototype for modern missiles - and for rocket-propelled vehicles. In 1938 the future academician Glushko was already appreciated.

He was hid, condemning "for sabotage," as all leading engineers and designers of the country. Awarded eight years of camps and sent "in sharashka," that is, a closed KB for further development. First, in Tushino, at the aircraft plant No. 82, where Valentin Petrovich developed jet propulsion systems installed on airplanes. Actually, rocket engineering, in its pure form, has not yet been considered as a useful thing, but soon everything changed.

Before the Victory

Glushko Valentin Petrovich was released in 1944. He immediately became the head of an experienced, or rather, a special design bureau in Kazan, where special engines were developed. In 1946 he was among those who in Germany studied German developments in the missile area.

Returning from there with new ideas, Glushko is already working in the reorganized OKB-456 at the aircraft factory in Khimki, where by 1948 the first RD-100 engine for the rocket appeared, and then a huge number of them for a wide variety of flying objects. Glushko Valentin Petrovich, whose biography is wholly associated with jet engines, was then the absolute leader in their creation.

Merit

In 1974, a completely new organization was launched, headed by Academician Glushko, the NGO Energia, which included OKB-456 and OKB-1. The general designer changed the course of the enterprise entrusted to him in a fundamental way. That is why all Russian space, including modern, owes this man almost everyone. It was he who designed the engines of the spaceship Vostok - from the first flight into space to the creation of stations in orbit. Without it, our cosmic achievements would be quite different. Perhaps they would not exist at all.

That is why the monument to Valentin Glushko was erected in Odessa, on a beautiful avenue, also named after this "secret" person. And on the alley of Cosmonauts in Moscow, too, there is such a monument. However, his merits before the fatherland can not 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

Back in OKB-1, with an outstanding designer, there worked wonderful specialists, whom he recruited at the office himself (imagine how much they valued this prisoner who was allowed such). These are legendary people: Umansky, Zheltukhin, List, Vitka, Strakhovitsch, Zhiritsky and many others. In 1942, at the request of Chief Designer Glushko, the most legendary man was already transferred to Kazan, to which the cosmos was subdued.

Glushko Valentin Petrovich and Korolev Sergey Pavlovich together developed the same military equipment, which brought victory to the country. Rocket engines were installed on the Pe-2, and immediately its speed became higher at 180 kilometers per hour. There were trials with Yak-3, La-7, Su-7 fighters. The increase in speed was impressive - up to two hundred kilometers per hour. Thus, the fate of rocket technology changed with the help of a liquid jet engine.

Relations with the authorities

Stalin early "freed" Glushko and withdrew his conviction in 1944. But in the life of the designer, nothing has changed from this decision. He always, regardless of the courts, was a man classified and protected from the rest of his life by a huge wall of creative work that is necessary for the country and which the soul and heart require. But Glushko correctly used this Stalinist gesture. He gave the leader a list of thirty people, who also had to be released early and left for work in the Design Bureau. So it happened. Most of these people linked their destiny with Glushko forever.

And since 1945, in the past, this person, condemned for many years, became the head of the chair at the Kazan Aviation Institute, where he was engaged in jet engines and trained worthy assistants to himself and his design bureau. Even more interesting: yesterday condemned "for sabotage" a year and a half studying missiles in Germany (1945-1947), while on a business trip. The trophies - the German rocket science - the designer, of course, impressed. But the relationship between the authorities and the creative contingent, this incident also told a lot. With Stalin, Glushko had four long face-to-face meetings, where domestic rocket science was discussed. The leader asked questions clever, intelligent, qualified.

Space

In 1953, Glushko was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1957, without the defense of the thesis, VAK awarded him a doctorate. It's time to realize your childhood dreams. Valentin Petrovich developed extensive programs of manned orbital stations, even lunar settlements, with his light arm appeared space shuttles of reusable use. He seriously engaged in the development of Venus and Mars, planned flights to asteroids.

And many of his dreams, carried through a lifetime, were embodied. The launch of the first satellite into the orbit of the planet pushed the country to the rapid development of rocketry. Communication with the Earth began to support the Mir orbital complexes, Salyut through manned Soyuz space vehicles and Progress transport ships, which were developed by Valentin Petrovich Glushko. But much has not come true, until now.

Moon

Glushko directed the development of the lunar station, on which people would always be. The stamp of the work "top secret" did not allow the public to inspire this idea, and therefore, when after the unsuccessful H-1 launches the lunar program was closed, no one was grieving about this, except for the general designer. And even all the great things that happened, could not console him to the end. And it 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 launch vehicle engines launched automatic stations to Mars, Venus and the Moon, they were installed on the manned spacecraft Soyuz and Vostok, and how many artificial satellites of the Moon and Earth were put into orbit with their help!

And the space shuttle Buran, developed under the guidance of Glushko, this spacecraft that easily took on the functions of the aircraft, with the latest thermal protection materials, computer calculations in tens of thousands of drawings, and the engine, the most powerful and today - the RD-170 LPRE, Child Glushko, not inferior, but superior in many ways, even the "Shuttle"! The device is truly impeccable! But ... the apple trees do not blossom on Mars, there are no lunar tracks of our tracks. Valentine Petrovich did not wait. In 1989, he died, and his name was the international union of astronomers called the crater on the visible side of the moon. Perhaps, just the one who at night has attracted this great and active dreamer to himself.

Women

Women are also very fond of Glushko Valentin Petrovich. The family therefore had far not one, despite the "secrecy", a long time in "sharashki" and inhuman employment. The first time he married at nineteen, being a student at Leningrad University. He did not unload the cars, but when he was particularly hungry, he worked a little on repairing the apartments, 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. Valentin was wounded with a firearm. He said that the reason is careless treatment. Then followed the divorce.

There was a new woman, he did not have time to marry - Tamara Sarkisova. However, the daughter of Eugene was born. Arrest of Glushko Tamara was very frightened and renounced all relations. Therefore, when the opportunity appeared, Glushko did not return to it - he did not forgive. In Germany, he had a teacher named Magda, and the children were born - Yuri and Elena. Then there must have been something else for which the story is silent. Glushko was a man extremely interesting and purely externally, and the aura of genius over him shone unbearably. But in 1959, when the designer turned fifty-one, Lydia Naryshkina, a girl of eighteen, worked at his Energomash store in Khimki, with whom he lived the remaining twenty-eight years, raising a beautiful son.