What can you say about the space program of the USSR? It lasted a little more than half a century and was extremely successful. Over its 60-year history, this primarily classified military program has been responsible for a number of groundbreaking achievements in spaceflight, including:
- the world's first and in history intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7);
- first satellite ("Satellite-1");
- the first animal in Earth's orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik-2);
- the first man in space and earth orbit (cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok-1");
- the first woman in space and earth orbit (cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok-6);
- the first human spacewalk in history (cosmonaut Alexei Leonov on Voskhod-2);
- first image of the far side of the Moon ("Luna-3");
- unmanned soft landing on the Moon ("Luna-9");
- the first space rover ("Lunokhod-1");
- first sample of lunar soil is automatically extracted and delivered to Earth("Luna-16");
- the world's first known space station ("Salyut-1").
Other notable achievements: the first interplanetary probes Venera 1 and Mars 1 to fly past Venus and Mars. The reader will learn briefly about the space program of the USSR from this article.
German scientists and Tsiolkovsky
The USSR program, initially enhanced by the help of captured scientists from 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.
Queen Contribution
Sergey Korolev was the head of the main project team; his official title sounded like "chief designer" (the standard title for similar positions in the USSR). Unlike its American rival, which had NASA as a single coordinating body, the Soviet Union's program was divided among several competing bureaus headed by Korolev, Mikhail Yangel, and such prominent but half-forgotten geniuses as Chelomey and Glushko.. It was these people who made it possible to send the first man into space to the USSR, this event glorified the country throughout the world.
Failures
Due to the program's secret status and propaganda value, announcements of mission results were delayed until successhas been defined. During the glasnost era of Mikhail Gorbachev (in the 1980s), many facts about the space program were declassified. Significant failures include the deaths of Korolev, Vladimir Komarov (in the crash of the Soyuz-1 spacecraft) and Yuri Gagarin (during a routine fighter mission), as well as the failure to develop the giant N-1 rocket designed to power a manned lunar satellite. She exploded shortly after launch on four unmanned tests. As a result, the USSR cosmonauts in space became real pioneers in this field.
Legacy
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine inherited this program. Russia created the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, now known as the State Corporation Roscosmos, and Ukraine created the NSAU.
Background
The theory of space exploration had a solid foundation in the Russian Empire (before the First World War) thanks to the writings 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 carried out by members of research groups in the 1920s and 1930s, among which were 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 liquid-fueled rocket, Gird-09, and on November 25, 1933, the first hybrid rocket, GIRD-X. In 1940-1941gg. there was another breakthrough in the field of jet power plants: the development and mass production of the Katyusha reusable rocket launcher.
1930s and World War II
In the 1930s, Soviet rocket technology was comparable to that of Germany, but Josef Stalin's "Great Purge" seriously harmed its development. Many leading engineers were killed, and Korolev and others were imprisoned in the Gulag. Although the Katyusha was in great demand on the Eastern Front during WWII, the advanced state of the German missile program astounded Soviet engineers, who inspected the remnants of it at Peenemünde and Mittelwerk after all the battles for Europe were over. The Americans smuggled most of the leading German specialists and about a hundred V-2 missiles to the United States in Operation Paperclip, but the Soviet program benefited greatly from captured German records and scientists, in particular blueprints obtained from V-2 production sites.
After the war
Under the direction of Dmitry Ustinov, Korolev and others examined the drawings. With the support of rocket scientist Helmut Grottrup and other captured Germans, until the early 1950s, our scientists created a complete duplicate of the famous German V-2 rocket, but under its own name R-1, although the dimensions of Soviet warheads required a more powerful launch vehicle. The work of Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau was devoted to liquid-fuel cryogenic rockets, which he experimented with in the late 1930s. As a result of this work, athe famous rocket "R-7" ("seven"), 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. Although he was "unanimously driven by the dream of space travel," Korolev generally kept it 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 launched into orbit for the first time. Two dogs were found alive after reaching a height of 101 km.
This was another success of the USSR in space. With its enormous range and heavy payload of approximately five tons, the R-7 was not only effective at delivering nuclear warheads, but also an excellent basis for spacecraft. The announcement by the United States in July 1955 of its plan to launch Sputnik greatly helped Korolev convince Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to support his plans to outdo the Americans. A plan was approved to launch satellites in low-Earth orbit ("Sputnik") to gain knowledge about space, as well as the launch of four unmanned military reconnaissance satellites "Zenith". Further planned developments called for a manned flight to orbit by 1964, as well as an unmanned flight to the Moon earlier.
The success of Sputnik and beyondplans
After the first satellite proved successful from a propaganda point of view, Korolev, known publicly only as the anonymous "chief designer of rocket and space systems", was tasked with accelerating the manned production program of the Vostok spacecraft. Still under the influence of Tsiolkovsky, who had chosen Mars as the most important destination for space travel, in the early 1960s the Russian program led by Korolev developed serious plans for manned missions to Mars (from 1968 to 1970).
Militarist Factor
The West believed that Khrushchev, the curator of the USSR space program, ordered all the missions for propaganda purposes and was in unusually close relations with Korolev and other chief designers. Khrushchev himself actually emphasized rockets rather than space exploration, so he wasn't very interested in competing with NASA. Americans' perceptions of their Soviet counterparts were heavily clouded by ideological hatred and competitive struggle. Meanwhile, the history of the USSR space program was approaching its stellar era.
Systematic plans for politically motivated missions were very rare. A peculiar exception was the spacewalk of Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space in the USSR) on Vostok-6 in 1963. The Soviet government was more interested in using space technology for military purposes. For example, in February 1962 the government abruptly ordered a mission involvingtwo Vostoks (simultaneously) in orbit, launched "in ten days" to break the record of Mercury-Atlas-6 launched in the same month. The program could not be implemented until August, but space exploration continued in the USSR.
Internal structure
The space flights organized by the USSR were very successful. After 1958, Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau faced increasing competition from Mikhail Yangel, Valentin Glushko, and Vladimir Chelomey. Korolev planned to move forward with the Soyuz spacecraft and the N-1 heavy booster, which would form the basis of a permanent manned space station and manned lunar exploration. Nevertheless, Ustinov instructed him to focus on near-Earth missions using the highly reliable Voskhod spacecraft, a modified Vostok, as well as interplanetary unmanned missions to the nearby planets Venus and Mars. In short, the USSR's space program was running very smoothly.
Yangel was an 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 propellants, but after the Nedelin disaster in 1960, Yangel was assigned to focus on the development of ICBMs. He also continued to develop his own heavy booster designs, similar to"H-1" Queen, both for military applications and for cargo flights into space during the construction of future space stations.
Glushko was the chief rocket engine designer, but he had personal friction with Korolev and refused to develop the large single-chamber cryogenic engines that Korolev needed to build heavy boosters.
Chelomey took advantage of the patronage of the curator of the Soviet space program 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 US shuttle Apollo alarmed the main developers, each of whom advocated their own program. Several projects have been approved by the authorities, and new proposals have jeopardized already approved projects. Due to Korolev's "special perseverance," in August 1964, three years after the Americans had loudly declared their ambitions, 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, back in the 1960s, the Soviet space program was actively developing 30 projects for launchers and spacecraft. With the removal of Khrushchev from power in 1964, Korolev was given complete control over the space program.
Korolev died in January 1966 after an operation on the colon, as well as from complications caused by diseasesheart and heavy bleeding. Kerim Kerimov 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 leadership of OKB-1 was entrusted to Vasily Mishin, who was supposed to send a man flying around the moon in 1967 and land a man on it in 1968. Mishin lacked Korolev's political power and still faced competition from other chief designers. Under pressure, Mishin approved the launch of Soyuz 1 in 1967, although the craft was never successfully tested in unmanned flight. The mission started with design flaws and ended with the car crashing to the ground, killing Vladimir Komarov. It was the first death in the history of the USSR space program.
Fight for the Moon
After this disaster and under increased pressure, Mishin developed a problem with alcohol. The number of new achievements of the USSR in space has significantly decreased. The Soviets were beaten by the Americans when they sent the first manned flight around the moon in 1968 with Apollo 8, but Mishin continued to develop the problematic super-heavy N-1 in the hope that the Americans would fail, which would provide enough time to make the N-1 "capable and land a man on the moon first. There was a successful joint flight between Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5, during which the rendezvous, docking and crew transfer methods to be used for landing were tested. LK Lander has been successfully tested in Earth orbit. But after four unmanned tests of the "N-1" ended in failure, the development of the missile was completed.
Secrecy
The USSR space program concealed 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 were unknown to the Soviet people for a long time. The secrecy of the Soviet space program served both as a means of preventing the leakage of information outside the state, and to create a mysterious barrier between the space program and the Soviet population. The program was so secret that the average Soviet citizen could only get a glimpse of its history, current activities, or future efforts.
Events in the USSR in space covered the entire country with enthusiasm. However, due to secrecy, the Soviet space program faced a paradox. On the one hand, officials tried to push the space program forward, often tying its successes to the strength 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 to protect its strengths and weaknesses.
Latest projects
In September 1983, the Soyuz rocket, launched to deliver astronauts to spacestation "Salyut-7", exploded on the site, as a result of which the system for dropping the capsule of the Soyuz spacecraft worked, saving the lives of the crew.
In addition to this, there have been several unconfirmed reports of lost cosmonauts whose deaths were allegedly covered up by the Soviet Union.
The Buran space program has released the space shuttle of the same name based on the Energiya, the third super-heavy launcher in history. Energia was to be used as a base for a manned mission to Mars. Buran was intended to support large space military platforms as a response first to the US space shuttle and then to the famous Reagan space defense program. In 1988, when the system was just starting to work, strategic arms reduction treaties made the Buran unnecessary. On November 15, 1988, the Buran and the Energia rocket were launched from Baikonur, and after three hours and two orbits, they landed a few miles from the launch pad. Several machines 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 position of the defense industry. The space program also found itself in a difficult political situation: having previously served as an indicator of the advantage of the socialist system over the capitalist one, with the advent of glasnost, it revealed its shortcomings. By the end of 1991the space program has ceased to exist. After the collapse of the USSR, its activities were not resumed either in Russia or in Ukraine.
