The most important and most famous missiles produced by the Soviet Union came into life with the help of the general designer, whose name stands 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, determined the main thing in his life as a child.
Start
The future academician Glushko was born in Odessa in 1908, and in 1924 he graduated from the Metal vocational school named after Trotsky. At the age of fifteen, he was already in a lively, eight-year-long correspondence with Tsiolkovsky himself, who sent the boy all his new works. This brilliant young man, still far from his age, 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 main part of the population did not even see airplanes! And in 1925, young Glushko went to Leningrad to study there at the university, for knowledge to himwere necessary to make all dreams come true.
It is difficult to study at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics! Yes, 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 did not unload wagons as a student, but was engaged in scientific work. Hunger, cold and other hardships against this background worried him a little. And this, of course, bore fruit: 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
Starting from 1933, liquid-propellant jet engines, created by a brilliant designer, have grown in the number of modifications. At the same time, the famous OPM-65 engine was born, which was planned to be installed on air torpedoes as weapons for aircraft, and as a prototype of modern missiles - for rocket planes. In 1938, the future academician Glushko was already appreciated.
He was hidden, condemned "for sabotage", like all the leading engineers and designers of the country. They were sentenced to eight years in the camps and sent "to a sharashka", that is, a closed design bureau for further development. First, in Tushino, at the aircraft plant No. 82, where Valentin Petrovich developed rocket launchers installed on aircraft. Actually, rocket science, in its purest form, was not yet seen as useful, 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 developments in the rocket field in Germany.
Having returned from there with new ideas, Glushko is already working in the transformed OKB-456 at the aircraft factory in Khimki, 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 entirely connected with jet engines, it was then that he became the undisputed leader in their creation.
Merit
In 1974, a completely new organization began its work, headed by Academician Glushko - 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 the entire Russian cosmonautics, including the modern one, owes almost everything to this man. 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 space achievements would be very different. Perhaps they wouldn't 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 alley of Cosmonauts in Moscow there is also onemonument. However, his services 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, and many medals. He is a laureate of the Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR.
Korolev
Even in OKB-1, wonderful specialists worked with the outstanding designer, whom he recruited into the bureau on his own (imagine how much they appreciated this prisoner, who was allowed to do this). These are legendary people: Umansky, Zheltukhin, List, Vitka, Strahovich, Zhiritsky and many others. In 1942, at the request of the chief designer Glushko, the most legendary man who conquered space was already transferred to Kazan.
Glushko Valentin Petrovich and Korolev Sergei Pavlovich together developed the very military equipment that brought victory to the country. Rocket engines were installed on the Pe-2, and immediately its speed became 180 kilometers per hour higher. There were tests with Yak-3, La-7, Su-7 fighters. The speed increase was impressive - up to two hundred kilometers per hour. Thus, with the help of a liquid-propellant jet engine, the very fate of rocket technology has changed.
Relationships with authorities
Stalin "released" Glushko ahead of schedule and removed his criminal record in 1944. But in the life of a designer, practically nothing has changed from this decision. He always, regardless of the courts, was a secret andprotected from the rest of life by a huge wall of creative work, which is necessary for the country and which is demanded by the soul and heart. But Glushko correctly used this Stalinist gesture. He gave 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 tied their fate with Glushko forever.
And since 1945, this man, who had been convicted for many years in the past, became the head of the department at the Kazan Aviation Institute, where he worked on jet engines and prepared worthy assistants for himself and his Design Bureau. Even more interesting: yesterday's convict "for wrecking" has been studying rockets in Germany for a year and a half (1945-1947), while on a business trip. Trophies - German rocket science - the designer, of course, impressed. But this case also told a lot about the relationship between the authorities and the creative contingent. Glushko had four lengthy personal meetings with Stalin, where domestic rocket science was discussed. The leader asked smart, intelligent, qualified questions.
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 doctoral degree. It's time to make your childhood dreams come true. Valentin Petrovich developed extensive programs of manned orbital stations, even lunar settlements, reusable spacecraft appeared with his light hand. He was seriously involved in the exploration of Venus and Mars,planned flights to asteroids.
And many of his lifetime dreams came true. The launch of the first satellite into the orbit of the planet pushed the country to the rapid development of rocket science. Communication with the Earth began to be supported by the orbital complexes "Mir", "Salyut" by means of manned spacecraft "Soyuz" and transport vehicles "Progress", which were developed by Valentin Petrovich Glushko. But much has not come true, so far.
Moon
Glushko led the development of a lunar station that would have people on it all the time. The “top secret” stamp of work did not allow the public to be inspired by this idea, and therefore, when the lunar program was closed after the unsuccessful launches of N-1, no one grieved about it, except for the general designer. And even all that great thing that happened could not console him to the end. Has it happened? More than fifty modifications of liquid engines, which are now used on seventeen models of space and combat 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 leadership of Glushko, this spacecraft, which easily took on the functions of an aircraft, with the latest heat-shielding materials, with computer calculations intens of thousands of drawings, and with an engine, the most powerful even today - the RD-170 rocket engine, the brainchild of Glushko, not inferior, but superior in many respects even to the Shuttle! The device is truly flawless! But … apple trees do not bloom on Mars, there are no traces of us on the lunar paths. Valentin Petrovich did not wait. In 1989, he died, and the International Union of Astronomers named a crater on the visible side of the Moon after him. Maybe just the one that attracted this great and active dreamer to him at night.
Women
Women were also very fond of Glushko Valentin Petrovich. Therefore, his family was far from alone, despite the "secrecy", a long term in "sharashka" and 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 earned a little money repairing apartments, where the former Odessa girl Susanna Georgievskaya, the future writer, was found. What happened between the spouses, why they divorced, remained a mystery. But the circumstances are amazing. Valentine was wounded by a firearm. He said that the reason was careless handling. This was followed by 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 relationships. Therefore, when the opportunity arose, Glushko did not return to her - he did not forgive. In Germany, he got a teacher, whose name was Magda, andchildren were born - Yuri and Elena. Then there must have been something else that history is silent about. Glushko was an extremely interesting and purely outward man, and the halo of genius shone unbearably over him. But in 1959, when the designer turned fifty-one, Lidia Naryshkina appeared in his life, an eighteen-year-old girl who worked in his Energomash Design Bureau in Khimki, with whom he lived the remaining twenty-eight years, raising a wonderful son.
