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Soviets in space (6)
Glushko biography - with a twist
Glushko, Valentin Petrovich (1908-1989)
Soviet Chief Designer, responsible for all large liquid propellant engines for missiles and LVs.
Led Glushko bureau, 1946-1974; Headed OKB-52 1974-1989, directing development of Buran launch vehicles, TKS spaceship, RD-270 engine and Salyut / Almaz space stations.
Soviet rocketry pioneer. Chief Designer and General Designer 1946-1976 of OKB-456.
Preeminent Soviet designer of rocket engines for missiles and launch vehicles.
Glushko was born to Ukrainian parents of Cossack and Russian peasant stock. In the spring of 1921, at the age of 15, he began reading the works of Jules Verne. From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon made a particular impression on him.
He began to devour astronomy books, notably those by Flammarion and Klein.
By 1922 the teenager was involved with the local observatory through a youth group and began work on a (modest!) book – ‘Historical Development of the Idea of Interplanetary and Interstellar Travel'.
Glushko next traveled to Leningrad (St. Petersburg, Russia), where he attended Leningrad State University to study mathematics and physics. He left before graduating in April 1929, having found the programs uninteresting.
He soon joined the Gas Dynamics Laboratory to study the design of liquid and electric propellant rocket engines. By 1931, he joined RNII (Reaction Propulsion Scientific Research Institute), which was formed from Korolev's Moscow-based GIRD (Group for Investigation of Reactive Motion).
Glushko was made supervisor for development of liquid rocket engines there.
Glushko’s life might have continued on relatively smoothly but for Stalin, who organized the “Great Terror” in the late 1930s to supposedly fend off the scourge of “Trotskyites” (Trotsky, the ex-War Minister of the USSR and living in exile in Mexico, was once Stalin’s greatest rival before being pushed out of power).
Glushko’s life turned a dark corner on March 23rd, 1938, when Stalin’s secret police (the NKVD) arrested him.
He was afterwards imprisoned in Butyrka Prison, and by the 15th of August 1939 was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag.
It was supposedly during this initial time of imprisonment that Glushko, most likely under duress, denounced Sergei Korolev.
Korolev was arrested on the 22nd of June, 1938, and also sentenced to work in the Gulag. It was his time in the Gulag that ruined his health and was to lead to his premature death in 1966.
Korolev might very well have died in Kolyma's gulag - and God know how different a space race would have unfolded without him
In contrast to Korolev, Glushko had a relatively easier life working on aircraft projects alongside fellow imprisoned engineers and scientists.
By 1941, Glushko, despite still officially being imprisoned, was running his own design bureau in charge of developing liquid rocket engines. It was only in 1944 when he was finally released by a special decree because of the USSR's need of his talents.
He had demonstrated these with his successful development of the RD-1 liquid rocket engine while imprisoned. Glushko and Korolev, whose relationship was to vary from cordial to frictional, were put to work together on designing the RD-1 auxiliary rocket motor. It was tested on a piston-engined fighter meant to protect Moscow from high-altitude Luftwaffe bombing sorties.
He was sent with Korolev, along with many of the USSR’s top rocket scientists and engineers, to Germany in the war’s aftermath to study the German V-2 rocket.
By 1946, Glushko was officially the chief designer of his own bureau (OKB 456), which he would remain as until 1976.
He was to become Russia’s foremost authority of liquid rocket engines while working there. The bureau’s early work included the RD-101 (used on R-2), the RD-110 (on R-3), and the RD-103 (used on R-5).
Glushko and Korolev, despite their frictions, successfully collaborated on the designs of the R-7 (the first ICBM and satellite launcher) and R-9 (an improved 2-stage ICBM), with Glushko’s bureau designing the engines and Korolev’s bureau the rockets.
Variants of the RD-107 engine on the R-7 still power Soyuz rockets today. Glushko’s bureau also produced engines for Mikhael Yangel’s R-12 medium-range ballistic missile, which was one of the rockets sent to Cuba that helped precipitate the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In 1960, Glushko’s bureau began design work on an engine that used propellants that burned on contact (AKA hypergolic propellants). This simplified engine design and would allow the Soviets to launch ICBMs at the US at any time.
Glushko’s bureau was commissioned to deliver the engines for a new mega ICBM, called the UR-500. Wanting more performance, his bureau delivered the RD-253 engine, which was the first in the world to combine the staged combustion cycle with hypergolic propellants.
The UR-500, later to be known as the Proton rocket, was designed to deliver a 100 mt warhead. It was initially unreliable and proved too large as an ICBM, but later would prove itself as the USSR’s heavy launcher.
While working on the Proton’s engines, Glushko’s bureau pressed ahead with a much larger staged combustion hypergolic engine, the RD-270, in 1962.
Korolev and Glushko's relationship came to a low point, according to Korolev's colleagues, when the USSR began looking into building a moon rocket, the N-1.
The preliminary work for the project started in 1959, and it was only formally initiated in 1960.
Its design outline was approved in 1960, and had the USSR begun devoting major resources to it then, they might have gotten to the Moon first.
As it happened, funding for the N-1 and its attempt to go to the Moon did not arrive until 1962, and it was meager compared to the resources spent developing the Saturn V.
According to Korolev's colleagues, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev wanted two things that Glushko refused to deliver for him: sizable kerolox booster engines (though under 600 tonnes-force in thrust) and hydrolox engines for the rocket's Earth Departure Stage.
Countering this claim are official documents from the USSR archives showing no such engines were ever requested of Glushko's bureau by Korolev.
Glushko certainly had made no secret of his dislike of such large kerolox engines, citing the dangers of combustion instability, and also scoffed at hydrogen's suitability as a rocket propellant.
One can almost imagine the gnashing of Korolev’s teeth at Glushko’s anti-hydrogen bias, particularly as the Americans’ were already launching hydrogen-powered upper stages by 1965.
Unsurprisingly Glushko thought Chelomei's hypergolic UR-700 monster a better, quicker, cheaper-to-develop option with more likelihood of success, and his bureau openly developed the engines needed for this rival HLV. Korolev perhaps not too surprisingly decided instead to work with Kuznetsov's bureau, which would have large consequences later on.
Vladimir Chelomei's UR-700, based around Glushko’s massive 1.4 m lbs-force (6.27 MN) RD-270 engine, was a far more compact but potent design than the N-1.
The UR-700 had a height of 76 m, a diameter of 17.6 m, and a gross lift-off mass of 4,823 metric tons, or 10.632 million lbs, and would have topped even the legendary Saturn V in capability.
Designed to be modular and rail-transportable (thanks to its tri-core layout), it was still reportedly projected to be able to launch 151,000 kg to LEO, and some 50,000 kg to lunar orbit.
The UR-700's first stage consisted of six 4.15 m diameter modules in pairs, while the second stage consisted of three 4.15 m modules, and its third stage was made of a core 4.15 m module with three 1.6 m diameter tanks.
Glushko's engine for this monster was to be the ultimate in hypergolic engines, featuring both a full-flow staged combustion cycle and thrust nearly equal to the Americans’ F-1.
Korolev was adamant that the toxic propellants needed to fuel such engines were not appropriate for a manned rocket.
It was only when the N-1 ran into problems in 1965-1967, that the UR-700 project was seriously considered as an alternative.
Unlike with the Saturn V and N-1, the UR-700 was designed to enable a lunar direct ascent mission, which Chelomei felt was safer than Korolev's preferred lunar-orbit rendezvous approach.
So capable was this rocket, thanks to largest single-chamber engine ever developed in the USSR, that Chelomei envisioned creating a lunar expeditionary base with it.
Other possible missions he imagined (and hoped the USSR would fund) for the hypergolic monster rocket were ahead of their time, including an automated Mars complex, Mars soil return, a Jupiter orbiter, Saturn probes, manned flybys of the Sun, Mars, Venus and Mercury, a piloted Mars orbiter, a Mars surface expedition, manned orbital battle stations (for destroying ICBMs and enemy satellites), geosynchronous "civilian" radio jamming satellites, heavy commercial communications satellites, and heavy spacecraft meant for space combat.
Tellingly, Chertok once asked Chelomei what would happen if, God forbid, such a booster exploded on the launch pad. "Wouldn't the entire launch complex be rendered a dead zone for 18 to 20 years?" Chelomei's reply was that it wouldn't explode, since Glushko's engines were reliable and didn't fail. That is amazing faith in an engine manufacturer, but probably too optimistic an assessment of the chances for an explosive failure.
By 1966 Korolev was dead, and his less competent deputy, Vasily Mishin, was put in charge of the USSR’s manned space program. Vasily Mishin oversaw the development of the underfunded N-1, and meanwhile the numerous critics of the UR-700 (including Mishin) managed to convince the Politburo to cut funding of Glushko’s RD-270 engine and the rival UR-700 rocket in 1969.
Their funding was totally cut by 1974.
There were of course many good reasons for doing this, including the danger of such a large hypergolic exploding on the pad and also the needless waste of funding two rival HLVs.
Mishin’s fortunes would soon be crushed by the Americans’ success, the four failures of the N-1 rocket, and the loss of four Soviet Cosmonauts during the initial flights of the Soyuz spaceship.
Following these failures, in 1973 Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev wanted to consolidate the Soviet space program into a single bureau.
With Ustinov help, Glushko was ready to head that bureau.
But Glushko was too ambitious and first set his conditions to Ustinov.
Glushko’s very first act would be to fire Vasily Mishin, and Ustinov had no issue with that.
Things come to halt, however, when Glushko said he would suspend the N-1 program as soon as possible (somewhat ironically Glushko may have been a big part of the reason why the program failed).
There Ustinov disagreed for the simple reason that, since the American had cancelled the shuttle and mothballed a pair of Saturn V, the N-1 remained an adequate answer.
Worse, the N-1 was to launch the MKBS giant space station; and its upper stages could replace both Proton and Soyuz rockets (N-11 and N-111 boosters).
That's how OKB-1 was saved, with Mishin replaced by Boris Chertok.
A furious Glushko was given instead the Chelomei design bureau, OKB-52.
Glushko inherited the Proton rocket he had designed the RD-253 engines a decade earlier.
He also inherited the Almaz small military station.
Meanwhile Chertok OKB-1 dumped Salyut back to OKB-52 to work on the much larger MKBS.
So from 1978 onwards Glushko had the Salyut, Almaz, the latter TKS manned cargo ship, and the huge RD-270 engine.
Although he could not formally kill the N-1 as he wanted, Glushko killed it indirectly.
Indeed Ustinov decided that, while the N-11 and N-111 preserved the N-1 by flying its upper stages, a new first stage was to be build to replace the thirty-NK-33 kludge, although this was given a low priority since NASA didn't build any new Saturn V.
Glushko was thus allowed to resume work on the RD-270, with a condition: that he switched from hypergolics to the more begnin kerolox propellants.
Building from Almaz, Salyut, the TKS and the RD-270 Glushko ran his own space program, although his ambitions were largely cut by lack of funding.
In the 80's most Soviet space funding was channeled into the huge MKBS space station; what little funding was left went to the "Universal rockets" N-11 (that replaced Proton) and N-111 (Soyuz successor).
Glushko died in spring 1989, never ruling entirely the soviet space program as he longued for. Chertok OKB-1resisted until the end of Cold War.
Glushko, Valentin Petrovich (1908-1989)
Soviet Chief Designer, responsible for all large liquid propellant engines for missiles and LVs.
Led Glushko bureau, 1946-1974; Headed OKB-52 1974-1989, directing development of Buran launch vehicles, TKS spaceship, RD-270 engine and Salyut / Almaz space stations.
Soviet rocketry pioneer. Chief Designer and General Designer 1946-1976 of OKB-456.
Preeminent Soviet designer of rocket engines for missiles and launch vehicles.
Glushko was born to Ukrainian parents of Cossack and Russian peasant stock. In the spring of 1921, at the age of 15, he began reading the works of Jules Verne. From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon made a particular impression on him.
He began to devour astronomy books, notably those by Flammarion and Klein.
By 1922 the teenager was involved with the local observatory through a youth group and began work on a (modest!) book – ‘Historical Development of the Idea of Interplanetary and Interstellar Travel'.
Glushko next traveled to Leningrad (St. Petersburg, Russia), where he attended Leningrad State University to study mathematics and physics. He left before graduating in April 1929, having found the programs uninteresting.
He soon joined the Gas Dynamics Laboratory to study the design of liquid and electric propellant rocket engines. By 1931, he joined RNII (Reaction Propulsion Scientific Research Institute), which was formed from Korolev's Moscow-based GIRD (Group for Investigation of Reactive Motion).
Glushko was made supervisor for development of liquid rocket engines there.
Glushko’s life might have continued on relatively smoothly but for Stalin, who organized the “Great Terror” in the late 1930s to supposedly fend off the scourge of “Trotskyites” (Trotsky, the ex-War Minister of the USSR and living in exile in Mexico, was once Stalin’s greatest rival before being pushed out of power).
Glushko’s life turned a dark corner on March 23rd, 1938, when Stalin’s secret police (the NKVD) arrested him.
He was afterwards imprisoned in Butyrka Prison, and by the 15th of August 1939 was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag.
It was supposedly during this initial time of imprisonment that Glushko, most likely under duress, denounced Sergei Korolev.
Korolev was arrested on the 22nd of June, 1938, and also sentenced to work in the Gulag. It was his time in the Gulag that ruined his health and was to lead to his premature death in 1966.
Korolev might very well have died in Kolyma's gulag - and God know how different a space race would have unfolded without him
In contrast to Korolev, Glushko had a relatively easier life working on aircraft projects alongside fellow imprisoned engineers and scientists.
By 1941, Glushko, despite still officially being imprisoned, was running his own design bureau in charge of developing liquid rocket engines. It was only in 1944 when he was finally released by a special decree because of the USSR's need of his talents.
He had demonstrated these with his successful development of the RD-1 liquid rocket engine while imprisoned. Glushko and Korolev, whose relationship was to vary from cordial to frictional, were put to work together on designing the RD-1 auxiliary rocket motor. It was tested on a piston-engined fighter meant to protect Moscow from high-altitude Luftwaffe bombing sorties.
He was sent with Korolev, along with many of the USSR’s top rocket scientists and engineers, to Germany in the war’s aftermath to study the German V-2 rocket.
By 1946, Glushko was officially the chief designer of his own bureau (OKB 456), which he would remain as until 1976.
He was to become Russia’s foremost authority of liquid rocket engines while working there. The bureau’s early work included the RD-101 (used on R-2), the RD-110 (on R-3), and the RD-103 (used on R-5).
Glushko and Korolev, despite their frictions, successfully collaborated on the designs of the R-7 (the first ICBM and satellite launcher) and R-9 (an improved 2-stage ICBM), with Glushko’s bureau designing the engines and Korolev’s bureau the rockets.
Variants of the RD-107 engine on the R-7 still power Soyuz rockets today. Glushko’s bureau also produced engines for Mikhael Yangel’s R-12 medium-range ballistic missile, which was one of the rockets sent to Cuba that helped precipitate the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In 1960, Glushko’s bureau began design work on an engine that used propellants that burned on contact (AKA hypergolic propellants). This simplified engine design and would allow the Soviets to launch ICBMs at the US at any time.
Glushko’s bureau was commissioned to deliver the engines for a new mega ICBM, called the UR-500. Wanting more performance, his bureau delivered the RD-253 engine, which was the first in the world to combine the staged combustion cycle with hypergolic propellants.
The UR-500, later to be known as the Proton rocket, was designed to deliver a 100 mt warhead. It was initially unreliable and proved too large as an ICBM, but later would prove itself as the USSR’s heavy launcher.
While working on the Proton’s engines, Glushko’s bureau pressed ahead with a much larger staged combustion hypergolic engine, the RD-270, in 1962.
Korolev and Glushko's relationship came to a low point, according to Korolev's colleagues, when the USSR began looking into building a moon rocket, the N-1.
The preliminary work for the project started in 1959, and it was only formally initiated in 1960.
Its design outline was approved in 1960, and had the USSR begun devoting major resources to it then, they might have gotten to the Moon first.
As it happened, funding for the N-1 and its attempt to go to the Moon did not arrive until 1962, and it was meager compared to the resources spent developing the Saturn V.
According to Korolev's colleagues, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev wanted two things that Glushko refused to deliver for him: sizable kerolox booster engines (though under 600 tonnes-force in thrust) and hydrolox engines for the rocket's Earth Departure Stage.
Countering this claim are official documents from the USSR archives showing no such engines were ever requested of Glushko's bureau by Korolev.
Glushko certainly had made no secret of his dislike of such large kerolox engines, citing the dangers of combustion instability, and also scoffed at hydrogen's suitability as a rocket propellant.
One can almost imagine the gnashing of Korolev’s teeth at Glushko’s anti-hydrogen bias, particularly as the Americans’ were already launching hydrogen-powered upper stages by 1965.
Unsurprisingly Glushko thought Chelomei's hypergolic UR-700 monster a better, quicker, cheaper-to-develop option with more likelihood of success, and his bureau openly developed the engines needed for this rival HLV. Korolev perhaps not too surprisingly decided instead to work with Kuznetsov's bureau, which would have large consequences later on.
Vladimir Chelomei's UR-700, based around Glushko’s massive 1.4 m lbs-force (6.27 MN) RD-270 engine, was a far more compact but potent design than the N-1.
The UR-700 had a height of 76 m, a diameter of 17.6 m, and a gross lift-off mass of 4,823 metric tons, or 10.632 million lbs, and would have topped even the legendary Saturn V in capability.
Designed to be modular and rail-transportable (thanks to its tri-core layout), it was still reportedly projected to be able to launch 151,000 kg to LEO, and some 50,000 kg to lunar orbit.
The UR-700's first stage consisted of six 4.15 m diameter modules in pairs, while the second stage consisted of three 4.15 m modules, and its third stage was made of a core 4.15 m module with three 1.6 m diameter tanks.
Glushko's engine for this monster was to be the ultimate in hypergolic engines, featuring both a full-flow staged combustion cycle and thrust nearly equal to the Americans’ F-1.
Korolev was adamant that the toxic propellants needed to fuel such engines were not appropriate for a manned rocket.
It was only when the N-1 ran into problems in 1965-1967, that the UR-700 project was seriously considered as an alternative.
Unlike with the Saturn V and N-1, the UR-700 was designed to enable a lunar direct ascent mission, which Chelomei felt was safer than Korolev's preferred lunar-orbit rendezvous approach.
So capable was this rocket, thanks to largest single-chamber engine ever developed in the USSR, that Chelomei envisioned creating a lunar expeditionary base with it.
Other possible missions he imagined (and hoped the USSR would fund) for the hypergolic monster rocket were ahead of their time, including an automated Mars complex, Mars soil return, a Jupiter orbiter, Saturn probes, manned flybys of the Sun, Mars, Venus and Mercury, a piloted Mars orbiter, a Mars surface expedition, manned orbital battle stations (for destroying ICBMs and enemy satellites), geosynchronous "civilian" radio jamming satellites, heavy commercial communications satellites, and heavy spacecraft meant for space combat.
Tellingly, Chertok once asked Chelomei what would happen if, God forbid, such a booster exploded on the launch pad. "Wouldn't the entire launch complex be rendered a dead zone for 18 to 20 years?" Chelomei's reply was that it wouldn't explode, since Glushko's engines were reliable and didn't fail. That is amazing faith in an engine manufacturer, but probably too optimistic an assessment of the chances for an explosive failure.
By 1966 Korolev was dead, and his less competent deputy, Vasily Mishin, was put in charge of the USSR’s manned space program. Vasily Mishin oversaw the development of the underfunded N-1, and meanwhile the numerous critics of the UR-700 (including Mishin) managed to convince the Politburo to cut funding of Glushko’s RD-270 engine and the rival UR-700 rocket in 1969.
Their funding was totally cut by 1974.
There were of course many good reasons for doing this, including the danger of such a large hypergolic exploding on the pad and also the needless waste of funding two rival HLVs.
Mishin’s fortunes would soon be crushed by the Americans’ success, the four failures of the N-1 rocket, and the loss of four Soviet Cosmonauts during the initial flights of the Soyuz spaceship.
Following these failures, in 1973 Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev wanted to consolidate the Soviet space program into a single bureau.
With Ustinov help, Glushko was ready to head that bureau.
But Glushko was too ambitious and first set his conditions to Ustinov.
Glushko’s very first act would be to fire Vasily Mishin, and Ustinov had no issue with that.
Things come to halt, however, when Glushko said he would suspend the N-1 program as soon as possible (somewhat ironically Glushko may have been a big part of the reason why the program failed).
There Ustinov disagreed for the simple reason that, since the American had cancelled the shuttle and mothballed a pair of Saturn V, the N-1 remained an adequate answer.
Worse, the N-1 was to launch the MKBS giant space station; and its upper stages could replace both Proton and Soyuz rockets (N-11 and N-111 boosters).
That's how OKB-1 was saved, with Mishin replaced by Boris Chertok.
A furious Glushko was given instead the Chelomei design bureau, OKB-52.
Glushko inherited the Proton rocket he had designed the RD-253 engines a decade earlier.
He also inherited the Almaz small military station.
Meanwhile Chertok OKB-1 dumped Salyut back to OKB-52 to work on the much larger MKBS.
So from 1978 onwards Glushko had the Salyut, Almaz, the latter TKS manned cargo ship, and the huge RD-270 engine.
Although he could not formally kill the N-1 as he wanted, Glushko killed it indirectly.
Indeed Ustinov decided that, while the N-11 and N-111 preserved the N-1 by flying its upper stages, a new first stage was to be build to replace the thirty-NK-33 kludge, although this was given a low priority since NASA didn't build any new Saturn V.
Glushko was thus allowed to resume work on the RD-270, with a condition: that he switched from hypergolics to the more begnin kerolox propellants.
Building from Almaz, Salyut, the TKS and the RD-270 Glushko ran his own space program, although his ambitions were largely cut by lack of funding.
In the 80's most Soviet space funding was channeled into the huge MKBS space station; what little funding was left went to the "Universal rockets" N-11 (that replaced Proton) and N-111 (Soyuz successor).
Glushko died in spring 1989, never ruling entirely the soviet space program as he longued for. Chertok OKB-1resisted until the end of Cold War.
- Archibald
- Word Count: 2.1k