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Valentin Glushko

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Valentin Petrovich Glushko (born September 2, 1908 in Odessa, Ukraine, died January 10, 1989) was a Russian engineer and rocketry pioneer.

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Biography

His father was Ukranian and his mother worked as a nurse. At the age of 13 he became interested in aeronautics after reading novels by Jules Verne. He is known to have written a letter to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1923. He studied at an Odessa trade school, where he learned to be a sheet metal worker. After graduation he apprenticed at a hydrolics fitting plant. He was first trained as a fitter, then moved to lathe operator.

During his time in Odessa, Glushko performed experiments with explosives. These were recovered from unexploded artillery shells that had been left behind by the White Guards during their retreat. From 1924-25 he wrote articles concerning the exploration of the Moon, as well as the use of Tsiolokovsky's proposed engines for space flight.

He attended Leningrad State University where he studied physics and mathematics, but found the specialty programs were not to his interest. He reportedly left without graduating in April, 1929. From 1929-1930 he pursued rocket research at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory. A new research section was apparently set up for the study of liquid-propellant and electric engines. He became a member of the G.I.R.D. (Group for the study of Rocket Propulsion Systems), founded in Leningrad in 1931.

On March 23, 1938 he became caught up in Stalin's Great Terror and was rounded up by the NKVD, to be placed in the Butyrka prison. By August 15, 1939 he was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag. Despite his supposed imprisonment, however, Glushko was put to work on various aircraft projects with other arrested scientists. In 1941 he was placed in charge of a design bureau for liquid-fueled rocket engines. He was finally released in 1944 by special decree.

At the end of World War II, Glushko was sent to Germany and Eastern Europe to study the German rocket program. In 1946 he became the chief designer of his own bureau, the OKB 456, and remained at this position until 1974. This bureau would play a prominent role in the development of rocket engines within the Soviet Union.

His OKB 456 would design the 35-metric ton thrust RD-101 engine used in the R-2, the 120-ton thrust RD-110 employed in the R-3, and the 44-ton thrust RD-103 used in the R-5 (SS-3 Shyster). The R-7 would include four of Glushko's RD-107 engines and one RD-108. In 1954 he began to design engines for the R-12 (SS-4 Sandal), which had been designed by Mikhail Yangel'. He also became responsible for supplying rocket engines for Sergei Korolev, the designer of the R-9 (SS-8 Sasin). Among his designs was the powerful RD-170 liquid propellant engine.

In 1974, following the successful American Moon landings, Brezhnev decided to cancel the troubled Russian program to send a man to the Moon. He fired Vassily Miskin and placed Glushko in charge of the OKB-1, Korolev's former design bureau, later named NPO Energia. Glushko's first act was to cancel the N-1 rocket, a program he had long critisized.

Glushko was an advocate of a new line of powerful launchers that he wanted to use for the establishment of a Russian lunar base. However the American Apollo program was coming to an end at about that time, and the government wanted to build a competitor to the Space Shuttle.

After his death, his obituary was signed by multiple Communist Party leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev. It was only following his death that Glushko's efforts became known to most of the Russian populace.

For many years had Glushko worked in Korolev's shadow, and certainly never received the credit he deserved (at the time) for his contributions. His personality was reputed to be bull-headed, and he never lacked for an ego.

Perhaps his most significant engineering failure, as noted by the division chief Yuri Demyanko, was his insistance that hydrogen was unsuitable for use as a rocket fuel. As a result the Russian space program were still discussing the use of hydrogen-fueled engines while the American's were assembling the Saturn V launcher. In spite of this, Glushko is considered a leading figure in the history of the Russian space program.

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Bibliography

V. P. Glushko and G. Langemak, Rockets, Their Construction and Application, 1935.
Glushko, V. P., Rocket Engines GDL-OKB, Novosti Publishing House, Moscow, 1975.

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Honors

An asteroid number 6357 , which was found in 1976 was named in his honour by Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh.
There is a Glushko crater on the Earth's moon named after him.

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