The outstanding Soviet scientist and engineer, the founder of domestic liquid-propellant rocket engine building, the “Energia – Buran” complex chief designer, Valentin Petrovich Glushko was born on September 2, 1908.
The legendary “Energia – Buran” Project was the Soviet response to American military initiatives, primarily to the Space Shuttle Project. Without this project, our country could have lost strategic parity with its potential adversary, the United States, and become vulnerable to attacks from space. Fortunately, it did not happen.
The “Energia – Buran” reusable space system is the most ambitious program in the history of Russian cosmonautics. 1200 enterprises, scientific and design engineering organizations, 70 ministries and departments took part in the project’s implementation. 16 billion rubles had been spent over 18 years of hard work. The unique program implementation became the brightest international event and predetermined the solution of many scientific, technical and practical problems.
Valentin Glushko was the founder of domestic rocket engine building, pioneer and creator of the domestic rocket and space technology, Roscosmos State Space Corporation says. The scientist became the designer of the world's first electric thermal rocket engine (1928-1933), the first Soviet liquid-propellant rocket engines ORM (1930-1931), RLA rockets family on liquid fuel (1932-1933), powerful liquid rocket engines installed in almost all domestic rockets that have been to space so far. V. P. GLUSHKO's engines orbited the first and subsequent Earth satellites, spaceships with Yuri Gagarin and other cosmonauts, as well as provided spacecraft flights to the Moon and solar system planets.
The scientist passed away at the age of 80 on January 10, 1989.
Фото: rawpixel / 123RF
