Valentin Glushko
| Valentin Glushko | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
2 September 1909 Odessa, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine) |
| Died |
10 January 1989 (aged 79) Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Nationality | Soviet Ukrainian |
| Education | Leningrad State University |
| Engineering career | |
| Projects | Space Race |
Valentin Petrovich Glushko (Russian: Валенти́н Петро́вич Глушко́, Valentin Petrovich Glushko; Ukrainian: Валентин Петрович Глушко, Valentyn Petrovych Hlushko; born 2 September 1908 – 10 January 1989), was a Soviet engineer, and the principal Soviet designer of rocket engines during the Soviet/American Space Race.
At the age of fourteen 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 hydraulics 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 Tsiolkovsky'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 GIRD (Group for the study of Rocket Propulsion Systems), founded in Leningrad in 1931.
On 23 March 1938 he became caught up in Joseph Stalin's Great Terror and was rounded up by the NKVD, to be placed in the Butyrka prison. By 15 August 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. In 1944, Sergei Korolyov and Glushko designed the RD-1 KhZ [sic] auxiliary rocket motor tested in a fast-climb Lavochkin La-7R for protection of the capital from high-altitude Luftwaffe attacks.
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