Vladimir Nikolayevich Chelomei

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vladimir Chelomey ( Russian Владимир Николаевич Челомей , born June 17 . Jul / the thirtieth June  1914 greg. In Siedlce , Russian Empire , now Poland , † 8. December 1984 in Moscow ) was a Soviet designer of missiles and rockets .

Life

Training and first constructions

Vladimir Chelomei was born into a family of teachers in the small Mazovian town of Siedlce. When he was three months old, the family moved to Poltava because of the First World War , and when he was twelve, to Kiev .

In 1932 he was admitted to the Kiev Polytechnic Institute , where he showed outstanding achievements. In 1936 he published his first book on vector analysis . In 1937 he graduated with honors and moved to the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR , where he received the title of Candidate of Sciences in 1939 and then worked as a scientist in the Institute of Applied Mathematics in the Academy.

In 1941 Chelomei moved to the Central Institute for Aircraft Engines "PI Baranow" (ZIAM) in Moscow, where he worked as a scientist and as a lecturer in mechanics and aviation propulsion theory. A scholarship enabled him to do his dissertation and in 1942 Tschelomei became head of the jet engine department.

Together with a few employees, Chelomei constructed the first Soviet detonation jet engine , which, however, fell short of expectations in terms of performance and noise generation.

First cruise missiles

On June 14, 1944, Chelomei was called to the Kremlin to see Georgi Malenkov in charge of the aircraft industry . He was shown a captured German Fieseler Fi 103 (V1) that had been given to the Soviets by the British. Malenkow wanted to know whether this missile could be recreated. After Chelomei agreed to do so, he was given the management of a new department with 100 employees at the Central Institute for Aircraft Engines . In the autumn of 1944, Chelomei was appointed chief designer of the aircraft factory 51, which had previously been a division of the recently deceased designer Nikolai Polikarpow . In December 1944, Tschelomei had recreated the German V1 and was working on a further development, which was given the designation 10ch ( Russian 10X ). You should of bombers of the type Pe-2 , Tu-2 and Tu-4 taken and several hundred kilometers are disengaged from the finish. Trials began in December 1944. At the beginning of 1945 the weapon was ready for use. In 1947 the 10X was demonstrated at the Flugtag in Tuschino .

The People's Commissar for the Aircraft Industry Alexei Shachurin claimed in his memoirs that the combat-ready squadrons were not deployed in order not to retaliate with the German V-weapons against the British civilian population.

In the first years of the post-war period, Chelomei fell victim to various political intrigues. Minister Anastas Mikojan campaigned for the construction of Soviet cruise missiles to be entrusted to the OKB-155 Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG) design office, which was headed by his brother Artyom Mikoyan . Intelligence chief Lavrenti Beria also had personal interests in this decision because his son Sergei was employed there.

This led to the fact that in February 1953 Chelomei's area was incorporated into Mikojan's OKB-155. Chelomei lost his post as chief designer and became a professor at the Moscow State Technical University "NE Bauman" .

Management of our own design office

After Stalin's death in March 1953, Georgi Malenkov initially became the most powerful man in the USSR. He remembered the young designer and encouraged him. On June 8, 1954, Chelomei became head of Special Department 10 (SKG-10) of Factory 500 in Tushino near Moscow. This group of 80 people worked on the development of anti-submarine guided missiles .

In the summer of 1955, Chelomei became the chief designer of the newly established OKB-52 design office based in Reutov near Moscow.

In March 1966, some design offices were subordinated to the newly established mechanical engineering ministry of Sergei Afanassjew . During this restructuring, the OKB-52 was renamed the Central Design Office for Mechanical Engineering (ZKBM).

Another name change for the company took place in 1983 when ZKBM became “NPO Maschinostrojenija” with the short form “NPO Masch”.

In the 28 years that Chelomei was at the head of the company, he had succeeded in bringing his design office under the leadership of the Soviet defense and space industry and keeping it there.

He was in constant competition with the design office OKB-1 (later ZKBEM and RKK Energija ) under the direction of Sergei Koroljow (later Vasily Mishin and Valentin Gluschko ), which was much larger and better financed.

The Soviet leadership did not always award projects from a technical or economic point of view, so personal relationships and intrigues played a large role. The rise of the OKB-52 was certainly due to the support of Malenkov and head of state Nikita Khrushchev . His son Sergei worked for Chelomei since 1958. After Khrushchev's fall in 1964, the new leadership was also hostile to everything that Khrushchev had supported. Relations between Chelomei and Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov , who was responsible for the development of military space travel, were tense .

Retirement and death

Chelomei's tomb

Chelomei retired in October 1983. In December 1984, he was hit by his own car when he closed the garage door. He was admitted to a Moscow hospital with a broken leg, where he died of thrombosis on December 8, 1984 . Chelomei's grave is in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery .

developments

Various projects have been developed under the direction of Vladimir Chelomei:

Cruise missile: The P-5 Pitjorka was the first guided missile that Chelomei was able to introduce into the Soviet Navy. Other successful types were P-70 Ametist and P-500 Basalt .

Reusable spacecraft: At the end of the 1950s, Tschelomei designed a spacecraft that would take off vertically and land horizontally and could be used for passenger and cargo transport as well as for military purposes. Based on a government specification and on behalf of the Soviet air force , he continued this concept called Raketoplan, primarily with the aim of a space-based bomber. Ultimately, however, it was not implemented in any of the planned variants. In addition to the Raketoplan there was the plan for the Kosmoplan , a spaceship that should primarily complete missions to the moon, Mars and Venus, but in an "early version" also military reconnaissance missions in deep orbit . After re-entry into the earth's atmosphere inside a protective cone that was later to be thrown off (in the original version), it was supposed to land like a conventional airplane with the support of turbo engines. This first concept was abandoned on May 13, 1961. New studies followed, called R-1 and R-2. During the development of the projects, two test devices flew to test heat shield materials and airbrakes, first in 1961 the 1750 kg "brake system demonstrator" MP-1 , and second in 1963 the M-12 . Thanks to compressed air, MP-1 was maneuverable in suborbit and by flaps on re-entry. The tests also provided data for ICBM warheads, in particular the shape of the M-12 lost on reentry corresponded to a scaled-down AB-200 warhead. In 1964 the Raketoplan projects came to an end, on the one hand due to the loss of support from Khrushchev , and on the other hand because the office was busy with the LK-1 lunar flight project and the fact that some of the tasks for which the concepts envisaged had already been adopted by satellites.

In 1975, Tschelomei presented the space shuttle LKS ( Russian Лёгкий Космический Самолёт , German "light cosmos aircraft"), his idea of ​​a smaller and cheaper answer from the Soviet Union to the US space shuttle . However, this small space shuttle was discarded in favor of the larger Buran . A mock-up of the LKS was produced in its original size.

Missiles: The UR-100 light ICBM was deployed in large numbers in the Soviet Union. The Proton rocket emerged from the larger UR-500 . The UR-700 was designed for a manned flight to the moon and the nuclear-powered UR-900 for a flight to Mars, but neither was manufactured.

Satellites: The OKB-52 developed Poljot , the first satellite able to maneuver in orbit, the research satellite Proton , which studied high-energy cosmic particles in orbit, and several other satellites.

Spaceships: The LK1 spaceship was designed for a manned orbit around the moon . It was to be launched with a special version of the Proton launcher. With effect from December 25, 1965, the original orbit project UR-500 / LK-1 Tschelomeis was transferred to the UR-500 / L1 project and was thus largely transferred to the OKB-1 of Sergei Koroljow . The spaceship was now a special version (7K-L1) of the Soyuz spaceship. Tschelomei derived the TKS spaceship from the draft of the LK1 . It was supposed to take care of the supply of the Almaz space stations and was used unmanned as a freighter for the space stations Salyut 6 , Salyut 7 and Mir .

Space stations: Three copies of the Almaz military space station were launched. More specimens were converted to unmanned reconnaissance satellites, but Chelomei did not see their launch any more.

Honors

Ukrainian postage stamp in honor of Chelomei (2003)

Chelomei has received many honors and awards:

From 1958, Chelomei was a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences , from 1962 a full member. In 1974 he became a member of the International Academy of Astronautics .

In Moscow and Reutov streets and squares were named after him, and the small planet 8608 Chelomey, discovered in 1976, bears his name.

Private

Chelomei was married. His son Sergei also worked in his company. He applied as a cosmonaut aspirant in the late 1970s, passed the medical exams, but was never nominated for cosmonaut training.

Web links

Commons : Vladimir Chelomei  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ AI Shachurin, Wings of Victory . Berlin 1989, p. 226.
  2. ↑ a b c Bart Hendrikx, Bert Vis: Energiya-Buran The Soviet Space Shuttle, Chapter: The roots of Buran, page 28. ISBN 978-0-387-69848-9
  3. ^ A b Christian Lardier, Stefan Barensky: The Proton Launcher: History and Developments, Verlag John Wiley & Sons, 2018, ISBN 9781119510505 , page 79
  4. ↑ a b Anatoly Zak: Raketoplan. In: RussianSpaceWeb.com. October 7, 2015, accessed on September 2, 2018 .
  5. ↑ a b Bart Hendrikx Bert Vis: Energiya-Buran The Soviet Space Shuttle, Chapter: The roots of Buran page 30. ISBN 978-0-387-69848-9
  6. ^ Soviet SSM Warheads , on globalsecurity.org
  7. ↑ Giuseppe De Chiara: “LKS” - The Chelomei alternative to Buran. (PDF; 6.4 MB) In: forum.nasaspaceflight.com. August 31, 2012, accessed July 24, 2018 .
  8. ^ Hall, Shayler, Vis: Russia's Cosmonauts . Springer, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-0-387-21894-6
personal data
SURNAME Chelomei, Vladimir Nikolaevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Челомей, Владимир Николаевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet designer of guided missiles and missiles
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Siedlce , Russian Empire , today Poland
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1984
Place of death Moscow