1. Valentin Petrovich Glushko was a Soviet engineer who was program manager of the Soviet space program from 1974 until 1989.
18 Facts About Valentin Glushko
1. 2.
Valentin Glushko was born on 2 September 1908 in Odesa to a Ukrainian cossack father and a Russian peasant mother.
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Valentin Glushko is known to have written a letter to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1923.
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Valentin Glushko studied at an Odessa trade school, where he learned to be a sheet metal worker.
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Valentin Glushko was first trained as a fitter, then moved to lathe operator.
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Valentin Glushko attended Leningrad State University where he studied physics and mathematics, but found the specialty programs were not to his interest.
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Valentin Glushko became a member of the Reactive Scientific Research Institute, founded in Moscow in 1931 when GDL merged with the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion.
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Valentin Glushko became responsible for supplying rocket engines for Sergei Korolev, the designer of the R-9 Desna.
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Valentin Glushko consolidated the Soviet space program, moving Vasily Mishin's OKB-1, as well as other bureaus, into a single bureau headed by Glushko, later named NPO Energia.
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Valentin Glushko meanwhile was an advocate of Vladimir Chelomei's UR-700 as well as an even more powerful UR-900 with a nuclear-powered upper stage.
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When Korolev continued protesting about the safety risk posed by hypergolic propellants, Valentin Glushko responded with the counterargument that the US was launching the crewed Gemini spacecraft atop a Titan II rocket with very similar propellants and it was not a safety issue for them.
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When Korolev suggested developing a liquid hydrogen engine for the N-1, Valentin Glushko said that LH2 was completely impractical as a rocket fuel.
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The UR-700, Valentin Glushko said, could enable a direct-ascent trajectory to the Moon, which he considered safer and more reliable than the rendezvous-and-dock approach used by the Apollo program and Korolev's N-1 proposals.
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Valentin Glushko imagined the UR-700 and 900 in all sorts of applications, from lunar bases to crewed Mars missions to outer planet probes to orbiting battle stations.
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Valentin Glushko then began work on a completely new HLV.
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Valentin Glushko instead decided to use an engine with four combustion chambers fed from a single propellant feed line.
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Valentin Glushko's team was part of the Soviet Ministry of General Machine Building headed by Minister Sergey Afanasyev.
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Valentin Glushko's obituary was signed by multiple Communist Party of the Soviet Union leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev.