vol4.pdf [Ivanovskiy Boris Andreyevich]

Boris Chertok (left) and Konstantin Bushuyev, one of the leading deputies at OKB-1 

who was in charge of the development of piloted spacecraft.

“Now you believe that, given our capacity of 43,000 people and with a half 

million subcontractors, in around five years we can produce all the vehicles and 

modules and upstage the Americans, who out of their own stupidity terminated 

the Saturn—for the long run if not forever?”

Bushuyev and Prudnikov convinced me of the feasibility of the project, 

even if the new Vulkan launch vehicle never appeared.

On the morning of 26 October 1978, Bushuyev had a toothache, and he 

went straight from his home to the polyclinic. For some reason, before the 

dentist would see him, he was advised to have an electrocardiogram. Sitting 

calmly in an armchair waiting for the results of his EKG, he died.

Prudnikov, having realized the hopelessness of continuing the projects on 

the lunar colonies, switched to a more relevant activity for that time—develop-

ing the design for a military space station.

In 1978, after reviewing the lunar expedition projects based on the use 

of Vulkan launch vehicles, an expert commission chaired by President of the 

USSR Academy of Sciences Mstislav Keldysh considered them irrelevant and 

found that they distracted the staff of NPO Energiya from the main mission 

of vital importance to the state, creating the Energiya-Buran reusable space 

transportation system.

The launch vehicle for the Buran was the Energiya rocket, which completed 

its first successful flight on 15 May 1987. Glushko made his last attempt to 

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save the lunar base projects, using the Energiya rocket, but he received no 

support “from the top.”

Our project for a lunar expedition in 1973 using upgraded N1-L3M 

rockets could have been the first attempt at equalizing the score in the Moon 

race. The lunar base projects of 1976 through 1978 were the second attempt. 

Both proposals were shut down “from the top.” Thirty years have passed. 

Today we are even further from the possibility of creating a lunar base than 

we were in 1978.

On the occasion of Vladimir Barmin’s 90th birthday, a commemorative 

meeting was held at the firm named after him.

12

 Among those invited, I gave a 

speech with my memories of Barmin and made sure to mention his enthusiasm 

for the lunar base project. After a session in the company museum among the 

brilliantly executed mockups of the launch systems of various rockets, which 

I had had the occasion to see in reality over the years, in the farthest corner 

of the exhibit I discovered a mockup of the lunar colony, “the Barmingrad.”

In the history of space exploration, there are dates that it has become 

tradition to celebrate, both nationally and internationally. Russia still remembers 

4 October 1957 and 12 April 1961. We rarely think about 20 July 1969, the 

date of the first landing of an Earthling on the Moon, although this event also 

ranks among the great scientific and technical accomplishments. In addition to 

such generally recognized anniversary dates, there are many events, forgotten 

by or simply unknown to the broad public, that are dear to a small group of 

individuals directly involved in them.

On 20 February 1986, the first, core module of the Mir station was 

launched and the construction of a habitable space station began. Two months 

before the launch of Mir, at the large “Council in Fili” (at the Khrunichev 

Factory), which Minister of General Machine Building Oleg Baklanov

13

 con-

ducted, I reported about the software arrearages and the missed deadlines for 

the delivery of the latest innovation in control technology for the space station: 

powered control moment gyroscopes. So that the beginning of construction on 

the station would not be delayed, instead of installing them on the core module, 

Sheremetyevskiy and I proposed installing six control moment gyroscopes on 

the Kvant module, which we were getting ready to launch after we made sure 

that the main core module was operating normally.

 12.  Barmin’s 90th birthday was celebrated on 17 March 1999.

 13.  Oleg Dmitriyevich Baklanov (1932–) served as minister of general machine building 

from 1983 to 1988. Later, he was one of the architects of the coup against Soviet Communist 

Party General Secretary Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev in August 1991.

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Epilogue

The Mir control system was fundamentally new. The dates for the station 

launch were not so much determined by its manufacture as by its ground-

based debugging. My comrades, our subcontractors, and I reported optimis-

tically, but inwardly each of us was heartsick. The skepticism regarding our 

proposal—to launch the core module, and then deliver and hook up the main 

attitude-control system (the control moment gyroscopes) a couple of months 

later—was understandable.

After an uproarious discussion during a 3-hour meeting, ZIKh Director 

Anatoliy Kiselev invited all of us to dinner.

14

 It would be unfair to complain 

about the array of drinks and hors d’oeuvres spread out over the tables in the 

next room. After our emotional conversations at the meeting, I relaxed and 

didn’t stop my friends when they promptly filled my wineglass.

Suddenly, over the general noise, I heard someone say my name, and my 

comrades sitting next to me started to nudge me hard.

“Answer the minister,” I heard someone whisper.

Oleg Baklanov, who was sitting an another table, had turned to me, and 

now for the third time was asking me: “So tell me honestly, Boris Yevseyevich, 

will we fulfill the mission or are we just warming up? Before the Party Congress 

we don’t just need a successful launch, but steady work in space.

15

 Today I 

learned that the dates and reliability of the orbital station depend on a funda-

mentally new control system.”

I stood up and loudly reported: “We will fulfill the mission. And the station 

will not only be in operation for the congress, but for three years after that.”

At that time three years seemed like the limit of a guaranteed service life. 

Twenty days after inserting the core module into orbit we were confident that 

we could reliably control the station. The very first Mir crew was Leonid Kizim 

and Vladimir Solovyev. They arrived on board on 15 March 1986.

Gradually the station configuration was completely transformed. The core 

module became overgrown with the modules Kvant, Kvant-2, Kristall, Spektr, 

and Priroda. The total mass of the orbital complex grew from 25 tons to 136 

tons. The total volume of the pressurized compartments was 400 cubic meters. 

Absolute world records were set on the station for the continuous length of 

time spent by a human being under spaceflight conditions. Valeriy Polyakov 

 14.  Anatoliy Ivanovich Kiselev (1938–) served as director of ZIKh from February 1975 to 

June 1993. Later, he was director of the M. V. Khrunichev State Space Scientific-Production 

Center before retiring in 2001.

 15.  The Twenty-seventh Congress of the Communist Party was held between 25 February 

1986 and 6 March 1986.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

became the absolute world record holder. He spent 438 days continuously on 

Mir, and his total time for two flights was 679 days.

16

Sergey Avdeyev set the record for the cumulative duration of his time in 

space, 748 days.

17

 American astronaut Shannon Lucid set the women’s record 

for spaceflight duration on Mir, 188 days.

18

 Twenty-eight long-duration pri-

mary expeditions were conducted on Mir and 25 visiting expeditions on Soyuz 

and Space Shuttle vehicles. One hundred and four cosmonauts and astronauts 

worked as part of the crews. Given a total station mass of 135 tons, the mass 

of the scientific equipment comprised 11.5 tons. During Mir’s time in service 

the processes of rendezvous, docking, and the delivery of cargoes and fuel by 

Progress cargo vehicles was refined and brought to a high degree of reliability. 

Domestic vehicles delivered 150 tons of cargo. In all, more than 220 organi-

zations of the former USSR were involved in the creation and operation of 

the Mir station.

On 25 June 1997, due to the error of people involved in the rendezvous 

control loop, cargo vehicle Progress M-34 collided with Mir. This was the first 

“space battering ram.” After similar off-nominal situations, airplanes “deviate 

toward the ground.” After being rammed, Mir remained functional.

Along with the piloted and unpiloted transport systems, Mir was a one-of-

a-kind space complex. Mir was the pride of Russia. The Energiya Rocket Space 

Corporation, the actual owner of Mir, had every right to be proud of it, but 

no one from the Russian elite—“you greedy hordes around the throne”

19

—was 

interested in its continued operation in space.

Instead of the three years promised in 1986, Mir survived 15 years! The 

Americans, who did not have our unique experience, were able to create the 

big International Space Station only with our help. And we sank our superi-

ority in the ocean with our own hands because the Russian economy denied 

 16.  The second space mission of Valeriy Vladimirovich Polyakov (1942–) lasted 437 days, 

17 hours, and 58 minutes. He was launched on Soyuz TM-18 on 8 January 1994 and returned 

on Soyuz TM-19 on 22 March 1995, having stayed on board Mir as part of three different 

Primary Expeditions (Ekspeditsiya osnovnaya or EO), EO-15, -16, and -17. He spent 241 days 

in space during an earlier mission to Mir in 1988–1989.

 17.  This record was superseded on August 16, 2005, by cosmonaut Sergey Konstantinovich 

Krikalev (1958–), whose cumulative time spent in space stands at 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 

minutes, accumulated on six different missions between 1988 and 2005.

 18. On 16 June 2007, Lucid’s record was broken by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams 

(1965–) on ISS Expedition 15, which lasted 196 days, 17 hours, and 17 minutes.

 19.  This is a line from the poem “Death of a Poet” [“Smert Poeta”] by Mikhail Yuryevich 

Lermontov (1814––1841).

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Epilogue

cosmonautics the funds for subsistence. “Russia cannot be understood with 

the mind alone….”

20

Russia’s utmost misfortune is that not just Mir, but all of Russian science 

and the enormous technical potential of its defense technology did not fit 

together with the philosophy of the mafia-style preeminence of utilitarian/

pragmatic self-interest. Mir’s fight for life was one of the episodes of Russia’s 

general decline over the last decade of the 20th century.

At the meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences dedicated to its 275th 

anniversary, the M. V. Lomonosov Gold Medal was awarded to Aleksandr 

Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.

21

 Speaking from the academy’s podium, Solzhenitsyn 

said: “Under the conditions of the only pirate nation in human history under 

a democratic flag, when the concerns of those in power are only about power 

itself, and not about the nation and the people inhabiting it, when the national 

wealth went to enriching the ruling oligarchy made up of countless cadres 

from the supreme, legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, it is difficult 

to come up with a reassuring prognosis for Russia!”

22

Among the many foreign guests who gave salutatory speeches on the occa-

sion of the 275th anniversary, only the president of the Chinese Engineering 

Academy noted the great achievements of Soviet and Russian scientists in space.

At the beginning of the 21st century, China managed to put a man in 

space using its own resources.

23

 The Chinese economy’s rate of development 

is astounding. Rocket technology and cosmonautics are priority industries in 

China. I believe that in the next 10 to 15 years China will take the place of the 

world’s second superpower, including in the field of cosmonautics.

 20.  This is the first line from the poem of the same name composed by Fedor Ivanovich 

Tyutchev (1803–1873), one of the most memorized and quoted Russian poets of the 19th 

century. He was a contemporary of other Russian romantic poets such as Aleksandr Pushkin 

and Mikhail Lermontov.

 21.  Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) was one of the most famous Soviet dis-

sident writers in the post-Stalin era. He wrote the earliest published accounts of life in the Gulag 

such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and the three-volume Gulag Archipelago 

(1973). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970 but was sent into exile from the 

Soviet Union in 1974. For most of that time, Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States, until he 

returned to Russia in 1994.

 22. A. I. Solzhenitsyn, “Nauka v piratskom gosudarstve” [“Science in a Pirate State”], 

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 3 June 1999. The meeting was held the day before. Chertok quotes from 

text that is also reproduced at http://vivovoco.rsl.ru/VV/PAPERS/ECCE/LOMOSOLJ.HTM, last 

accessed 11 August 2011. The M. V. Lomonosov Gold Medal is the highest award given by the 

Russian Academy of Sciences. The award was established in 1956 and has been given annually 

to one Russian and foreign scholar.

 23.  China launched its first citizen in space, the fighter pilot Yang Liwei, into orbit on 15 

October 2003.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

From the author’s archives.

Yakov Kolyako and Viktor Frumson at Red Square.

I shall return now to the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the 

N-1 rocket. This event was described in a separate chapter of my book.

24

 The 

management of the Energiya corporation supported the initiative of former 

N-1 chief designer Boris Dorofeyev and decided to make a gift to all those 

involved in the rocket’s creation who were still living. Dorofeyev, with the help 

of Viktor Frumson, organized the showing of a once top-secret documentary 

film dedicated to the history of the rocket’s creation and to all four launches. 

Frumson was the organizer and was involved in the creation of the full-length 

film, which is of exceptional historical value. The corporation’s management 

granted permission to invite into our large, 400-seat auditorium not only 

those still working, but also those who had retired from the enterprise and 

representatives of other organizations involved in N-1 projects.

Because 21 February 1999 fell on a Sunday, the film screening was scheduled 

for 2 p.m. on 22 February. The hour-long film covered the history of the N1-L3, 

from the first resolution to the last tragic launch in November 1972. The film 

took us back to the past, and each of us experienced it in his or her own way. The 

last frame faded from the screen, and a hush fell over the packed auditorium. The 

last launch needed just 7 seconds more for the second stage to start up and for the 

 24.  See Chapter 10 of this book.

602

Epilogue

flight to continue, which could 

have altered the subsequent fate 

of the N-1! The film ended with 

an optimistic text, which a pro-

fessional narrator read with élan. 

The authors of the text didn’t 

know the future yet.

Discussion of the film had 

not been planned, but Vasiliy 

Mishin expressed his version 

of the demise of the N1-L3 

program. The upshot of his 

speech was that there is no need 

to seek out the guilty parties 

personally.

“The nation’s economy was 

not ready to carry out such an 

expensive program.”

Sergey Kryukov took 

exception with Mishin: “You can’t write off the N1-L3 tragedy to the weakness 

of our economy. We found financing for the Energiya-Buran program. Those 

funds would have been quite enough to update the N1-L3 and for successful 

expeditions to the Moon.”

25

The discussion ended, but we were in no hurry to break up. I can’t remem-

ber now who from among the veterans walked up to me then and said: “It 

brought tears to my eyes when I was watching. You promised in your fourth 

book to tell about the history of the Moon race. Why didn’t you speak out now?”

“I really do hope to tell about that in the book, but right now a 3- to 

5-minute speech wouldn’t turn out well.”

The festivities on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the first N-1 

launch were limited to the film screening described above.

The events dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the first landing of an 

Earthling on the Moon were supposed to take place in Europe and in America 

in July 1999. The publisher of the German translation of my first volume of 

From the author’s archives.

Vasiliy Mishin, shown here in 1992, by which 

time his role in the Soviet human lunar 

program was publicly known.

 25.  Both Mishin and Kryukov have written major works on the history of the Soviet human 

lunar program. See V. P. Mishin, “Pochemu my ne sletali na lunu?” [“Why Didn’t We Land 

on the Moon?”], Kosmonavtika, astronomiya no. 12 (1990): 1–64; S. S. Kryukov, Izbrannyye 

raboty: iz lichnogo arkhiva [Selected Works: From the Personal Archive] (Moscow: MGTU im. 

N. E. Baumana, 2010).

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

Rockets and People telephoned me from Germany asking me to take part in a 

big radio show dedicated to the history of the Moon race. I was to come to 

Cologne in July for it. I asked him to pass on to the organizers of that radio 

program that as long as NATO was bombing the European nation of Yugoslavia 

using the latest achievements of aviation and cosmonautics, I could not accept 

such an offer.

26

 Moreover, I had no desire to appear in foreign mass media and 

tell about the glorious past of domestic cosmonautics against the background 

of its very uncertain present and of the gloomy prognosis for its future. Even 

here, in Russia, not everyone understands me if I quote the classic words from 

the popular film: “I’m offended on behalf of the nation.”

27

 And there’s no way 

they’ll understand this in the West.

Over the course of many decades, during periods of the worst shocks, we did 

not lose our optimism and confidence in the future. That same confidence did 

not leave the creators of the N1-L3 even after the decision to shut down opera-

tions on this program. To this day, people continue to argue about whether this 

decision was a mistake. Today, I am answering for myself: we committed many 

mistakes in the process of the Moon race. Mistakes also occurred in Korolev’s 

time. His premature departure from life deprived him of the opportunity to 

correct the mistakes, including those that he himself made. At his initiative, 

at the very beginning of the design process on the two-launch version of the 

lunar expedition, we reworked it into a single-launch version, simultaneously 

modifying the N-1 launch vehicle to increase the payload capacity from 75 to 

95 tons. Theoretically, a launch vehicle capable of inserting 75 tons into near-

Earth orbit could come out a year before the one modified to insert 95 tons.

“Stop!” my opponents would object. “We had three accidents due to 

unreliable engines. And if testing had started a year earlier, the engines would 

have been even less reliable.”

“Right! That’s our mistake. That’s not Korolev’s fault. He left this life 

believing that the engines would be reliable.”

Three years after Korolev’s death, flight tests began on the unreliable 

engines, and this was a fatal error. History has shown that the engines developed 

at N. D. Kuznetsov’s design bureau in Kuybyshev were successfully brought 

to such a degree of reliability that 25 years later the Americans considered it 

 26.  The NATO bombing of the former nation of Yugoslavia took place between 24 March 

and 11 June 1999.

 27.  This is a line from the Soviet film Beloye solntse pustyni [White Sun of the Desert, 1970], 

directed by Vladimir Yakovlevich Motyl (1927–2010). It is one of the most famous films in 

the history of Soviet cinema, and many of the characters’ lines have become firmly rooted in 

Russian conversational language.

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Epilogue

feasible to use them to update their launch vehicles.

28

 At the turn of the century 

a proposal came out to upgrade our most reliable Soyuz launch vehicle, the 

R-7: on the central block (the second stage), Glushko’s engine, which had a 

ground thrust of 85 tons, would be replaced with Kuznetsov’s engine, which 

had a thrust of 160 tons and was left over from the production stock for the 

N-1.

29

 The old tried-and-true Semyorka with this engine would make it pos-

sible to insert into space a piloted vehicle with a mass of 11 tons rather than 

7. The future piloted Soyuz vehicles and Progress cargo transporters would 

make a quantum leap. But that is in the future!

But meanwhile I’m sometimes asked: “How would Korolev have acted in 

the situation with the N-1 after four failures if he had lived another eight years?”

I can’t answer for Korolev. As Korolev’s comrade-in-arms I can answer 

this question as I see fit. It was easier for us to do this because we knew that 

future which remained unknown to him. Korolev always analyzed and cor-

rected mistakes. Most likely, he would not have allowed flight tests to begin. 

Yes, he would have had to “hold his nose”—drive through the review of the 

lunar program in the administration in terms of dates, objectives, and missions.

But there could also have been a different scenario: after realizing the 

unreliability of the rocket as a whole, after the first two launches Korolev 

would forbid the continuation of flight tests. One would like to think with 

all the antagonism in his relationship with Glushko, he would have come to 

an agreement with him about technical assistance for the modification of the 

engines, which Glushko called “rotten.” Now we know that Kuznetsov brought 

them to a very high level of reliability, but this happened when Korolev’s former 

best friend—Valentin Glushko—became general designer of NPO Energiya.

Glushko received a unique opportunity: to correct—albeit late, but radi-

cally—the errors that Korolev, Mishin, and we, their deputies, had commit-

ted. Undoubtedly, the great 20th-century rocket-engine specialist was able 

to gain detailed insight into the promising outlook of Kuznetsov’s engines. 

But now Glushko himself was supposed to go against his own ambition. 

Essentially, Glushko was unwilling to remain the general designer of a rocket 

that he had not been involved in developing. I am confident that Korolev’s 

staff would have supported Glushko if he had begun to upgrade the N-1 in 

his role as general designer. Glushko was the only one who could convince 

 28. Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Taurus II launch vehicle will use Kuznetsov’s NK-33 

rocket engines (originally slated for use on the N-1) on its first stage. In its “American” version, 

owned by Aerojet, the engine is known as AJ26-58.

 29.  The most recent such proposal is known as the Soyuz-2.1v, a light-class launch vehicle 

that will make use of a single NK-33-1 on the core block.

605

Rockets and People: The Moon Race

first Keldysh and then Ustinov that there was no point in burying the N-1 

and that the lunar program needed to be implemented from 1977 through 

1980 using the new N1-L3M configuration or any other one. Today we 

understand that this was quite realistic. But Glushko decided to start with 

new launch vehicles, new engines, and a new big system. Under his leadership, 

the new Energiya launch vehicle really was created and it had new RD-170 

liquid-oxygen–kerosene engines that were the most powerful in the world. 

There were great difficulties in the creation of this engine. During firing rig 

tests, one failure after another would occur. Many highly placed skeptics 

simply didn’t believe that it was possible to solve the problems facing the 

staff of the Energomash Design Bureau and Glushko himself. Bringing the 

engine to the highest degree of reliability by the beginning of flight tests was 

Glushko’s personal achievement.

30

But this took another 13 years! What else can be said in defense of Glushko? 

He was under very strong pressure “from the top”—they said we didn’t need the 

Moon; we needed a reusable transport system that was as good as the American 

Space Shuttle. Fourteen years after shutting down the N1-L3 program, such 

a system was created.

After Buran, nobody in the world ever made a reusable spacecraft capable 

of landing at an airfield in unpiloted, automatic mode again and again with 

uncanny precision.

31

 On 15 November 1988, after two orbits around Earth, at 

0924 hours and 42 seconds, ahead of the calculated time by just one second, 

Buran touched down on the takeoff and landing strip at the airfield especially 

created for it, and after running 1,620 meters, it stopped in the center with a 

deviation of just 3 meters from the center line. And this was despite a stormy 

cross-headwind. The miss in terms of the longitudinal axis was just 15 meters!

But a year after the first brilliant flight, no use was made of Energiya or 

Buran. One of the Buran vehicles was installed as a space attraction next to a 

restaurant on the Kremlin quay of the Moscow River.

32

 And what happened 

to the Energiya launch vehicle? We feverishly hunted for payloads for it. And 

actually, very interesting prospective projects materialized, which could have 

led to new achievements in the field of fundamental astrophysics research, 

 30.  See Bart Hendrickx, “The Origins and Evolution of the Energiya Rocket Family,” Journal 

of the British Interplanetary Society 55 (2002): 242–278.

 31.  The U.S. Air Force’s X-37 Orbital Test Vehicle completed a fully automated landing 

on a runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 3 December 2010 after over seven 

months in Earth orbit.

 32.  This was Buran model OK-M, originally used for static and precision testing, which 

now resides on the Frunze embankment of the Moscow River in the M. Gorky Central Park of 

Culture and Leisure.

606

Epilogue

global communication systems, information systems development, and also 

monitoring in the interests of the national economy and national security.

In July 1989, Central Committee General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev 

was supposed to fly to Paris for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the 

French Revolution. High-level negotiations were planned with the President 

of France, including negotiations for joint space projects. A month before the 

very high-level visit, I flew to Paris as part of a government delegation. My 

task was to persuade French specialists and bureaucrats to take part in creat-

ing a global communication system using a heavy universal space platform 

(UKP) with a mass of 18 tons, which only the Energiya rocket could insert 

into geostationary orbit.

33

The French listened politely but just as politely implied that they did not 

have the funds for such promising projects, and France could serve its current 

interests with its own Ariane rocket.

At the same time as the French, we were also courting the Germans. First 

we invited specialists from leading corporations to Moscow. It seemed that 

the ice was breaking. Then the Bosch Corporation invited us to Backnang, 

where the company’s radio electronics division was located.

34

 Our delegation 

included the managers of the five leading Soviet radio electronics firms, with 

whom we had cooperated on the design of the UKP in geostationary orbit.

Throughout the week we familiarized the Germans with information, 

which they received with genuine interest. The specialists of the firm were 

extremely interested in a joint project, but the upper management of the 

corporation, who had spared no expense for our delegation on receptions 

and far-flung excursions, did not want to risk investing capital in a project 

that, based on a very optimistic business plan, would not return a profit 

until five years later.

In 1989, the new general designer of NPO Energiya, Yuriy Semyonov, 

exhibited a truly combative nature. He attained consideration and approval of 

proposals for the UKP in the Defense Council. A draft decision of the USSR 

Council of Ministers appeared, which N. I. Ryzhkov was supposed to sign 

shortly.

35

 The ministry and Military-Industrial Commission declared that the 

 33. UKP—Universalnaya kosmicheskaya platforma.

 34.  Backnang is about 50 kilometers northeast of Stuttgart.

 35.  Nikolay Ivanovich Ryzhkov (1929–) was a close associate of Gorbachev’s who served 

as chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1985 to 1990.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

work on the UKP ranked third in terms of importance after Buran and the 

Mir orbital station.

36

Almost at the same time as the UKP, NPO Energiya and the Academy of 

Sciences were jointly developing the design of a space radio interferometer. 

The spacecraft, equipped with a uniquely precise parabolic antenna with a 

diameter of 25 meters, was to be inserted into elliptical orbits with an apogee 

of up to 150,000 kilometers. Only the Energiya rocket was capable of doing 

this. Corresponding Member (now Academician) Nikolay Kardashev was 

responsible for the scientific part of the project.

37

 We flew to the Netherlands 

together. The European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) is 

located there in the city of Noordwijk. In Noordwijk, and later in Paris, a 

special competitive commission declared that our radio interferometer would 

make it possible to study the finest structure of the universe right down to the 

“last boundaries of creation.” The universe was ready to reveal its secrets, but 

for this we needed to find approximately 1 billion dollars…. We didn’t find 

it. We even “teamed up” with the Europeans.

Yes, we could have implemented many projects. By all appearances, they 

were pipe dreams…. But why not fantasize a little? If Defense Minister Ustinov 

had not allowed the invasion of Afghanistan and had given half of the funds 

spent on that war to cosmonautics, the nation would not only have saved 

15,000 lives—we would have built a permanently operating base on the Moon. 

The mistakes of the government and politicians cost the people hundreds and 

thousands of times more than the biggest space programs.

Very interesting projects for other payloads appeared for the Energiya 

launch vehicle, including military space complexes. It was assumed that the 

reusable Energiya-Buran system would become the main system for the inser-

tion of reconnaissance satellites and military orbital stations, including those 

equipped with laser weaponry. The Soviet Union had the opportunity to ensure 

its superiority not only in the field of ground-based and sea-launched nuclear 

missiles, but also in space in the event of “Star Wars.” However, the main cus-

tomer of the Energiya-Buran complex—the Ministry of Defense—abandoned 

the system and its military application.

 36.  This heavy standardized communications satellite proposal that Chertok mentions was 

approved by a decree of the President of the USSR on 5 February 1991. Chertok was one of 

its main architects at NPO Energiya; the project was later named Globis. After the collapse of 

the Soviet Union, work on the project was stopped by mid-1993.

 37.  Nikolay Semenovich Kardashev (1932–) is a famous Russian astronomer specializing 

in experimental and theoretical astrophysics and radio astronomy. He became an Academician 

in 1994.

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Epilogue

The development of the Energiya-Buran system involved 1,206 enterprises 

and organizations from almost 100 ministries and agencies. The nation’s largest 

scientific and production centers were involved. In all, more than a million 

people worked on this large nationwide program over a period of 18 years!

In December 1991, the State Council of Russia abolished the Ministry 

of General Machine Building, which had been responsible for cosmonautics. 

Everything came tumbling down in no time. A space disaster had occurred 

through no fault of scientists, generals, chief designers, and managers of the 

rocket-space industry. Of all the major space developments of our organiza-

tion that I was directly involved in, and of which I can rightfully be proud in 

front of my descendants, at that time only Mir was temporarily spared and was 

fighting for its life. The old saying “misery loves company” inspired a certain 

grain of optimism.

In connection with the 275th anniversary of the Russian Academy of 

Sciences, it was noted that recent years had inflicted on it the most fundament 

shakeups in its entire history from the times of Peter the Great.

38

 The Academy 

had endured because it was created under conditions that were very difficult for 

the nation, but historically favorable for the prosperity of science and industry.

The Council of Chiefs, which included many academicians, did not with-

stand the government’s pressure. On 3 October 2001, it made the decision to 

terminate the flight of the Mir station.

39

 In order to reliably scuttle the fully 

operational station, two Progress cargo vehicles had to be docked to it.

The station celebrated its 15th anniversary on 20 February 2001 without 

a crew. On 19 March, an orbit exit program was loaded into its on-board 

computer complex. On the night of 23 March, hundreds of people gathered 

at TsUP. At 9 p.m. Moscow time, 40 tons of fragments that hadn’t burned up 

in the atmosphere fell into the Pacific Ocean. I couldn’t bring myself to watch 

the death of the station at TsUP. The legendary Mir complex had ceased to 

exist. I was later told that everyone stood up, a hush fell over the room, and 

they observed a minute of silence. Many had tears in their eyes. “The king is 

dead. Long live the king!” Thus, two years after the funeral of Mir we could 

console ourselves. All the “Mirites” were switched over to the construction of 

the International Space Station.

Of all the endeavors of the military-industrial complex, the rocket-space 

industry, inextricably tied with science, proved its resiliency under the condi-

tions of the Russian national crisis. The backbone of the industry, which was put 

 38.  The 275th anniversary was celebrated in 1999.

 39.  Chertok probably means 3 October 2000.

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Rockets and People: The Moon Race

in place by the pioneers of rocket science and technology, industrial organizers, 

and millions of workers—true zealots of science and technology—contributed 

to the solution of extremely complex problems. The answer to the question 

“to be, or not to be” for Russian cosmonautics can only be affirmative. I am 

confident that this is exactly how the tens of millions of Russians who blazed 

the trail to new civilization with their labor will answer.

610