Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight)

by Jay Chladek

  7. Vladimir Chelomei was instrumental in the creation of the Soviet Union’s first operational space station.

  Specific details of Chelomei’s time at Kiev Polytechnic are sketchy. He was considered quiet and analytical compared to Korolev’s more hyperactive personality. He was a brilliant student and a prodigy with a keen engineering mind. In 1936, during his internship at the aviation plant in the industrial city of Zaporozhye, he proposed an unorthodox solution to deal with problems of mechanical failures in aircraft engines. He took quite an interest in vibration study. Vibrations can be harnessed, but they can also upset navigation systems and destroy equipment if not kept in check. That same year, he published his first book, Vector Analysis; by age twenty-four, he had published fourteen papers on his research. He graduated with honors in 1937 from Kiev Polytechnic and stayed on as a lecturer. By 1939 he had completed his candidate dissertation (equivalent to a master’s degree) and received one of the fifty coveted Stalin postgraduate scholarships awarded annually to begin his doctoral program. He completed his doctoral dissertation and joined the Communist Party in 1941.

  At the start of his country’s involvement in what the Soviets refer to as the Great Patriotic War against Germany, Chelomei was named chief of the Jet Engine Group at the Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Motor Building in Moscow. With the support of the aviation minister, Dmitriy Volikov, Chelomei was able to form a research group of engineers to look into pulse-jet technology. His time as the head of this research group caused a minor scandal among other intellectuals, as the sign on his office door read, “Professor Chelomei.” While he had completed his dissertation, he had not yet been awarded his doctorate. Eventually it came, though, making the title of professor official.

  In 1942 Vladimir Chelomei and his research group created Russia’s first pulse-jet engine. A pulse jet has few moving parts. Fuel is injected into a combustion chamber along with air, the air inlet closes, and the mixture is ignited, creating a combustion that is expelled out the back of the engine to propel the vehicle forward. This form of jet propulsion is characterized by a constant dull rumble or buzzing noise. Compared to other types of jet engine, pulse jets are somewhat crude, mainly because they can’t be throttled. In 1943 Chelomei proposed using the engine to power a cruise missile, but his proposal was rejected by Soviet leadership. However, the Germans were also working on pulse jets at the same time, and the results of their research led to the engine for the Fi-103 cruise missile, more commonly known as the V-1, or buzz bombs. Chelomei created his pulse jet totally independent of the German design, which was a postwar point of annoyance for him when international aviation experts wrongly believed that early Soviet pulse-jet technology had emanated from German efforts. The truth was quite different.

  In 1944, Britain wanted to enlist the aid of the Soviets in recovering materials related to the German V-2 rocket and the Fi-103 missile from retreating German forces. At the time, the Soviet leadership had little interest in the V-2, but they were quite interested in the Fi-103, since its shape and use was more familiar to them. The Soviets felt the design held great potential as a weapon.

  When the British provided the Soviets with the remains of an Fi-103 missile and engine that had been recovered from a crash site in England, Josef Stalin immediately ordered a program to develop a similar cruise missile. On 14 June 1944 Chelomei met with Stalin’s aviation minister, Georgy Malenkov, at the Kremlin to inspect the remains of the German missile. Chelomei was asked if such a weapon could be developed for the Soviet Union. He replied with an enthusiastic affirmation and reportedly gave an impressive speech advocating the potential of this technology. It is said that two days after that meeting, he had a hundred people at his disposal to begin work on a Soviet cruise missile. That was only the start; by the early fall of 1944, he had received all the resources he had requested. Chelomei was then appointed director and chief designer of Plant Number 51, a facility that was formerly part of the design bureau of deceased aircraft designer Nikolai Polikarpov.

  By late 1944 Chelomei had succeeded in duplicating the Fi-103’s engine, which was more powerful than his own engine design had been. Reportedly, ten different configurations for a cruise missile were considered before he settled on a design that resembled the Fi-103. Little remained of the missile that Chelomei had inspected months earlier. His team had to figure out on their own everything that made the missile work. By March 1945 a prototype of the missile was ready for testing, and its shape similarities with the Fi-103 did not go unnoticed.

  That same month, Chelomei was summoned to a meeting with Stalin and the head of Soviet security, Lavrentiy Beria. Beria bluntly asked Chelomei if he had appropriated the design for his cruise missile from the Fi-103. It was likely an attempt by Beria to check if the designer was a loyal Communist, or even a German spy. Beria was feared among intellectuals, because his NKVD (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del) secret police were personally responsible for the purges of the 1930s, which sent many aircraft designers, engineers (including Sergei Korolev), and other academics to prison and the gulags of Siberia. Those who didn’t die from their time in custody had Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union to thank for early release as their talents were needed to counter the German war machine. Even then, these people continued their work from prison, and most weren’t completely free to resume their peacetime lives until near the end of the war. To this line of questioning from Beria about his design’s similarities to the German weapon, Chelomei bluntly replied, “I obviously could not have borrowed their ideas. Whether the Germans [stole] my ideas is a question for you, Lavrentiy Pavlovich.” It was a bold statement from the young designer, and the matter was quietly dropped.

  From March to August 1945, numerous test launches of the new missile (designated 10kh, or 10X) were conducted by airdrops from a specially equipped bomber. The results were only modestly successful, and there wasn’t much hope that the missile could be employed in battle before World War II ended. Like Korolev, Chelomei reportedly made a trip to Germany at the end of the war to seek out any undamaged Fi-103 hardware and was apparently able to incorporate those findings into the 10kh design. However, successful results did not come as quickly after the war, especially as there were problems that took many years to solve. Nevertheless, Chelomei’s team continued to refine the missile, working on variations for deployment from land, ships, and Soviet heavy bombers.

  By 1953, political forces were conspiring to have Chelomei’s design bureau taken away from him. Artem Mikoyan of the OKB (a Russian acronym meaning “Experimental Design Bureau”) 155, more commonly known as the MiG Bureau, submitted his own proposal for a different cruise missile design based on the MiG-15 fighter jet. This design would become the KS-1 Kometa cruise missile. One of the individuals who worked for MiG at the time was a young engineer with the rank of colonel in the Soviet Army. His name was Sergei Beria, the son of Lavrentiy Beria. Having the son of the influential head of Soviet security working at the bureau meant that Mikoyan could make proposals higher up the political ladder than he was capable of doing otherwise. Artem Mikoyan also had other political allies, as he was also the younger brother of Anastas Mikoyan, for many years a high-ranking member of the Communist Party and Soviet Central Committee.

  Mikoyan’s bureau had the success of the MiG-15 on its side, as the jet was very much an equal to the U.S. Air Force’s F-86 Sabre, which it met in the skies over Korea. One of the limitations with Chelomei’s pulse-jet-powered missile was that it would be unlikely to break the sound barrier, while a pure jet-powered missile potentially could. Many considered the pulse jet a dead-end technology. The argument for the MiG Bureau to take over development of all cruise missile designs was very persuasive. In early 1953 Stalin signed a decree making Chelomei’s Plant Number 51 part of the MiG design bureau and stripping Chelomei of his title of chief designer. Chelomei tried in vain to fight the decision. Following his dismissal, all he was left with was his teaching job at the Baumann Moscow Higher Te
chnical School, where he had been a professor since 1952.

  Very soon after, things would swing in Chelomei’s favor once again. On 5 March 1953 Stalin died from complications related to an apparent stroke. Georgy Malenkov assumed leadership as premier of the Soviet Union with Lavrentiy Beria as deputy premier. But Beria only stayed in office for 113 days. In June of that year, a power struggle orchestrated by both Malenkov and party official Nikita Khrushchev caused Beria to be removed from office. Beria was arrested, interrogated by many of the same NKVD interrogators who had worked for him, and executed in December of that year.

  Premier Georgy Malenkov remembered young Chelomei from his days as aviation minister and looked favorably on the engineer. Chelomei’s theories also made an impression on Nikita Khrushchev, who had become First Secretary of the Central Committee after Beria was removed from power.

  During Chelomei’s brief period of unemployment as a designer, he fleshed out a design for a cruise missile with folding wings that was capable of being launched from a submarine. It wasn’t just the missile itself that Chelomei came up with; his plan was to develop a fully encapsulated system that could be stored on the submarine in an inactive state until the order to launch was given. It was a radical concept, and this approach would be a hallmark of Chelomei’s design philosophy.

  Vladimir Chelomei was reported to be a charming and charismatic figure by those who knew him. This proved to be an advantage when he approached Nikita Khrushchev to discuss his proposals, and he received a favorable reception. Chelomei’s line of thinking appealed to Khrushchev, who was supportive of cruise missiles and submarines to help keep a technological balance with the U.S. Navy, as opposed to building a large and expensive fleet of surface warships, which Soviet naval commanders desired at the time. In 1955 a decree was signed that created a new design bureau, the OKB-52, under the Ministry of Aviation Technology. The OKB-52 was tasked with developing submarine-based cruise missile technology, and Vladimir Chelomei was appointed as its chief designer. He subsequently staffed the OKB-52 with many members of his old team from the Plant 51 days and several promising young engineers straight out of the universities. Chelomei’s new cruise missile designs were very advanced for their day and were successful when deployed operationally. His star was definitely on the rise. In 1958 Chelomei hired Nikita Khrushchev’s son Sergei to join the OKB-52 as an engineer of guidance systems. Sergei Khrushchev was certainly a smart individual, but his hiring by Chelomei may have simply been a repeat of what Mikoyan did with Beria, in order to gain acceptance from Nikita Khrushchev, who had been appointed Soviet premier in 1958 in addition to retaining his role as First Secretary.

  By this time, Chelomei had also begun to set his sights on ballistic missiles and spaceflight. As advanced as OKB-52’s cruise missile designs were, Chelomei realized that ballistic missiles were the wave of the future, since there would likely be no defense against them for the foreseeable future. Sergei Korolev’s OKB-1 already had a virtual monopoly on the development of the Soviet Union’s first ICBM, but Chelomei felt he could design a better one. In the days of its early development, the R-7, or Semyorka (Digit-7), rocket had suffered numerous failures, and Chelomei voiced bold criticism that OKB-52 should be placed in charge of developing the new missile. But OKB-1 continued to refine the R-7 until it was finally ready to be deployed operationally. The rocket would also be used to launch the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in October of 1957. Because of Sputnik, the world stopped and took immediate notice of the Soviet Union.

  While Korolev completed his task of creating an ICBM, the limitations of the design as a weapon system immediately became apparent to the Soviet leadership. Given that the R-7 required fueling with LOX (liquid oxygen) and kerosene, the missile required hours of preparation to fly. In addition, all the operational R-7 ICBM sites were above ground and potentially easy to target for destruction. The need for LOX also meant that there were production, transportation, and storage challenges, especially at remote launching sites. So while Sputnik revealed to the world that the Soviets had an ICBM and space launch capability, it meant that at best they only had a handful of operational R-7 ICBMs capable of being launched against targets in the United States.

  With the blessing of the Soviet government, Sergei Korolev’s OKB-1 began to focus its efforts on manned spaceflight activities. Korolev’s aspirations to continue with work in spaceflight should have meant a need for other design bureaus to take up the challenge of developing more capable ICBMs. Yet at the same time, Korolev lobbied Soviet leadership that OKB-1 should also continue to develop ICBMs as the only design bureau responsible for all ballistic missiles and rockets. It was at this time that Chelomei threw the resources of OKB-52 into the ring, since Khrushchev was not in favor of a single design bureau for all rockets. Khrushchev knew the Americans were focusing a maximum effort on rocketry development as well, with multiple American companies taking part. Chelomei was not alone in his aspirations, as Mikhail Yangel’s OKB-586 was also working on a more capable ICBM. Yangel was a pioneer in the use of storable hypergolic fuels for the Soviets. His first operational success was the R-16 rocket, but something better was needed. As for OKB-1, they succeeded in developing one more ICBM, the R-9, before they narrowed their focus exclusively to spaceflight activities.

  OKB-52 began work on two rockets, the UR-100 and the UR-200. The acronym UR stood for “Universal Rocket,” as Chelomei came up with designs capable both of weapons delivery and of launching spacecraft. It was his attempt to try to cut a slice of the spaceflight pie from Korolev’s bureau while also trying to secure a majority of the ICBM business. The UR-200 came first and was designed to deliver heavy nuclear weapons in addition to space payloads. The UR-100, by comparison, was a lightweight ICBM. While it couldn’t loft the larger megaton-range nuclear weapons, the UR-100 made up for that with a very large number of missiles deployed operationally, making it all but impossible for a first strike against the Soviet Union to succeed in taking out all of them before they were launched.

  One early obstacle with Soviet ICBM designs that didn’t use LOX and kerosene was their dependence on acid-based hypergolic fuels. If the rockets were put on alert and fueled, they could not remain this way indefinitely, as the acid-based chemicals would damage the fuel tanks. This required the rockets to be overhauled after fueling if they weren’t used. The need to fuel the rockets also meant that launch preparations after an order was given consumed precious time. Soviet solid-fuel technology was well behind that of the United States in the 1960s. While the Soviets found success in making small solid motors for use in air-to-air missiles and parachute-deployed retro-rocket landing systems, they did not have the capability of building a large-scale solid-fueled ICBM of the same capabilities as the U.S. Air Force’s Minuteman 1 missile or the Titan III-C’s SRMs. Chelomei’s solution was to design the UR-100 to be fully fueled from the factory. Taking a page from his cruise missile designs, Chelomei’s UR-100s were built with the fuel and oxidizer already loaded, and the missiles were transported to their silos in special encapsulated containers. The rockets could remain in this stored state for up to five, and later ten, years between overhauls. They could be launched within three minutes of receiving an order to fire. Many technological challenges had to be overcome to produce the UR-100 missile, and the process was long and troublesome. But Chelomei’s methodical approach to design and testing meant that OKB-52 was able to solve the problems one at a time and that the operational UR-100 was an effective counter to the Minuteman 1.

  When OKB-52 started work on the UR-200, Yangel’s group was already hard at work on their R-36 ICBM design to replace the R-16. The R-36 and the UR-200 were very similar to one another in their specifications. Khrushchev welcomed this competition and the different approaches, as he felt that the only way the Soviet Union would be able to negotiate on equal terms with the United States was to have a very capable force of nuclear-armed ICBMs. The better the ICBM design, the better the bargaining positi
on and international posture. But Chelomei had grander plans for the UR-200. OKB-52 was also working on an antisatellite weapons system (ASAT) and a nuclear-powered communications-and-targeting satellite for the Soviet Navy for use with Chelomei’s cruise missiles. Both were designed to use the UR-200 as a space launch vehicle.

  As work began on the UR-200, Chelomei began to look at other plans to conquer space. Utilizing the technology for his encapsulated cruise missile, he proposed ideas for several kosmoplans (a Russian word that literally means “cosmic planes”). The idea was for a modular vehicle that could be powered by solar, chemical, or nuclear power systems depending on the mission requirements. The spacecraft could be loaded onto a missile and sent into space, where it would fly its mission. When this was completed, a small winged craft based on one of Chelomei’s cruise missiles would be jettisoned for the return to Earth, protected from atmospheric friction by a heat shield. Low in the atmosphere, the return vehicle would sprout wings and return to land on a runway like a conventional aircraft. The most ambitious mission that Chelomei intended for the kosmoplan was a landing on the planet Mars. However, the radical concept never went further than the drawing board.