Dreams of conquering space appeared long before the first rocket was invented. Already in 1865, the French writer Jules Verne wrote the novel "From the Earth to the Moon", in which the traveler Michel Ardan flew to the satellite of our planet in a hollow metal cylinder pointed at the end. Almost a century later, the first real spaceships took off into the sky, and the Soviet Union played a significant role in this event. Read about how the USSR space program originated and what successes it achieved in the Izvestia material.
The USSR Space Program — the beginning
The founder of the theory of cosmonautics in Russia is the scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. In his writings of the 1890s, he began to raise issues of interaction with alien life, the creation of rocket engines, the supply of fuel to ships, etc. By the end of the 1920s, the scientist had developed and described the concept of multi-stage rockets on which it was possible to leave the Earth, but no one was interested in his developments.
At the state level, the development of rockets and engines for them was carried out by the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) under the leadership of inventor Nikolai Tikhomirov. It was founded in Leningrad in 1929 and was located in the Peter and Paul Fortress. At that time, it was a military facility, and development on it was conducted in the strictest secrecy. It was there that the first tests of Soviet jet missiles were conducted. And in 1933, the Jet Research Institute (RNII) opened in Moscow.
Before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, research in the field of missile development practically stopped due to the arrests of leading scientists and military personnel who supported these developments. However, the use of the V-2 ballistic missile (V-2) by fascist Germany forced the Soviet leadership to reconsider its views. Already in May 1946, the USSR missile program was approved.
In 1952, the design of the first two-stage intercontinental rocket R-7 started. One of its designers, Sergey Korolev, proposed to include an artificial Earth satellite, an orbital station and other space projects in the development program. The management ignored his words. However, the Queen still had to prove herself.
USSR Space Program — achievements
In 1955, the international scientific community turned to the leading world powers with a request to launch an artificial satellite of the Earth. US President Dwight Eisenhower was the first to respond to the request, promising to implement this idea. The Soviet Union could not stand aside, and the next day the head of government Nikita Khrushchev made a similar promise. From that moment, the Soviet-American space race began, which gave the world cosmonautics a lot of discoveries.
To fulfill this task, the design bureau No. 1 for rocket technology was created, headed by Korolev. In October 1957, Soviet engineers managed to put into orbit the first artificial Earth satellite in the history of cosmonautics. It was only 58 cm in diameter and weighed just over 83 kg. A month later, his "younger brother" was launched, already much larger. In 1958, the third satellite equipped with solar panels went into space. He regularly sent data from orbit for 691 days.
In 1959, with the help of automatic stations "Luna-1" and "Luna-2", it was possible to deliver the USSR flag to the surface of the Earth satellite, as well as to take the world's first photograph of the invisible side of the Moon.
The next stage of space exploration was manned flights. To do this, Korolev and his colleagues developed a new Vostok launch vehicle that could return to Earth. The first living creatures to successfully fly around the planet in 1960 were the dogs Belka and Strelka.
Soon it was the turn of the people. On August 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin entered Earth orbit, becoming the first man in space. He spent 108 minutes there, was able to fly around the Earth once and return alive. All this time Gagarin kept in touch with Moscow and recorded his impressions on a tape recorder.
This event changed the world cosmonautics forever and secured the USSR's primacy in the space race for a long time. Achievements followed one after another. A year after Gagarin, Herman Titov went to Earth's orbit. His flight lasted more than a day, he managed to fly around the Earth 17 times. In 1963, a woman, Valentina Tereshkova, visited space for the first time. And in 1965, cosmonaut Alexey Leonov was the first person to go into outer space.
In the period from 1965 to 1969, the Soviet unmanned vehicles Zond-4 and Zond-5 flew around the moon. On board the latter were turtles, fruit flies, worms and bacteria. They all returned unharmed.
In 1970, the interplanetary stations Luna-16 and Luna-17 went to the moon. With their help, the Lunokhod-1 spacecraft was lowered to the surface of the satellite, which collected soil samples and took many photos.
A year later, the Mars-3 spacecraft made the first ever soft landing on the surface of the Red Planet. After landing, communication with the Earth was interrupted, but it was restored thanks to additional transmitters. Soviet scientists were the first to receive photos from the surface of Mars.
The first multi-module space station in history was also designed and launched in the USSR. It was called Mir and spent almost 15 years in Earth orbit — from 1986 to 2001. During this time, she made more than 86 thousand revolutions around the planet. Two records for staying in space were also set at this station. One of them belongs to Valery Polyakov — he spent 437 days and 18 hours on board the Mir. The second one was installed by American Shannon Lucid, who stayed at the station for 188 days. This is the longest flight for a woman.
How much did the USSR space program cost
The USSR space program operated for almost 35 years, until 1991. During this time, many projects have been implemented, but there is still no clear answer to the question of how much money was spent on them. And the point here is not secrecy, but the fact that the costs were distributed across a variety of budget items and it is almost impossible to put them together.
Nevertheless, some data is still publicly available. In the article "Where is Soviet cosmonautics going?", published in the brochure of the society "Knowledge" in 1994, the following figures are given: in 1989, 6.9 billion rubles were allocated for space exploration. This is about 1.5% of the USSR budget for that period of time.
An interesting document is also kept in the archives — a note by the head of the KGB, Vladimir Semichastny, "On the moods of G.K. Zhukov." It mentions that 4 billion rubles were spent on Gagarin's flight into space. However, it is not known how accurate this figure is.
Earlier, Izvestia told about the birthday of NASA and what the logo of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration means.