to open next chapter. - NASA's History Office

Rockets and People
NASA History Office.
Above is the 09 rocket built by the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD) in 1933. The 09,
which was successfully fired in August 1933, was the first Soviet rocket to use liquid propellants.
GIRD members included Fridrikh Tsander, Sergey Korolev, and Mikhail Tikhonravov, three important
pioneers of Soviet rocketry and spaceflight.
involved in developing the theory and design layouts of different engines that did
not need atmospheric oxygen.Tsander was a typical scientist—an enthusiast and a
dreamer. He was also completely devoted to the ideas of interplanetary travel.
In 1932, Sergey Korolev replaced Tsander as director of GIRD.Tsander needed
good therapy at a sanatorium. Korolev managed to get him a pass to Kislovodsk,
which for those times was not a simple feat. Tsander became ill in Kislovodsk,
however, and died suddenly in March 1933. Twenty-three years later, Korolev
finally managed to track down Tsander’s gravesite in Kislovodsk, and in 1957 a
gravestone with a bust of Tsander was placed there on the occasion of what would
have been his seventieth birthday.
Other talented engineers who experimented with the first Soviet liquidpropellant
rockets at the Moscow GIRD included Yuriy Pobedonostsev, Mikhail
Tikhonravov, Vladimir Vetchinkin, Yevgeniy Shchetinkov. Korolev developed
designs for stratospheric aircraft with liquid-propellant rocket engines, and
Tikhonravov directed a team that designed the first hybrid-propellant rockets and
oxygen-gasoline propellant rockets. Pobedonostsev was involved with the problems
of ramjet engines. In 1932,Andrey Kostikov came to work at GIRD, having
graduated from the N. Ye. Zhukovskiy Air Force Academy. He joined in on the
work of Pobedonostsev’s and Tikhonravov’s teams.
The Moscow GIRD, which had around sixty employees, was funded by the
Osoaviakhim presidium and RKKA Directorate for Military Inventions. In 1932,
meetings were held in Leningrad between GDL employees and GIRD leaders
Korolev,Tsander,Tikhonravov, and Pobedonostsev. RKKA senior armament officials
who were familiar with the work of GDL and GIRD were firmly convinced
of the need to combine the two organizations and create a Reactive Scientific-
Research Institute. In those years, organizational decisions aimed at strengthening
166