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On the Times and My Contemporaries
ters be preserved.The first calculations showed that the mass of the payload had to
be increased from 3 metric tons to 5.5 metric tons while the launch mass of the
rocket had to be increased by 100 metric tons.
The design had to be completely redone. In June 1954, a government resolution
was issued concerning the production of R-7 two-stage ballistic missiles,
which satisfied Malyshev’s proposal. According to this resolution, the production
of this missile was a goal of special importance to the State.
Korolev’s designers, and those of allied organizations,“went nuts,” to use a slang
expression. Serious conflicts arose between Korolev and Barmin. 14 Now a fundamentally
new system would have to be created. Thus, the now world-famous
launch system for the R-7, the modern Soyuz-U, emerged.The deadlines stipulated
previously by the government had to be shifted somewhat, but in accord with
Korolev’s famous motto “No later than May!”, the first launch of the R-7 took
place on 15 May 1957.
Since then, two of the first stages of the R-7 have remained the reliable basis
for manned and many other space programs up to the present day.The world owes
gratitude not only to Korolev and the other creators of the R-7 “packet,” but also
to Vyacheslav Malyshev, who in 1954, using the State’s power, obliged Korolev to
redesign the rocket. Unfortunately,Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich himself, the initiator
of such a historic turning point in the fate of the first Soviet intercontinental
ballistic missile, did not live to see its first launches.The powerful doses of radiation
that he received participating in the tests of the first nuclear devices had taken
a toll on his health. 15
as a rule under stalin, the creation of the first scientific-research organizations
and the industrial base for missile production did not take place in a vacuum, but
at the expense of, and frequently to the detriment of, work in the other defense
industry fields. The NII-88 head institute was created on the basis of Artillery
Factory No. 88. Production of anti-aircraft guns was transferred to other factories.
Factory No. 456 in Khimki, which had mastered the production of transport
aircraft even before the war under license to the American firm Douglas, was
appropriated from the aviation industry for use as a design bureau and factory for
liquid-propellant rocket engines. NII-885 was created on the basis of an electromechanical
factory to serve as an institute and factory for guidance systems.The
automobile industry was hardest hit. In the city of Dnepropetrovsk, the construction
of the largest automobile factory in the country had been completed. It was
supposed to produce amphibious vehicles for the infantry, and in the future, allterrain
trucks and tractors. In 1951, the factory was handed over to the Ministry
of Armaments for the series production of Korolev’s R-1 and R-2 missiles and
14. Academician Vladimir Barmin was the Chief Designer of ground launch complex for the R-7.
15. Malyshev died of cancer in 1957.
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