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On the Times and My Contemporaries
conquests. Academician Kapitsa wrote that the author and organizer of such a
scientific feat as the launch of the first artificial satellite is entirely deserving of the
Nobel Prize. 17 There is no doubt that worldwide public opinion would have been
positive if the Nobel Committee had awarded this prize to the Chief Designer of
the launch vehicle and first satellite. But the name of the Chief Designer was kept
secret until his death, and the Nobel Prize is not awarded to anonymous authors.
after the launch of the first satellites, the rocket-space industry was forced to
rapidly expand its industrial base and attract new production capacity. It needed to
further improve the coordination of operations for armaments and military technology
production for the conventional and new branches of the armed forces.
Obsolete military doctrines needed to be revised.The interaction between industries,
and the organization of new and broader cooperation between enterprises
required the restructuring of industrial management.
Khrushchev consistently implemented a policy of developing the rocket-space
industry to the detriment, above all, of the aviation industry. He believed that if the
Soviet Union had intercontinental missiles it did not need heavy long-range
bombers, and he believed the number of intermediate-range combat aircraft and
ground attack aircraft could also be reduced if we learned how to crank out rockets
“like sausages.”
One of the first “gifts” to cosmonautics was the handing over of Kuybyshev
Aviation Factory No. 1, also called Progress Factory, to the rocket industry. The
factory was commissioned to take over the series production of the Korolev R-7
intercontinental missiles. In 1962, Progress Factory also took on space technology.
It started its own monopoly in the field of reconnaissance and surveillance spacecraft.
Today the Central Specialized Design Bureau (TsSKB) and the Progress
factory are a single enterprise.
In 1951, at Fili in Moscow at the base of the huge Aviation Factory No. 23,
Experimental-Design Bureau 23 (OKB-23) was formed for the development of
heavy bombers. By the late 1950s, OKB-23 Chief Designer Vladimir
Mikhaylovich Myasishchev was producing bombers that, in terms of their parameters,
surpassed the American B-52; but in spite of his indisputable achievements,
he was transferred to the post of director of the Central Aero-Hydrodynamics
Institute (TsAGI).The staff of OKB-23 became Branch No. 1 of OKB-52, headed
by V. N. Chelomey, while Factory No. 23, named for M.V. Khrunichev, was transferred
in its entirety to the production of missiles and Proton launch vehicles.
Today the Khrunichev State Rocket-Space Scientific Industrial Center is the
largest rocket-space enterprise in Russia and the pride of the Russian Aviation and
Space Agency. One can assume that if the Khrunichev factory had remained in the
17. Academician Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa (1894-1984), who won the Nobel Prize in 1978, was one of the
pioneers of Soviet nuclear physics.
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