FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

204 SMITHSONIAN ANNALS OF FLIGHT
test flights in that glider. 1 The BICh-11 airplane
was turned over to GIRD in February 1932, but
the OR-2 engine could not be developed within so
short a term. Both funds and skilled workers were
lacking, and the seemingly simple task of creating
a liquid-fuel jet engine and installing it in the
glider, grew, in the process, into an aggregation of
most complicated scientific and research problems.
Wanted were new people not merely interested in
space flights but capable of contributing to the
practical development of rocket engineering.
That was how practical activities revealed the
deficiency of personnel and special knowledge.
The orientation of technical training also had to be
changed in favor of the practical aspects of rocket
engineering and its importance for the country's
progress, rather than theoretical ideas, the feasibility
of space flights, etc. The personnel training
problem was especially acute. Korolyev had been
an experienced exponent of practical knowledge
in aviation and technology ever since his school
days and in this respect, therefore, also took a
leading role in GIRD.
He was quick to understand that both aviation
and especially rocketry require the effort of large
teams of subject specialists, and had therefore
attached a very great importance to personnel
training and selection. The result was that GIRD
offered the world's first courses on jet motion and
the whole character of training was revised. This
change was described in Korolyev's letter of 31 July
1932 to an advocate of cosmonautics, writer Ya.I.
Perel'man:
Though extremely busy with experimentation, we are very
much concerned about the development of our mass
work . . No time is to be lost. The immense local
initiative is to be received and digested in such a manner
as to create a positive public opinion around the problem
of reactive motion, stratospheric flights and (in the future)
interplanetary travels. The need to develop a body of literature
is also very urgent, for it is practically absent, except
for two or three books, and these are not generally available.
We think the time is right for publishing a series (10-15
items) of semitechnical booklets on jet motion, each one
clarifying a single problem, such as "What is jet motion?"
"Fuel for jet motion," "Applications of jet motion," etc.
These may later be replaced by more specialized literature.
. . 2
In this context Korolyev paid much attention to
the training department of GIRD. He delivered
lectures, wrote papers, advocated a new journal
Sovetskaya Raketa (Soviet Rocket), and finally,
wrote the book "Rocket Flight in the Stratosphere."
3 This, although meant to popularize science,
proved to be an important contribution to
the rocket engineering of that time. Tsiolkovskiy
found it to be a "clever, informative and useful
book." 4
Attaching high value to "group work," Korolyev
was no less active in the personal selection of
specialists, thus turning GIRD into a strong, viable
team of engineers, designers, and mechanics, who
had come from the aircraft industry, many of them
Korolyev's long-time colleagues. To GIRD, and
then to the whole Soviet rocket industry, it brought
high technological standards.
Korolyev's part was highly esteemed from the
very beginning. Thus, the secretary of GIRD wrote
to Tsiolkovskiy:
Our experimental work on the GIRD-RP-1 rocket aircraft,
is nearing its completion .... Many highly qualified
engineers work with us, and best of them all is the chairman
of our Technical Council S. P. Korolyev. He has already done
more than a lot for all of us. He is also going to pilot the
first rocket aircraft. 5
The emphasis, in the technical training, on immediate
practical targets of rocket technology and
on the solution of urgent problems of the philosophy
and technology of flights brought recognition
to GIRD, and this was further enhanced by the
weighty argument it had advanced in the form of a
virtually completed (as it seemed at the time) RP-1
rocket aircraft. As a result, considerable support
for GIRD had been developed, and the Central
Council of Osoaviakhim, a voluntary society responsible,
among other things, for aviation and
technical sports and for supporting the construction
of gliders and sports aeroplanes, in April
1932 decided to organize an industrial support
facility to be known as the GIRD experimental
plant. S.P. Korolyev became Director of both the
plant and the whole GIRD. Thus a center was
created, quite large for the time, possessing impressive
design, research, and production facilities.
Korolyev's organizing talent played a decisive role
in the whole affair.
Speaking on the emphasis of GIRD's promotional
and production activities on immediate practical
goals, one question is to be answered: what was, at
that time, Korolyev's actual attitude towards interplanetary
flights? From official documents and his
own papers it appears that Korolyev tried in those