FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

206 SMITHSONIAN ANNALS OF FLIGHT
becoming imperative. Main efforts therefore had to
be directed towards the development of experimental
rocket-propelled craft with stabilization and
control systems on different principles. Engines
could be further improved on test benches, whereas
problems of flight dynamics could only be solved
by way of flight tests. In Korolyev's opinion, the
flight of piloted rocket craft continued to be the
main prospective task. At the 1934 Ail-Union conference
on atmosphere studies, under sponsorship
of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he read
a paper devoted to manned rocket flight problems. 9
In March 1935 the RNII and the Aviation Department
of the All-Union Engineering Society on
Korolyev's initiative convened the Ail-Union Conference
on the Use of Jet-Propelled Aircraft in the
Exploration of the Stratosphere. There Korolyev
delivered a detailed report entitled "Winged Rocket
for Manned Flight," in which he summarized the
results of his investigations and for the first time
described unique features and possible designs of
the rocket plane, its calculated weight analysis, and
its flight characteristics. The report proposed the
development of a rocket-plane laboratory for purely
experimental flights at low altitudes. It would thus
be "possible to make a systematic study of the operation
of rocket elements in flight. When secured at a
required altitude, it might be used for experiments
with an air-breathing jet engine and a whole series
of other experiments." 10
Korolyev's preference for rocket gliders rather
than ballistic missiles originated not by virtue of
his profession as an aircraft designer but by the
limitations of the engine industry in those years.
The characteristics of the already existing liquidfuel
jet engines and those under design (thrusts of
the order of 100-300 kg and specific thrusts of
about 210-230 sec—rather modest from today's
point of view), were useful only in comparatively
small wingless rockets for experimentation purposes
(such rockets were actually built, including
those for the stratosphere studies). Thus, winged
rockets were the only possibility to airlift weighty
objects, including man. The development and
flight tests of such rockets were well within the
frame of Korolyev's idea of the time-spaced development
of rocketry. In the process of developing
piloted winged rockets, various problems were to
be solved involving superlight structures; sophisticated,
safe, and reliable engines (including fuel
tanks and feed systems); cabin sealing; the aerodynamics
of high (supersonic) speeds; and the flight
dynamics and other problems also of importance
for carrier missiles and space ships.
Korolyev understood that unmanned rocket
craft are good enough for solving certain technical
problems, and he therefore organized in the RNII
tests of numerous small-size winged rockets. The
first such rocket started on 5 May 1934.
The 212 rocket with the previously mentioned
ORM-65 engine and a gyroscopic automatic stabilizer
was the best known of that type. Its estimated
range was 80 km. It was started from a
rocket-powered sled by a powerful accelerator. The
212 was flight tested in 1938-1939.
The most complicated problem involved in designing
unmanned winged rockets had long been
flight stability, and Korolyev turned for help to
specialists in mechanics and mathematics. In 1936
he made a detailed progress report on winged
rockets at a session at the Mechanics Research Institute
of the Moscow State University, where he
posed the task of investigating the motion of uncontrolled
and controlled winged rockets and solving
the flight stability problem. Such a study, undertaken
on a contract basis by a group of young
mechanics and mathematicians, was the first case of
pure science put to solve causal problems of rocketry.
Korolyev not only had Moscow University undertake
the solution of prospective problems in
mechanics, he also employed prominent scientists
for advisory service, in addition to similar work
carried on in RNII itself.
He organized a special department for the development,
production, and adjustment of gyroscopic
control instruments; for the enormous role to be
played in rocketry by automatic flight-control systems
was clear to him. His people had to solve a
new and, for that time, difficult problem of bringing
the characteristics of these instruments into
accord with dynamic properties of the rocket. It is
worth mentioning that the level at which some
dynamics problems connected with rocket-propelled
aircraft were treated in his department was higher
than in the aviation industry.
Having accumulated the necessary experience
and having developed suitable engines, RNII could
proceed with the rocket plane. In contrast to extensive
activities on smaller unmanned rockets, all