Text 8. Volodymyr Chelomei

Volodymyr Mykolaiovych Chelomei (30 June 1914 – 8 December 1984) was a Soviet mechanics scientist and rocket engineer from Ukraine. He was born in Siedlce, Poland in a Ukrainian family. At the age of three months, his family fled to Poltava, when World War I came close to Siedlce. When Vladimir was twelve years old, the family moved to Kyiv.

In 1932 V. Chelomei was admitted to the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (later the basis of Kyiv Aviation Institute), where he showed himself as a student with outstanding talent. In 1936 his first book Vector Analysis was published. Studying at the institute, V. Chelomei also attended lectures on mathematical analysis, theory of differential equations, mathematical physics, theory of elasticity and mechanics in the Kyiv University. Namely in this time V. Chelomei became interested in mechanics and in the theory of oscillations and remained interested for the rest of his life. In 1937 V. Chelomei graduated from the institute with honours. After that he worked there as a lecturer, defending a dissertation for the Candidate of Science (in 1939).

From the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, V. Chelomei worked at the Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Motor Building in Moscow, where he created the first Soviet pulsating air jet engine in 1942, independently of similar contemporary developments in Nazi Germany.

The USSR Special Design Bureau (SDB) on designing pilotless aircraft was established under V. Chelomei’s leadership. In 1955 V. Chelomei was appointed the Chief Designer of the SDB, where he continued to work on cruise missiles. He continued his scientific research, earning a doctorate in science from Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School. After his dissertation defence in 1951 he became a professor at the School.

In 1959 V. Chelomei was appointed the Chief Designer of Aviation Equipment and in 1961 started to work on spacecraft a design for a much more powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, the UR-500.

In 1962 V. Chelomei became an Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Mechanics Department.

V. Chelomei became Koroliov’s internal competitor in the "Moon race". He proposed that the powerful UR-500 be used to launch a small two-man craft on a lunar flyby, and managed to gain support for his proposal by employing members of Khrushchev's family. He also claimed the UR-500 could be used to launch a military space station.

Although it was never used to send cosmonauts to the Moon as V. Chelomei had hoped, Proton has been widely used to launch Soviet satellites, as well as all Soviet/Russian space stations and modules including two of the first three components of the International Space Station (ISS).

The Earth satellites such as Polyot were also designed by V. Chelomei’s SDB. Unlike the earlier crafts, even V. Chelomei's first satellites “Polyot-1” (1963) and “Polyot-2” (1964) such crafts were able to change their orbits themselves. He also headed the development of the Proton satellite. In the 1970s V. Chelomei’s SDB worked on the Almaz orbital stations Salyut 2, Salyut 3 and Salyut 5 which also became the basis for the “Salyut”, “Mir” and “Zvezda” space stations. To support his “Almaz” stations, V. Chelomei designed the new craft, alternative to Soyuz. It never flew as planned but derivatives flew as modules on “Salyut 7” and “Mir”.

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