Mikhail Klavdievich Tikhonravov (29 July 1900 – 3 March 1974) was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

engineer who was a pioneer of spacecraft design and rocketry. Mikhail Tikhonravov was born in Vladimir, Russia. He attended the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy from 1922 to 1925, where he was exposed to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's ideas of spaceflight. After graduation he worked in several aircraft industries and was engaged in developing gliders. From 1931 he devoted himself to rocketry. In 1932, he joined Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD), as one of the four brigade leaders. His brigade built the GIRD-09 rocket, fueled by liquid oxygen and jellied gasoline, and launched on 17 August 1933. Tikhonravov became part of the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII) when GIRD and the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) merged in 1933. From 1938 Tikhonravov researched rocket engines with liquid fuel and developed rockets for the purpose of upper atmosphere research. In the end of the 1930s, the development of rockets with liquid fuel was stopped and Tikhonravov concentrated on the development of the projectiles of the weapon system Katyusha rocket launcher. In 1946, he became deputy chief of NII-4 in the Academy of Artillery Science and developed Project VR-190. Tikhonravov in 1948 proposed a type of

multistage rocket A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of another stage; a ''parallel'' stage is ...

in which the engines would work in parallel (packet) in order to achieve a greater flight range. His announcement was met with ridicule and skepticism by his scientific colleagues because at that time, it was believed that 1,000 km was the absolute limit for rocket range. In NII-4 he led a team of researchers that did important studies on packet rockets, satellite orbital motion, optimal pitch control programs for launching into orbit, reentry trajectories and heat shielding. This team designed Sputnik-3, Luna-1, Luna-3, Luna-4 and the early Venus and Mars probes. In 1956, Sergey Korolev had Tikhonravov and his team (including Mstislav Keldysh) transferred into his bureau, OKB-1. After the launch of Sputnik-1 and a satellite with a dog on board, Tikhonravov (along with a number of other scientists) received the Lenin award (1957). While he was not credited for much of his work, he was a lead scientist for the

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (, , ''Satellite 1''), sometimes referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program ...

rocket and satellite. He designed the first Soviet liquid-propellant rocket, he proposed the clustered-booster idea for the famous R-7 rocket, he oversaw the design of Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok rocket, and he supervised the development of the first Soviet moon probes. He also played a large role in the development of Sputnik 1. The classically educated Tikhonravov has been credited for coining and popularizing the term ''

cosmonaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

'' ("space traveller"), to be distinct from the English ''astronaut''. Tikhonravov Crater on

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

is named after Mikhail Tikhonravov.

References

Literature

* "Rockets and people" – B. E. Chertok, M: "mechanical engineering", 1999. * "S. P. Korolev. Encyclopedia of life and creativity" - edited by C. A. Lopota, RSC Energia. S. P. Korolev, 2014

External links

Detailed Biography by Anatoly Zak
NASA {{DEFAULTSORT:Tikhonravov, Mikhail Klavdievich 1900 births 1974 deaths Early spaceflight scientists People from Vladimir, Russia Soviet aerospace engineers Soviet space program personnel Soviet spaceflight pioneers Academic staff of Moscow Aviation Institute Soviet inventors Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery Russian scientists