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

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

engineer who was a pioneer of spacecraft design and rocketry. Mikhail Tikhonravov was born in

Vladimir, Russia Vladimir ( rus, Влади́мир, p=vlɐ'dʲimʲɪr, a=Ru-Владимир.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Vladimir Oblast, Russia, located on the Klyazma River, east of Moscow. It is served by a railway and the M7 motorway. ...

. He attended the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy from 1922 to 1925, where he was exposed to

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (russian: Константи́н Эдуа́рдович Циолко́вский , , p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin ɪdʊˈardəvʲɪtɕ tsɨɐlˈkofskʲɪj , a=Ru-Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.oga; – 19 September 1935) ...

's ideas of spaceflight. After graduation and until 1931 worked in several aircraft industries and was engaged in developing gliders. From 1931 and on, devoted himself to the development of the field of 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 August 17, 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 layers’ 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 The Katyusha ( rus, Катю́ша, p=kɐˈtʲuʂə, a=Ru-Катюша.ogg) is a type of rocket artillery first built and fielded by the Soviet Union in World War II. Multiple rocket launchers such as these deliver explosives to a target area ...

. 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 i ...

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 1000 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 an animal 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 Michail Tikhonravov was a lead scientist for the sputnik 1 rocket and satellite 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 human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

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

Tikhonravov Crater Tikhonravov is a large, eroded crater in the Arabia quadrangle of Mars. It is in diameter and was named after Mikhail Tikhonravov, a Russian rocket scientist. Tikhonravov is believed to have once held a giant lake that drained into the Naktong-Sc ...

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmos ...

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 Moscow Aviation Institute faculty Soviet inventors Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery