Text 4. Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

born Sept. 5 [Sept. 17, New Style], 1857, Izhevskoye, Russia

died Sept. 19, 1935, Kaluga, Russia, U.S.S.R.

Russian research scientist in aeronautics and astronautics who pioneered rocket and space research and the development and use of wind tunnels for aerodynamic studies. He was also among the first to work out the theoretical problems of rocket travel in space.

Tsiolkovsky was from a family of modest means. His father, Eduard Ignatyevich Tsiolkovsky, a provincial forestry official, was a Polish noble by birth; his mother, Mariya Ivanovna Yumasheva, was Russian and Tatar. The boy lost his hearing at age nine as a result of scarlet fever; four years later his mother died. These two events hadan important bearing on his early life in that, being obliged to study at home, he became withdrawn and lonely, yet self-reliant. Books became his friends. He developed an interest in mathematics and physics and, while still a teenager, began to speculate on space travel.

At 16 Tsiolkovsky went to Moscow, where he stayed for three years, studying chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics, attending lectures with the aid of an ear trumpet, and expanding his grasp of the problems of flight. But the elder Tsiolkovsky understandably wanted his deaf son, notwithstanding his growing ability to deal with abstruse questions in physics, to achieve financial independence. After discovering that the youth was going hungry and overworking himself in Moscow, his father called him home to Vyatka (now Kirov) in 1876.

The future scientist soon passed the teachers examination and was assigned to a school in Borovsk, about 60 miles (100 km) from Moscow, where he began his teaching career, married Varvara Yevgrafovna Sokolovaya, and renewed his deep interest in science. Isolated from scientific centres, the deaf teacher made discoveries on his own. Thus, in Borovsk, he worked out equations on the kinetic theory of gases. He sent the manuscript of this work to the Russian Physico-Chemical Society in St. Petersburg but was informed by the chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev that it already had been done a quarter century before. Undaunted and encouraged by Mendeleyev, he continued his research. Impressed by the intellectual independence of this young provincial schoolteacher, the Russian Physico-Chemical Society invited him to become a member.

In 1892 Tsiolkovsky was transferred to another teaching post in Kaluga, where he continued his research in astronautics and aeronautics. At that time he took up the problem that occupied almost all his life: the problem of constructing an all-metal dirigible with an adjustable envelope. In order to demonstrate the validity of his experiment, he built a wind tunnel, the first in Russia, incorporating into it features that would permit testing the aerodynamic merits of various aircraft designs. Since he did not receive any financial support from the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, he was obliged to dip into his family's household budget in order to build the tunnel; he investigated about 100 models of quite diverse designs.

Tsiolkovsky's experiments were subtle and extremely clever. He studied the effects of air friction and surface area on the speed of the air current over a streamlined body. The Academy of Sciences learned of his work and granted him modest financial aid of 470 rubles, with which he built a larger wind tunnel. Tsiolkovsky then compared the feasibility of dirigibles and airplanes, which led him to develop advanced aircraft designs.

While investigating aerodynamics, however, Tsiolkovsky began to devote more attention to space problems. In 1895 his book Gryozy o zemle i nebe (Dreams of Earth and Sky) was published, and in 1896 he published an article on communication with inhabitants of other planets. That same year he also began to write his largest and most serious work on astronautics, “Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices, ” which dealt with theoretical problems of using rocket engines in space, including heat transfer, a navigating mechanism, heating resulting from air friction, and maintenance of fuel supply.

The first 15 years of the 20th century undoubtedly were the saddest time of Tsiolkovsky's life. In 1902 his son Ignaty committed suicide. In 1908 a flood of the Oka River inundated his home and destroyed many of his accumulated scientific materials. The Academy of Sciences did not recognize the value of his aerodynamic experiments, and, in 1914, at the Aeronautics Congress in St. Petersburg, his models of an all-metal dirigible met with complete indifference.

In the final 18 years of his life, Tsiolkovsky continued his research, with the support of the Soviet state, on a wide variety of scientific problems. His contributions on stratospheric exploration and interplanetary flight were particularly noteworthy and played a significant role in contemporary astronautics. In 1919 Tsiolkovsky was elected to the Socialist Academy (later the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.). On Nov. 9, 1921, the council of the People's Commissars granted him a pension for life in recognition of his services in education and aviation.

Mikhail S. Arlazorov

Text 5. Russian-American Aircraft Designer

Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky 1889-1972 Today remembered as the father of the helicopter, Igor Sikorsky had three distinct aviation careers. During the birth of aviation, Sikorsky designed and constructed the first successful large four-engine airplanes. After immigrating to America following the Russian revolution, Sikorsky's company built large flying boats for long-range airline service. Not until 1938 did Sikorsky embark on the third of his aviation careers, beginning design work on the helicopters for which he became famous.

Igor was born in the Russian (now Ukrainian) city of Kiev, one of five children. His father taught psychology at the university and established a successful private practice. Igor's mother was also well educated. In one of Igor's earliest memories, his mother described Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) designs for helicopter-like flying machines. Sikorsky spent three years studying at the Imperial Russian Naval Academy, then resigned in 1906 to pursue engineering. While visiting Germany in 1908, Sikorsky read his first account of the Wright brothers' flight. Recognizing his fascination, his older sister Olga offered Igor, then just 19, enough money to purchase an engine and some building materials. But the heavy engines of the time rendered his attempts to build a helicopter hopeless. Always persistent in the face of difficulties, Sikorsky instead designed an airplane and awaited the day when technological developments would make his helicopter dreams possible.

Sikorsky's success with airplanes was remarkable. In less than two years, by 1911, one of his planes set a world speed record. The planes were still frail, though. In one case, Sikorsky crash-landed after a mosquito was caught in his fuel tank and clogged the carburetor. But aviation progressed quickly. In 1913 Sikorsky constructed the first four-engine planes in the world. During World War I these massive planes became the first heavy bombers. Though the army initially found them almost useless, by 1917 the planes were quite successful. Several times they fought off attacks by five or more German fighter planes. No longer did mere mosquitoes' endanger Sikorsky's aircraft. However, the Russian Revolution in 1917 ended Sikorsky's first career in aviation, forcing him to flee Russia for his own safety.

By March 1919 Sikorsky had arrived in New York City, ready to resume work in aviation. The end of the war led to hard times for an aircraft designer. While earning a meager living teaching math to other Russian immigrants, Sikorsky met Elizabeth Semion, and they were married in 1924. By 1923 Sikorsky was back on his wings, and 1928 marked the return of Sikorsky's success, as he became a United States citizen and sold the first of his flying boats to Pan American Airways. These designs culminated in the large " Clipper" planes that introduced long-range commercial air travel in the 1930s. However, again social turmoil over-came the technical innovations of Sikorsky's designs. By 1938 the Great Depression had dried up the market for large luxury flying boats, thus ending Sikorsky's second aviation career.

Fortunately, Sikorsky managed to keep his crack engineering team together as he entered his third aviation career, returning to his life-long dream: building a practical helicopter. By late 1939 the prototype VS-300 was flying. An infusion of military support led to the creation of the R-4, the world's first mass-produced helicopter. Though helicopters played little role in World War II, they were rapidly adapted to military, civilian, and industrial uses after the war. In 1950 Sikorsky accepted the Collier Trophy, one of aviation's highest awards, on behalf of the helicopter industry he had founded. Igor Sikorsky retired in 1957 but remained active as a spokesman for the helicopter industry. He died in 1972 in Easton, Connecticut

Text 6. Sukhoy

Sukhoy - officially OKB imeni P.O. Sukhogo also called OKB Sukhoy formerly OKB-51 Russian aerospace design bureau that is the country's second most important producer of jet fighters (after the design bureau MiG). Sukhoy is part of a giant, partiallystate-owned conglomerate of design bureaus and production plants known as AVPK Sukhoy (Aviation Military-Industrial Complex Sukhoy). Headquarters are in Moscow.

The Sukhoy design bureau has three institutional components—the actual bureau, an experimental plant, and a flight-testing station. It has production affiliates at Novosibirsk, Ulan-Ude, Komsomolsk-na-Amure, Dubna, Irkutsk, and Tbilisi, Georgia. Since its origin at the start of World War II, Sukhoy has designed about 100 different aircraft, of which about 50 types have been put into series production. Most of its fighter sales are to Russia, but it also supplies aircraft to other countries including India, China, and Vietnam. At the start of the 21st century Sukhoy began diversifying into the civilian market with the development of sports aircraft, freight vehicles, and passenger aircraft.

The history of the company is closely associated with the career of the noted Soviet aircraft designer Pavel O. Sukhoy. In the 1920s and '30s, as a senior engineer working for Andrey N. Tupolev's Moscow-based design group of the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI; see Tupolev), Sukhoy designed several bombers and fighters. In September 1939 the Soviet government appointed Sukhoy to head a new experimental design bureau (OKB) at a plant in Kharkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine), where he designed the Su-6 ground-attack aircraft. Although he produced several excellent designs during the 1930s and '40s, a combination of bad luck, unfavourable wartime government decisions, and internal politics dogged his creations throughout this phase of his career. At the end of World War II the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin assigned him to create a new-generationjet fighter, but because of safety concerns, technical delays, and Stalin's perception that the design was too derivative of the German Me 262, Sukhoy's Su-9 and its subsequent modifications were never adopted for production. Stalin eventually closed his design bureau in November 1949, and Sukhoy's team became a subdivision of the Tupolev design bureau in Moscow.

After Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet government permitted Sukhoy to regroup his old team as an independent design bureau, first at Plant 1 in Kuybyshev (now Samara) in early 1953 and then at Plant 51 in Moscow later in the year. In 1954 his organization was renamed OKB-51, becoming the foundation of the present-day firm. In the 1950s and '60s the design bureau planned and built a series of new supersonic jet fighters, including the swept-wing Su-7 and delta-wing Su-9 (the latter a different aircraft from the Su-9 of the 1940s). These two aircraft were extensively modified over the years and used in vast numbers by the air forces of the U.S.S.R. and other Warsaw Pact countries. Like other Soviet aviation designers, Sukhoy embraced the concept of incremental development rather than large technological leaps in aircraft design. For example, he improved the Su-9 series into the Su-11 and Su-15 fighter-interceptor series for service with the Soviet air defense forces.

Shortly after Sukoy's death in 1975, his name was added in posthumous recognition to that of the design bureau, which became commonly known as OKB Sukhoy. In the 1970s and early '80s the design bureau produced the high-performance, variable-wing Su-24 multirole aircraft and the Su-25 close-support aircraft. Perhaps the best known Sukhoy design was the Su-27, a long-range, air-superiority fighter recognized for its versatility and overall capabilities. First flown in 1977 and introduced in the mid-1980s, the Su-27 set numerous world records for altitude and takeoff speed and became the forerunner of an entire family of aircraft during the next two decades.

In the 1990s Sukhoy introduced a number of new aircraft. Its Su-34 fighter-bomber began replacing the Su-24, while the redesigned Su-39 ground-attack aircraft began substituting for its older Su-25 variant. Its fifth-generation, multirole, all-weather S-37 Berkut air-superiority fighter, first flown in 1997, was equipped with state-of-the-art electronics, forward-swept wings, and thrust vector control. In competition with MiG for the international market, Sukhoy also continued to develop the lightweight Su-54 fighter. In 1997 the Russian government formed AVPK Sukhoy by combining OKB Sukhoy with its production plant and several other affiliates as part of a general restructuring. Subsequently Sukhoy endured a period of turmoil and internal strife, which included the firing of its top-level leadership.

Text 7. Tupolev

Tupolev - officially ANTK imeni A.N. Tupoleva also called ANTK Tupolev formerly OKB-156 Russian aerospace design bureau that is a major producer of civilian passenger airliners and military bombers. As a Soviet agency, it developed the U.S.S.R.'s first commercial jetliner and the world's first supersonic passenger jet. Headquarters are in Moscow.

Tupolev consists of the main design bureau and an experimental plant in Moscow, a branch in Tomilino, a flight-testing station in Zhukovsky, several design affiliates throughout Russia, and a department in Ukraine. It employs about 10, 000 people. Since its establishment it has been involved in about 80 aircraft projects, almost half of which have been put into massive series production, and it has supplied more than50 percent of all passenger aircraft operated by the countries of the former Soviet Union. In addition to civilian passenger airliners, Tupolev produces freight aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and test aircraft for research and development projects. Its success in foreign markets has been small compared with other Russian airplane builders.

The origin of the company dates to September 1922 with the formation of a commission to design and develop all-metal military aircraft. Established as part of the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI), the premiere Soviet aeronautics research institution, the commission was headed by aviation designer and TsAGI co-founder Andrey N. Tupolev. Tupolev's organization, which was set up in Moscow, included both a design team and workshop facilities to construct experimental aircraft for testing. The group's early forays into aircraft design led to the creation of a number of notable Soviet airplanes including the TB-1 (ANT-4), the world's first all-metal, twin-engine, cantilever-wing bomber and one of the largest planes built in the 1920s. Two Tupolev aircraft from the early 1930s, the giant, eight-engine ANT-20 airliner (Maksim Gorky) and the ANT-25 bomber, set world records for size and long-distance flights, respectively. In July 1936 Tupolev's design and construction effort was formally separated from the TsAGIand reorganized as Plant 156; its staff at that time numbered more than 4, 000.

In October 1937, during the height of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's great purges, the state secret police arrested and imprisoned Tupolev and a number of associates on charges of sabotage and espionage. Late thefollowing year, the secret police organized the TsKB-29 (Central Design Bureau 29) in the Bolshevo prison near Moscow to allow incarcerated aviation designers to develop military aircraft. There they ordered Tupolev to organize a design team, which, despite the lack of proper facilities for design and testing, managed to build a full-size mock up of a bomber design from timber. Eventually the team was allowed to return to the Plant 156 facilities in Moscow. Still prisoners and under constant guard, they designed and built a new twin-engine tacticalbomber, the Tu-2, which was rolled out in late 1940 and which became the standard tactical bomber in the Soviet air force in the immediate post-World War II era. In July 1941 Tupolev and a number of colleagues were released from incarceration, just in time to assist in evacuating their design bureau to Omsk in western Siberia following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. By the time the group returned to its former facilities in Moscow in late 1943, Tupolev had reestablished it as OKB-156 (Experimental Design Bureau 156).

The first major postwar task for Tupolev's bureau was to produce an exact replica of the Boeing B-29 bomber, based on a complete breakdown and detailed analysis of American planes that had been impounded during the war. The product of this effort was the Tu-4, the first truly strategic Soviet bomber. Tupolev simultaneously converted the Tu-4 for civilian use as the Tu-70, setting a precedent that he would later follow for several other military aircraft. In the 1950s, the design bureau produced the swept-wing turboprop Tu-95 in response to Stalin's request to develop an intercontinental strategic heavy bomber. Known to NATO allies by the designation “Bear, ” the Tu-95 became one of the longest-lived aircraft in the Soviet strategic arsenal. In the same period it created the first Soviet jet airliner, the twin-engine Tu-104, which first flew in 1955. The Tu-104 was derived from the bureau's highly successful Tu-16 jet bomber, first flown in 1952. From the late 1950s through the early '80s, the design bureau introduced a new generation of supersonic jet bombers, which included the twin-engine Tu-22, the twin-engine, variable-wing Tu-22M (Tu-26; NATO designation “Backfire”), and the four-engine, variable-wing Tu-160 (“Blackjack”). These were in addition to its development of several civilian airliners, such as the four-turboprop, 220-passenger Tu-114 (the world's largest passenger plane until the Boeing 747) and the160-passenger Tu-154 trijet.

During the 1960s the bureau also undertook the design and construction of a delta-wing supersonic transport, the Tu-144, a counterpart to the British and French Concorde. Tupolev assigned his son, Aleksey, as chief designer for the project. In June 1969 the Tu-144 became the first passenger jet to fly faster than the speed of sound. The aircraft's fuel consumption, however, proved to be much higher than anticipated, shortening its range, and political support for it waned after a production plane crashed at the Paris Air Show in 1973. The Tu-144 was in passenger service only briefly in 1977–78, until a second aircraft caught fire and crashed while ona test flight. In 1996 the design bureau revived the Tu-144 as part of a cooperative project with a number of U.S. aerospace companies to conduct research on a test version of a supersonic airliner.

Aleksey succeeded his father as general designer of the bureau upon the latter's death in 1972. In 1989 the organization became known by the name ANTK imeni A.N. Tupoleva (Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex named after A.N. Tupolev) as part of a restructuring to unite the core design bureau with its production affiliates. In 1992, following the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., it became a joint stock company with the Russian government holding a limited financial interest.

In the 1990s Tupolev struggled to survive in an extremely strained economy. Its few viable projects involved passenger airliners such as the Tu-204, which went into service in 1996. It also developed the Tu-324 passenger airliner, its first aircraft supported solely by financing from a commercial customer, the republic of Tatarstan. Other new products included the Tu-334, a 100-passenger airliner designed to replace its Tu-134 (introduced in the 1960s), and the Tu-330, a wide-body cargo transport for the Russian air force. It also continued to make marginal upgrades in the systems of its older bomber fleets.

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