The Atlantic

December 14, 2011

obitoftheday:

Obit of the Day: Человек Pакет*
Boris Chertok was there when the “Space Race” began. A rocket designer and aeronatuic engineer, Chertok was a member of the Soviet Union’s space program during its height in the 1950s and 1960s. He was there when Sputnik was sent into orbit in 1957. Four years later, Chertok was part of the team that made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space.
Chertok spent much of his career at the side of Sergei Korolev, the USSR’s leader of the space program. They had met in 1940 when both were sent to meet with Nazi rocket designers.
Note: A reminder that Germany and the USSR had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact in 1939 that lasted until the Nazis invaded Russia in 1941. Later many of the German rocket scientists headed to the U.S. to avoid living under Communist rule. So many “what ifs.”
The Soviets’ space program, like so many other facets of the country’s military and technology, was built to compete with, and hopefully surpass the United States. Unfortunately for Chertok and his colleagues, after their early successes, the U.S. became the dominant force in space exploration. The Soviet scientists were treated like human state secrets and could not travel out of the country until the late 1980s with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and Glasnost.
Chertok travelled broadly after the fall of the Communist regime and even wrote a three volume history of rocket development, Rockets and People which was published in the U.S. by his one-time rivals - NASA. He passed away in December 2011 at the age of 96.
* “Rocket Man” or, literally “Man of Rockets”
(Image of People and Rocket, Vol. 1 is courtesy of Amazon.com and copyright of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration.)

Obit of the Day: Человек Pакет*

Boris Chertok was there when the “Space Race” began. A rocket designer and aeronatuic engineer, Chertok was a member of the Soviet Union’s space program during its height in the 1950s and 1960s. He was there when Sputnik was sent into orbit in 1957. Four years later, Chertok was part of the team that made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space.

Chertok spent much of his career at the side of Sergei Korolev, the USSR’s leader of the space program. They had met in 1940 when both were sent to meet with Nazi rocket designers.

Note: A reminder that Germany and the USSR had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact in 1939 that lasted until the Nazis invaded Russia in 1941. Later many of the German rocket scientists headed to the U.S. to avoid living under Communist rule. So many “what ifs.”

The Soviets’ space program, like so many other facets of the country’s military and technology, was built to compete with, and hopefully surpass the United States. Unfortunately for Chertok and his colleagues, after their early successes, the U.S. became the dominant force in space exploration.
The Soviet scientists were treated like human state secrets and could not travel out of the country until the late 1980s with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and Glasnost.

Chertok travelled broadly after the fall of the Communist regime and even wrote a three volume history of rocket development, Rockets and People which was published in the U.S. by his one-time rivals - NASA. He passed away in December 2011 at the age of 96.

* “Rocket Man” or, literally “Man of Rockets”

(Image of People and Rocket, Vol. 1 is courtesy of Amazon.com and copyright of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration.)