The engine designer who powered Soviet spacecraft: inventor of the closed-cycle rocket engine
After Gagarin's return, Korolev introduced Isaev to Khrushchev: "And this is the man who brakes all our work." Khrushchev caught the joke — Isaev had built the braking engine that brought the spacecraft home — and laughed, thanking him repeatedly.
A mining engineer turned rocket designer, Isaev began with the engine for the BI-1 rocket-powered fighter and founded his own design bureau in 1944. In 1949 he first proposed the closed-cycle (staged combustion) engine; his thin-walled copper chambers, anti-oscillation baffles and flat injector plates freed Soviet rocketry from the complex plumbing of V-2-derived designs. His TDU braking engine returned every Vostok and Voskhod cosmonaut, including Gagarin, safely to Earth, while the KTDU maneuvering engines powered Soyuz, Salyut, Mir, and every Soviet lunar and planetary probe. He also designed the R-11 (Scud) engine and pioneered submerged-in-tank propulsion for SLBMs. The KB KhimMash bureau he founded remains Russia's premier spacecraft engine centre.
Career Timeline
- 1931Graduated Moscow Mining Institute; metallurgical engineer
- 1934–44Bolkhovitinov bureau: landing gear, BI-1 rocket fighter engine
- 1944–47Chief Designer of OKB-2; German rocket technology mission (1945)
- 1948–52NII-88 Section 9: anti-oscillation baffle, flat injector plate, closed cycle (1949)
- 1951–55R-11 (Scud) engine S2.253; collaboration with Korolev begins
- 1958–61OKB-2 consolidation; Vostok TDU braking engine (104 successful flights)
- 1962–71KTDU series: Soyuz/Salyut/Mir/planetary probes; LOX/LH2 engine for N1-L3 lunar project
- 1967–71Chief Designer of KB KhimMash (former OKB-2) until his death