The minister whose precision instruments controlled missiles and the Buran shuttle
In February 1991 he was offered the post of deputy prime minister for foreign economic relations in the new cabinet. He refused. 'They did not need me in that leadership,' he recalled.
A military-industrial administrator who, as USSR Minister of Instrument-Making, Automation and Control Systems (1980–1989), oversaw the critical control systems for strategic missiles and the Energia-Buran space shuttle. For his leadership of the Buran program's successful test flight he was made a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1990; he later served as Administrator of Affairs of the Council of Ministers before refusing a post in the 1991 cabinet and retiring.
Career Timeline
- 1954Graduates Novocherkassk Polytechnic Institute, begins as engineer at Krasnodar Electrical Measuring Instruments Plant
- 1954–1968Rises through Krasnodar ZIP plant: head of technology lab, head of special design bureau, to chief engineer
- 1968–1974Chief engineer of Main Directorate for Electrical Measuring Instruments at Minpribor, then head of Soyuzelektropribor
- 1974–1980Head of Technical Directorate, then Scientific-Technical Directorate, then Deputy Minister of Minpribor
- 1980–1989USSR Minister of Instrument-Making, Automation and Control Systems
- 1981–1986Candidate member, CPSU Central Committee
- 1986–1990Member, CPSU Central Committee
- 1989–1991Administrator of Affairs, USSR Council of Ministers
- 1991 이후Retired, expert adviser at RAS Institute of Control Sciences, and memoirist
Related historical events
The Energia-Buran Program and Control Systems
The Soviet reusable space shuttle system Energia-Buran was a massive project spanning over a decade, culminating in its unmanned test flight on 15 November 1988. The Ministry of Instrument-Making (Minpribor), led by Mikhail Shkabardnya, was responsible for developing and producing the automatic control and measurement systems that served as Buran's central nervous system. Shkabardnya personally directed the creation of a complex automated control system for the launch complex, oversaw the safe fueling process for large quantities of cryogenic propellants, and organized cooperation among the ministry's research institutes, design bureaus, and factories. By his account, more than 130 enterprises and 70 research institutes and design bureaus under Minpribor took part in the project.
In November 1988, Buran launched unmanned, completed two orbits, and landed automatically, demonstrating that Soviet automatic control technology rivaled the American Space Shuttle. For this achievement Shkabardnya was made a Hero of Socialist Labor by a closed decree of the President of the USSR on 30 December 1990, receiving the Order of Lenin. The technologies accumulated by Minpribor enterprises under his leadership were subsequently applied to automated control systems for nuclear power plants, gas pipelines, and metallurgical and chemical plants: the backbone of the country's infrastructure.