Mars-dreaming GIRD co-founder and designer of the Soviet Union's first liquid-fueled rocket
His lifelong motto was 'Forward to Mars!'; he died of typhus in March 1933 and never saw the GIRD-X, the Soviet Union's first liquid-fueled rocket that he designed, fly six months later.
A Soviet rocket engineer and spaceflight theorist of Baltic German descent. In 1931 he co-founded the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD) in Moscow with Sergei Korolev, and as head of Brigade No. 1 designed the GIRD-X, the first liquid-fueled rocket launched in the Soviet Union. He proposed pioneering concepts including space greenhouses, solar sails, winged rockets, and atmospheric braking, and pursued interplanetary flight his whole life under the motto 'Forward to Mars!'
Career Timeline
- 1914Graduated, Riga Polytechnic Institute
- 1915–1919Engineer, Provodnik rubber plant, Moscow
- 1919–1926Engineer, Motor aircraft plant
- 1926–1930Engineer, Central Design Bureau of Aviation
- 1929–1932Designed and tested OR-1 jet engine
- 1930–1931Lecturer, Moscow Aviation Institute
- 1931–1933Co-founded GIRD, head of Brigade No. 1
- 1933Designed and tested OR-2 liquid-fuel engine