1887–1933
○ Typhus
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!'
Activities and affiliations
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
From experimental engines to GIRD rockets
Zander's rocket work involved engine experiments and technical proposals before he co-founded GIRD in 1931. In 1929 he began work on the experimental OR-1 engine at the Central Institute of Aviation Motor Construction. Running on compressed air and gasoline, it became GIRD project 01; Zander also tested high-energy fuels made by mixing powdered metals with gasoline. After GIRD was organized in Moscow in 1931, he headed its first brigade, responsible for rocket engines. OR-2 was designed for Korolev's RP-1 rocket glider and burned oxygen and gasoline. It was later modified to use alcohol, which produced less heat, and its thrust was increased.
Zander began developing GIRD-X in January 1933. An initial plan to use metallic propellant was abandoned after unsuccessful tests, and the rocket was designed around the Project 10 engine, which used liquid oxygen and gasoline. Cooling the combustion-chamber walls with liquid oxygen encountered burn-through problems, prompting a change from gasoline to alcohol. Zander died of typhus in March 1933 and did not take part in the launch. GIRD-X was launched on 25 November and rose to about 80 metres. Earlier, on 17 August, GIRD's second brigade launched GIRD-9, a hybrid-propellant rocket that reached 400 metres. In September 1933 Moscow's GIRD and the Leningrad Gas Dynamics Laboratory were merged into the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII); their liquid-propellant rocket research continued within this successor organization.