The man who said 'go' for Tereshkova, Leonov, and Lunokhod
Minutes before Vostok 5, the third-stage 'Go' light stays dark. The commission leans toward scrubbing. Tyulin backs Korolev: it's instrumentation. They recycle the count — and the launch is perfect.
Soviet rocket-space scientist and Lieutenant General who served as First Deputy Chairman of GKOT (1963–1965) and First Deputy Minister of General Machine Building (1965–1976). As chairman of State Commissions, he personally gave the final launch command for Tereshkova's Vostok 6, Leonov's first spacewalk on Voskhod 2, the first soft lunar landing (Luna 9), and Lunokhod (Luna 17). He bore final governmental responsibility for the Soviet side of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (1974–1975) as the deputy minister directly in charge. A mathematician who began as a lathe operator at fourteen and served in Katyusha rocket units during the war, Tyulin was among the small cadre of military-technical managers who turned the Soviet rocket program from experimental launches into an institutionalized state capability.
Career Timeline
- 1941–1944Katyusha rocket units: battery commander to chief of staff, 3rd Army Operational Group GMCh
- 1945–1946Led V-2 rocket technology recovery group in Germany ('Tyulin's Enterprise')
- 1948–1955NII-4: head of ballistics lab → deputy chief for science → first deputy chief
- 1959–1961Director, NII-88 (later TsNIIMash)
- 1961–1965Deputy Chairman → First Deputy Chairman, GKOT
- 1965–1976First Deputy Minister of General Machine Building (under Minister S. A. Afanasyev)
- 1974–1975Chairman, Soviet Coordination Committee for Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
- 1977–1990Organized and led Wave Processes Research Lab, MSU Mech-Math Faculty