Abstract
Anatoliy Davidovich Daron was born on April 26, 1926, in Odessa, Ukraine. In 1948 he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute as an engineer specializing in liquid propellant rocket engines. After graduation he worked for 50 years at the Experimental Design Bureau No. 456 (OKB-456), led by the Chief Designer of Rocket Engines Valentin Glushko. Daron was the lead designer of the liquid propellant rocket engines RD-107 and RD-108 for the R-7, the first Soviet ICBM. These engines launched Sputnik and boosted into space all Soviet piloted spacecraft—Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz. Daron also served as the lead designer of engines for the R-9 silo-based ICBM and for the UR-700 rocket. He worked as the head of the design department at Glushko’s design bureau. Daron is a doctor of technical sciences and the author of more than 300 technical articles and patents. He also has a number of publications on the history of engine design at OKB-456.1 He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Order of Lenin, from the Soviet government for the launch of Sputnik, for the first human spaceflight of Yuriy Gagarin, and for participation in joint US-Soviet space programs. Dr. Daron has emigrated to the United States and currently lives in Brighton, Massachusetts.
Anatoliy Daron (courtesy Anatoliy Daron).
May 23, May 27, and June 13, 2008
Brighton, Massachusetts
Interviewer: Slava Gerovitch
The interview was conducted in Russian and translated by Slava Gerovitch.
Anatoliy Daron, a brilliant engineer and the mind behind the most famous Soviet rocket engine, gives a firsthand account of the transition of Soviet rocketry from the learning and imitation of German technology to new, innovative designs. Daron’s account of numerous challenges of rocket engine design and testing provides a rare insight into the engineering culture of Soviet rocketry. His analysis of the failings of the Soviet N1 lunar rocket’s design is a crucial addition to the history of the Soviet piloted lunar program. Daron, who worked for Chief Designer Valentin Glushko, also discusses the notorious dispute between Glushko and Chief Designer Sergey Korolev from the perspective of the Glushko camp, adding complexity to the conventional accounts told by the Korolev side. Daron also offers some provocative ideas about the future of human spaceflight.
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Notes
Anatoliy D. Daron, “K istorii razrabotki dvigateley pervykh stupeney rakety-nositelya ‘Vostok’,” in Iz istorii aviatsii i kosmonavtiki, vyp 66 (Moscow: IIET AN SSSR, 1995), accessed May 21, 2014, http://www.lpre.de/resources/articles/R7_Engines.pdf;
Daron, “Razrabotka dvigatelya po novoy skheme,” in Odnazhdy i navsegda: Dokumenty i lyudi o sozdatele raketnykh dvigateley i kosmicheskikh sistem akademike Valentine Petroviche Glushko, edited by Viktor F. Rakhmanin and Leonid E. Sternin (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1998), pp. 456–497, accessed May 21, 2014, http://www.lpre.de/resources/articles/R D-270.pdf; Daron and Rakhmanin, “Evolyutsiya konstruktsii kamery ZhRD dlya obespecheniya poletov v kosmos,” Dvigatel, no. 5 (2007), accessed May 21, 2014, http://www.lpre.de/resources/articles/Chambers.pdf;
Daron and Rakhmanin, “Evolyutsiya konstruktsii i vybor razmernosti kamery dvigatelya rakety R-7,” XXXI Akademicheskiye chteniya po kosmonavtike (Moscow, 2007), accessed May 21, 2014, http://www.lpre.de/resources/articles/R7_EngineChamberEvolition.pdf.
See Georgiy E. Langemak and Valentin P. Glushko, Rakety, ikh ustroystvo i primenenie (Moscow: Glavnaya redaktsiya aviatsionnoy literatury, 1935). In 1938 Glushko was arrested on a trumped-up charge of wrecking, sentenced to eight years of imprisonment, and released in 1944.
On Glushko, see Pavel I. Kachur and Aleksandr V Glushko, Valentin Glushko (St. Petersburg: Politekhnika, 2008).
The “Doctors’ Plot” refers to the arrest in early 1953 of a large group of prominent Soviet physicians, many of them Jewish, who were accused of plotting to assassinate top Soviet leaders. The arrest engendered a vicious anti-Semitic campaign, which resulted in the dismissal and arrest of scores of Jewish professionals across the Soviet Union. See Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953 (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
The Black Hundreds was an extreme nationalist movement in support of the Russian monarchy in the early twentieth century, known for its rabid anti-Semitism. See Walter Laqueur, Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).
Tsiolkovskiy’s writings, popularizing the idea of a multistage rocket, profoundly influenced Soviet rocketry enthusiasts. See James T. Andrews, Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009);
Asif A. Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
The design testing batch is usually intended only for tests of rocket design, not for launching payloads. The permission to launch Sputnik was contingent upon the success of the first test launches of the R-7 ICBM. After the first successful test of R-7 in August 1957, Sergey Korolev was able to proceed with preparations for the launch of Sputnik. See Asif Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974, NASA SP-2000–4408 (Washington, DC: NASA, 2000), chapter 4.
At a 1960 meeting of the Council of Chief Designers, Korolev stated, “Using UDMH for combat missiles is undoubtedly inexpedient. A single fueling of the N1 launcher with UDMH would cost 5–7 million rubles”; Georgiy S. Vetrov, comp., S. P. Korolev i ego delo: svet i teni v istorii kosmonavtiki (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), p. 306.
Nikolay Dmitriyevich Kuznetsov (1911–1995). On Kuznetsov, see Vladimir N. Orlov and Marina V. Orlova, Generalnyy konstruktor N. D. Kuznetsov i ego OKB (Samara, 2011).
On the Energiya-Buran program, see Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis, Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle (Chichester: Springer/Praxis, 2007).
See, for example, Vladimir Ye. Bugrov, Marsianskiy proyekt S. P. Koroleva (Moscow: Russkiye vityazi, 2007).
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© 2014 Slava Gerovitch
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Gerovitch, S. (2014). Engine Designer Anatoliy Daron. In: Voices of the Soviet Space Program. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481795_4
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