Gleb Yurievich Maksimov is a talented and most underestimated space designer in the USSR. It was he who created the first artificial Earth satellite and many other spacecraft, including the top-secret interplanetary spacecraft, which was supposed to launch to Mars on June 8, 1971.
SON OF THE ENEMY
Maksimov became an outstanding scientist not thanks to, but in spite of Soviet power. All the details of his biography suggest a chain of incredible accidents that allowed him to take place as the creator of space technology. Grandfather, Nikolai Maksimov, a native of the Horde Khan Maksud, who converted to Orthodoxy and received a consonant surname at baptism - Maksimov, is the founder of the first book publishing house in Ufa, the owner of the first book printing house. That is, by Soviet standards, the exploiter of the working people. His father, Yuri Maksimov, was a repressed Left Socialist-Revolutionary who served in the Gulag from the 1930s to the 1956 Khrushchev amnesty. Nevertheless, the son of the "enemy of the people" managed to graduate from the Moscow Aviation Institute, in 1949 he got a job at Research Institute No. 4 of the USSR Ministry of Defense, located in Bolshev, near Moscow. There he calculated the ballistic characteristics of the flight path of limited-range missiles (for example, from Moscow to London).
His space odyssey began after a report from academician Blagonravov, where Maksimov proposed to dock the rockets together (that is, to make the rockets multistage). Thus, the flight range increased, and the multistage rocket could already be launched into space. Sergei Korolev, who was then unsuccessfully tormented by a duplicate of the captured V-2 (R-1 rocket), came to listen to Maximov's report. And soon Maksimov received an appointment to the royal OKB-1 (present-day RSC Energia), where practical work on space exploration began.
ALGAE FOR COMFORT
In 1956, Maksimov designs the first artificial satellite of the Earth - the same famous ball with antennas, whose name has entered all languages of the world. Then he switches to projects of interplanetary expeditions. The first automata with a short autograph “G. Max "on the case:" Moon "," Mars-1 "," Venera-1 "," Venera-2 "," Venera-3 ". Maximov's apparatus is the first to photograph the far side of the moon. But the designer at that time already dreamed of manned interplanetary flights.
And in 1959, his group began work on the most ambitious project of the twentieth century - the project of a manned flight to Mars. The so-called heavy interplanetary spacecraft (TMK) with a nuclear engine, protected from solar radiation, with landing modules, with greenhouses, providing autonomous flight for many years, is being developed. “At that time it was not yet known that a person could live in zero gravity,” recalls Oleg Tikhonov, a participant in that project. - Therefore, even artificial gravity was envisaged. The ship rotates around its axis and artificial gravity arises."
The Martian ship was to be built in orbit, and for its launch a special rocket - "seven" (N-7) was created. An intermediate option was also envisaged: a flyby of Mars and a return to Earth in an elongated elliptical orbit. “In the end, we decided to do without greenhouses and sections with rabbits,” says Nikolai Protasov, a colleague of Maksimov, who was involved in life support systems of the interplanetary spacecraft.- We left only chlorella algae, which produce oxygen, and even then as an element of psychological comfort. After all, the flight to other planets is different from the flight in the earth's orbit. Now astronauts see the Earth, the Moon, feel that we are near. And flights to Mars, Venus are completely different."
THE PARTY SENT TO SPACE
They were preparing for the flight to Mars very seriously. In accordance with the decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 715-296 of June 23, 1960, the start date was set - June 8, 1971. The day was taken not from the ceiling, but from the calculations of astronomers: it was then that there was the most favorable period of the so-called great opposition of the planets, when the distance between the Earth and Mars was reduced to a minimum. The triumphant return to Earth was planned for June 10, 1974.
The current talk about the sluggishness of the Soviet economy is somewhat exaggerated. There was everything that is inherent in the economy of developed countries, up to the elements of competition: several institutions are simultaneously working on heavy missiles. In addition to the Queen, the rockets are created by the teams of Yangel and Chelomey. And on the project itself, in parallel with Maximov, the group of Konstantin Feoktistov begins to work. Then the achievements of these groups are compressed into the final version. Gleb Maksimov becomes the head of a large well-coordinated team, the famous 9th department.
By the beginning of 1964, OKB-1 had already prepared projects for six docking modules for the creation of TMK (however, these modules appeared “in metal” only 25 years later, during the creation of Salyut-type orbital stations). A mock-up of a heavy interplanetary ship was also built - a ground module, where the testers lived in conditions of a long stay in a confined space.
THE MAIN THING IS THE MOON
However, Mars was soon forgotten. And the Moon was to blame for this, more precisely, the lunar race that unfolded between the Soviet Union and the United States. At this time, the Americans are launching their heavy rocket (Saturn-1B) with a model of the lunar Apollo. In accordance with Khrushchev's imperative "Catch up and overtake America!" all forces were immediately switched to projects for the development of the moon, and the Martian project was pushed into the background by order. And after the displacement of Khrushchev, they began to look at the projects of the Martian expeditions as if they were corn in the Arctic Circle. The era of "Star Wars" is approaching, the Politburo (at the suggestion of Ustinov) is concentrating on orbital stations.
However, the president of the USSR Academy of Sciences Mstislav Keldysh in 1969 proposed to return to the Martian projects of Gleb Maksimov. But he did not receive support. Gradually, all the drawings and calculations for the exploration of Mars were destroyed, even the designer's personal diaries and documents labeled "secret" were burned.
- And what about the spaceship? Was it also scrapped? - I ask Protasov.
- Not really, one module is still alive - now it is a ground-based experimental complex at the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems. This is Maksimov's ship.
Unlike Korolev, who won worldwide fame, albeit posthumously, few people know about Gleb Maksimov even now. Only once did the designer get a few lines in the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine: “On August 26, 2001, Gleb Yurievich Maksimov died. For more than half a century, he worked actively, with enthusiasm and with great creative dedication in the rocket and space industry, first, since 1949, at NII-4 in the group of MK Tikhonravov, on the theoretical problems of launching artificial earth satellites. Then, since 1956, at OKB-1 SP Korolev, where he headed the design sector and the department that developed the first automatic interplanetary stations for the study of the Moon, Venus, Mars and interplanetary ships, for which he was awarded the Lenin Prize.
