Vladimir Myasishchev: supersonic heavy aircraft

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:54

Recently, the media published a laconic report about the report that took place by Vladimir Denisov, an employee of the Russian scientific and industrial space center. It voiced the idea of building a monoblock spacecraft capable of flying to the Moon or Mars, flying around Venus.

The spacecraft, by design, will move in the gravitational field of the planets using a combined nuclear propulsion system. Orbital flight is planned to be carried out by "electric rocket engines" powered by a nuclear power plant on board.

The speaker also mentioned that the basis for such a project has already been worked out by Russian scientists, in particular Vladimir Myasishchev. At the same time, the speaker tactfully kept silent about the military rank of the named person. He was a major general-engineer.

Relevance of the issue raised in the report

Vladimir Denisov, announcing a possible research topic, clearly hinted at the Myasishchev MG-19 aircraft, developed in the 70s of the last century, brought to the stage of working drawings.

It was a promising model. In the event of its creation, which was planned by the end of the 80s, the USSR would have been far ahead of the United States in space, significantly "outplaying" the American Space Shuttle program. The M-19 project was not completed, but for two generations of Soviet space engineers it became a legend.

From today's standpoint, the Myasishchev project program was closed in the 80s voluntaristically. It must be admitted that the plane of the Soviet aircraft designer Vladimir Myasishchev MG-19 was not the only victim. Temporary managers then destroyed all military science, which required appropriations and yielded results only after years, while hiding behind demagogy.

According to modern calculations, a dozen of Myasishchev's planes would provide an abundance of cargo turnover from Earth to Space for the period until the end of the 21st century. With the help of these aircraft, systems of satellites and orbital stations would be created much cheaper and on a larger scale. The combat capabilities of space systems have increased by an order of magnitude.

The universal project - the Myasishchev MG-19 aircraft - simultaneously achieved four scientific goals, creating:

• nuclear supersonic aircraft;
• cryogenic hypersonic aircraft;
• aerospace plane;
• a spacecraft powered by a nuclear reactor.

At the same time, the Soviet project Buran-2, which replaced the MG-19, pursued only one of these tasks: the design of an aerospace aircraft. Simply put, it was just an adequate response to the American Space Shuttle program, nothing more.

VladimirMikhailovich, before engaging in the space program, glorified his name in the field of aviation technology, creating heavy supersonic bomber aircraft. This article is devoted to his biography and technical research.

Myasishchev Vladimir Mikhailovich. Career start

This man's life was full. Myasishchev enjoyed prestige among his colleagues. He was respected by S. Korolev, the two outstanding aircraft engineers had a close friendship. His ideas were ahead of time, and developments were always super-relevant. Suffice it to mention that Myasishchev's aircraft set 19 world records.

The future General Designer of OKB-23 was born in 1902, in the family of a we althy merchant in the Tula province. Interest in aviation arose in childhood, when a detachment of red pilots landed in his hometown of Efremov. The boy touched their planes with his hands and "got sick" with them for life.

Graduated from Myasishchev Moscow State Technical University. Bauman at the age of 25 and at the same time he married - Elena Spendiarova, the daughter of an Armenian composer.

After graduating, he worked for twelve years at the Tupolev Design Bureau. He studied the intricacies of design from his supervisor V. M. Petlyakov. Vladimir Myasishchev. Aircraft "Maxim Gorky", ANT-20, TB-3 were the fruit of the work of the engineering and technical team, where the hero of this article gained experience.

Vladimir Mikhailovich stood out among his colleagues for his fundamental physical and mathematical knowledge. In 1934, he led the creation of the ANT-41 torpedo bomber, being the head ofTsAGI brigade.

Since 1937, Myasishchev set up serial production of Li-2 as the chief designer of plant No. 84 (Khimki). This was the recognition of a practical worker in him.

Saving arrest

The times were not easy for the army, when all of its leaders were repressed. To the credit of individual NKVD workers, they tried to save the "brains of the Armed Forces". Perhaps that is why in 1938, acting ahead of Beria's bone-breakers, leading aircraft engineers were arrested, forced to sign a confession of sabotage, tried and sent to serve their sentences in prison design bureau No. 23.

Once there, Myasishchev was surprised to see familiar faces: his mentor Petlyakov, Tupolev, Korolyov, who had been arrested earlier, and a dozen and a half more aviation specialists. They not only worked together, but also lived in the same premises.

However, the NKVD has never been a charitable organization. The liabilities of Vladimir Mikhailovich included a 10-year prison term and confiscation of property. In the asset - a saved life, performance, talent, allowing in the future to be rehabilitated.

Designer was a good family man. He was helped to survive the trials by the hope of returning to his family again. As he recalled, it was only thanks to his wife's letters that he did not break down.

Aircraft industry. Teaching work

The aircraft designer understood that creativity and originality were required of him. The project of an innovative long-range bomber was developed by Myasishchev in 1939. Soviet-made aircraft, its predecessors, for a whole generationbacked off from him. Vladimir Mikhailovich introduced a whole range of new products: remote-controlled machine-gun and cannon equipment, a thin wing and built-in tanks, a chassis with one drive wheel. In 1940, the aircraft designer was released ahead of schedule.

Since 1943, Vladimir Mikhailovich, after the death of his predecessor, headed the Kazan Design Bureau of Petlyakov. Under his leadership, the PE-2I bomber was produced, superior in performance to German counterparts.

In 1945, his project to create a four-engine bomber was recognized as unpromising and the development was closed. From 1946 to 1951 Myasishchev works as the dean of the faculty for the construction of aircraft at TsAGI. He purposefully deepens his knowledge. He, a major general-engineer, is awarded the academic rank of professor.

From strategic bombers to spaceships

Myasishchev fundamentally disagreed with the fact that in 1946 he was "expelled from applied aviation" because of the futility of development. As a professor, he was able to fundamentally prove the correctness of his research, which he outlined in 1950 in a personal letter to Stalin. They believed him. In 1951, Major General was appointed chief designer for the development of the M-4 strategic bomber.

The project was more than successful. Vladimir Mikhailovich created the Soviet strategic bomber, which became the ancestor of a whole family of these aircraft (M-50, M-52, M-53, M-54).

In 1956 beforethe designer for the first time faced the task of creating a nuclear engine. The general engineer improved his previous model of the M-50 intercontinental bomber. With good combat capabilities of the machine, however, the fuel consumption was criticized: 500 tons for a one-way flight to the American continent. To the credit of the hero of this article, the manufacturer of the engine was not his design bureau.

This shortcoming was critical for launching the aircraft into mass production. The designer decided to eliminate it in the next model.

Myasishchev's M-60 aircraft - a strategic bomber driven by a nuclear reactor - was supposed to become a more advanced intercontinental weapon. However, the project was stopped. It's not even that the science of that level could not solve the problem of radiation. It's just that General Secretary Khrushchev decided that ballistic missiles are much more promising for intercontinental attacks.

In the future, the aircraft designer decided to develop aircraft for space. Since 1956, his Design Bureau No. 23 was the first in the USSR to work on the creation of a rocket plane that lands like an airplane. Myasishchev had considerable research experience. He was ready to develop space planes from scratch, because they were only described in the most general terms by theorists. In parallel with domestic scientists, the Americans developed a similar Space Shuttle program. The Soviet version of the space shuttle was called Buran-1.

Vladimir Mikhailovich gradually planned work on an aircraft, which had no analogues yet. For starters, his design bureau developed four possible options for him.designs:

• winged with low angles of attack for entry and hypersonic braking shields;
• winged with large angles of attack of entry and gliding landing;
• wingless with rotary trigger;
• conical with parachute landing.

Triangular type design with flat bottom approved for development. Step by step, difficult exploration work was carried out, but fate prepared another blow for the gifted scientist. Topic closed. Such a subjective interference in science could not even be foreseen by Myasishchev: space planes in the USSR were supplanted by rockets. General Secretary Khrushchev, inspired by the success of S. P. Korolev, decided: "We will not pull both programs!" By a resolution of the Council of Ministers, work on the creation of the first Buran was stopped.

Scientist's latest project

Vladimir Mikhailovich was a tough nut to crack: he was repressed, and he became one of the world's leading scientists in the field of astronautics. The topics of his research were forcibly closed twice, but he did not give up. Only one let the scientist down - age. Myasishchev knew that, having started a global work, he would not finish it. He once told his first deputy about this: “This project will be my swan song. I will never see the result of it. However, I can start it in the right direction.”

The sixty-four-year-old designer, as if dropping forty years, enthusiastically set about developing the global theme "Cold-2", which resulted in the project "Myasishchev MG-19 Suborbital Aircraft". A fundamentally new aircraft was being created.

The necessary basic research, design, testing and finally the full implementation of the project were planned for about twenty years. Initially, it was planned to work out the technology for consuming cryogenic fuel, then the rest of the design work.

Vladimir Mikhailovich created and rallied a professional and creative team to resolve scientific and design work. A. D. Tokhunts, Myasishchev’s colleague, became the head of the design complex, I. Z. Plyusnin became the chief designer, A. A. Bruk and N. D. Baryshov were appointed leading specialists in the areas.

Myasishchev's suborbital plane. Engine

The unique propulsion system was the hallmark of the 19th model. It has proved to be a stumbling block for many scientists. Some of them considered the technical characteristics of the project to be fundamentally unattainable. Others considered it impossible to create a nuclear engine that did not threaten the astronauts themselves with radiation.

However, the team, managed by the designer, calculated the necessary technical parameters of the engine, thanks to which Vladimir Myasishchev's MG-19 aircraft ceased to seem like a fantasy. The combined propulsion system, using the energy of a nuclear reaction, gave him the opportunity not only to master the near-Earth space, but also the circumlunar one. The nuclear installation made it possible to use promising types of space weapons: beam, beam, climatic.

An issue was also resolved in the projectcrew exposure. The radioactive circuit was isolated using a special heat exchanger. On this issue, Vladimir Mikhailovich held a scheduled consultation with the presidents of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Aleksandrov A. P. He highly appreciated the MG-19 aircraft being created by Vladimir Myasishchev, making a firm statement that in ten years a serial combined engine with a nuclear installation would be created.

Motor details

Let's consider the operation of Myasishchev's nuclear engine. The working fuel for it is hydrogen, which is supplied to the engine. This fluid system, which uses a nuclear reactor, does not require an oxidizer to operate. The fuel, which burns in a controlled chain reaction, heats the hydrogen, which, turning into plasma, is ejected through nozzles under significant pressure and makes the space shuttle move.

The project fell victim to schemers

Computational studies have confirmed the impressive technical capabilities of the aerospace aircraft. However, the Damocles sword of closure suddenly hovered over a project that required further five years of study. Minister of Defense Ustinov supported the faster project of Academician V. P. Glushko "Energy-Buran". Against the background of the position of the fourth person in the rating in the USSR, the position of the Minister of the Aviation Industry Dementyev P. V., who supported Myasishchev's nuclear aircraft, was not decisive. Pyotr Vasilyevich, having studied the documentation, understood that the MG-19, if created, would mark a qualitative breakthrough in the Soviet space program, and the Buran project would only be a symmetrical response to the Pentagon.

Ministerfor some time, the aviation industry tried to delay the implementation of the program of Academician Glushko. However, the enterprises subordinate to it involved in the creation of space planes were transferred by order from the Minaviaprom to the Ministry of General Engineering.

Thus, the imperious intriguers stopped the project creating the suborbital aircraft of the aircraft designer Vladimir Myasishchev MG-19. Vladimir Mikhailovich turned into a subordinate chief designer of Lozino-Lozinsky V. G. Work on the aerospace aircraft began to gradually curtail, and after the death of Myasishchev in 1978, its development was closed.

How to understand the statement of the Khrunichev center?

Readers who already have a general idea of what the Myasishchev VM MG-19 aircraft is, can now more clearly understand what was meant in a recent statement by a representative of the Russian space department.

It contains a certain amount of craftiness. Far from being a pacifist was Major General Myasishchev. The study of deep space, declared in the Khrunichev report, is in fact not priority number 1 for Russia today. The necessary conditions must first arise.

Let's cite the idea expressed last year by Igor Mitrofanov, head of the department of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He noted that research flights into space will become a reality in 25 years, when the problem of protecting the ship and crew from space radiation will be resolved.

The temptation to use the limitless military possibilities of space is too great. The suborbital aircraft of the Soviet aircraft designer Vladimir Myasishchev significantly reduces the cost of the delivery of components and the installation of space systems. These can be weapons that strike the enemy's electrical equipment with an electromagnetic pulse, intercept his missiles with a powerful laser, or moon-based remotely controlled rocket launchers. The current designers are also developing quite exotic weapons:

• climatic;
• catching asteroids and redirecting them to ground targets.

Thus, if Myasishchev's M-19 aircraft could be created today, it would mean only one thing - a new round of the arms race in the already studied near space. After all, a purposeful study of the distant complex is predicted by scientists only after two decades.

It is naive to believe that the Khrunichev Center will receive funding for this project not from the military department.

Conclusion

Once USSR Minister of Aviation Industry Dementiev had the imprudence to say at a meeting of aircraft designers that Myasishchev's projects would be implemented when the graves of all those present were forgotten by their descendants.

Looks like he was right. Today, the development of the seventies, the suborbital aircraft of Vladimir Myasishchev MG-19, is again becoming relevant in the 21st century.

In terms of its scientifically based capabilities, the aircraft conceived by the Major General exceeds the functionality of the shuttle in many basic indicators:

• all-azimuth launch;
• self-return to the launch site and the possibility of self-relocation;
• increased economic efficiency;
• using a wider range of orbit types;
• the ability of a space plane to alternately become airborne at an altitude of 50-60 thousand km, and then return to space again.

However, with all the "pluses", Myasishchev's MIG-19 aircraft will not become important in the study of the long-range complex right now. Before letting brave people into it, it is necessary to scientifically and technically solve the problem of their radiation safety.