"The Moon, of course, must be the priority to us" – interview with Oleg Lifanov, the Academician

How the first artificial satellite was launched and why everyone considered it a sensation, except those who worked on it; why Chief Designer Vasily Mishin was almost arrested and why the future belongs to reusable technology; whether people need to fly into space and whether our country remains a space power... We are proud to introduce a conversation with Academician Oleg Alifanov, Head of the Department of Space Systems and Rocket Engineering of the MAI Institute No. 6 "Aerospace".

We are celebrating two "space" anniversaries this autumn: 165 years since the birth of the founder of theoretical cosmonautics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and 65 years since the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth. Do you remember the launch?

I remember it as if it was yesterday. In October 1957, I was 16 years old, I was graduating from school and was fond of amateur radio. I caught the "beep-beep" signal with my radio station, and in the evening we all went outside to see the "star" of that satellite flying over the sky. It made great impression.

The dawn of the space era

Is it possible to say that it determined your fate?

I don’t think so. I have always been an enthusiastic person, and since childhood I had many different hobbies. Painting and radio engineering were two most serious. I was fascinated by both. I studied painting quite seriously and didn't know where I was going until the tenth grade. There was a unique teacher in the art studio of the Palace of Pioneers, his name was Valentin Ivanovich, very kind and at the same time very demanding he was. I remember coming there in the third grade with quite a thick folder of my drawings. It seemed to me then that I had already achieved great success. Valentin Ivanovich flipped through my art, put it aside and said, "Well, let's start learning to draw." It was disturbing for my ego, but, I must say, it was useful. Since then, I have been studying there regularly and really learned a lot. But I also made a detector receiver in the fourth grade.

But in 1958 you came to MAI and since then you have not left these walls. You were the dean of the aerospace faculty, you were the head of the department for many years... Why MAI?

My father, Mikhail Kuzmich, was a student of the first group of students who came to study in MAI in 1930 and then worked for aviation. Of course, he wanted me to study here too. But first I tried to pass the exams to Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. It didn't work out though. I scored four for the exam in mathematics, but I got a three for physics. I still remember the task: an extensive electrical circuit, and it was necessary to find currents in the circuits. We didn't do anything of that kind at school. I wrote a whole essay on where and how the electrons will run. In fact, I was trying to deduce Kirchhoff's law, but I failed. I went to MAI and stayed here for almost 65 years.

Didn't you regret it?

From about the third year it became interesting to me. And the first courses, I do not remember clearly. I've always wanted more specifics in the applications of a particular section of mathematics and physics. For example, mathematics was lectured to us somehow quite abstractly, and even then we wanted to have at least a distant idea of why we need this or that section of it. Keeping in mind this experience, I always advise math teachers: be sure to tell students where it can be useful to them, have appropriate statements of control tasks for the course. In particular, our department at one time, together with teachers of mathematical analysis, developed problem statements that graduates may encounter in their future work. Motivation is a very important thing for a student. And just calculating integrals, taking derivatives is too boring.

Oleg Mikhailovich, the satellite was launched immediately after the centenary of Tsiolkovsky. Was that done on purpose?

I think few people realized this. For the first time, my teacher Vasily Mishin, who took the place of a chief designer after Sergey Korolev, told about how it was at the International Astronautical Congress in 1997. This information was strictly classified. Vasily Pavlovich was an exceptionally honest man, and when asked about it, he replied: "Well, now I have to tell you."

He was the first deputy of Korolev for scientific and technical activities at OKB-1, and he was also entrusted with the development of combat missiles, ranging from R-1 to R-7 and the first solid-fuel rocket. And Sergey Pavlovich himself has always been, if I may say so, "imprisoned" by space exploration. He was primarily interested in everything related to this. My father worked with him during the war in Omsk at the Tupolev plant and told me that even at that time Korolev dreamed of flying into space.

So, when it came to the intercontinental rocket, the "Seven", it became clear that it could be used to launch an artificial satellite into orbit, which had already begun to be developed at OKB-1. But first it was necessary to bring the rocket to its main purpose. Its separating head parts during flight tests could not withstand heating during descent in the atmosphere and fell apart. At that time, they did not know how to make effective thermal protection. Flight tests were temporarily halted.

A group of young scientists gathered under the leadership of Academician Georgy Petrov to solve the problem. They successfully coped with this task. And while the problem was solved, Sergey Pavlovich appealed to the government with a proposal to use a ready-made rocket to launch an artificial satellite into orbit. At first, the idea aroused distrust, but when everything was explained to Khrushchev, he gave his consent.

PS-1 was urgently manufactured: the first "simplest satellite" was born under this name. The people who made it and launched it into space had no idea what a sensation it would cause all over the globe. Vasily Pavlovich said that when he came to work the next day, to his surprise, he saw that his desk was littered with clippings from foreign newspapers shouting about the opening of the space era by the Soviet Union.

Solving the incorrect tasks

Oleg Mikhailovich, subsequently thermal protection was improved and you played a significant role in it. You are even called the creator of an entire scientific school. What is it about?

While still studying at the Institute, I became interested in the issues of descent in the atmosphere of manned cruise spacecraft. I also wrote a diploma on this topic. It was a completely new topic, there was no literature, everything was classified. There was a State Scientific and Technical Library on Kuznetsky Most, and some American data in English could be found there. I almost lived there, studying these materials. I needed to calculate ballistics, aerodynamics and thermal modes. It was the thermal design and thermal protection of spacecraft that I wanted to do, remaining at the department.

But I had to wait, because the department was given one important scientific task - to create a methodology for calculating the reliability of ballistic missile designs. No one was dealing with this problem then. Our group of four graduates of the department was headed at that time by associate professor, later Professor Alexey Kuznetsov - an amazing man with an extraordinary destiny. During the war he was a flying radio operator, he was shot twice, jumped with parachute, once he was unharmed, and once he broke his leg, but then he flew again. One of the entire squadron, he survived and taught at MAI for the rest of his life. I am very grateful to him for the lessons of life – they were a special kind of people of crystal honesty, decency and hard work.

When we started this work, none of us understood much about it, including Alexey Alekseevich himself. But gradually we found the necessary solutions and eventually completed the task successfully. After that, I moved on to the problem that I wanted to deal with - the thermal protection systems of space descent vehicles. Korolev was no longer there, and Mishin, his successor, gave us the task to create an experimental base for testing heat-protective materials in non-stationary modes. Again, there was practically no experience. They began to create plasma torches, which was very difficult to do, and in the future to conduct the necessary experimental studies.

For example, I needed to find a way to measure large time-variable heat fluxes acting on the surface of the sample under study. And the time of such measurements is sometimes only a few seconds, then the sample of the material is already subjected to thermal destruction named ablation. At the same time, the problem itself is mathematically unstable. I had to take up mathematics.

And did you finally understand what it is needed for?

Yes, serious math was needed here. I studied functional analysis, the theory of partial differential equations, integral equations, numerical methods, attended several courses of lectures at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of Moscow State University, which was founded by the outstanding mathematician Andrey Tikhonov. By this time, I managed to find a general method for solving so-called incorrect problems.

What is it?

There was such a famous French mathematician whose name was Hadamard, who at the very beginning of the last century formulated the conditions for the mathematical correctness of the formulation of any problem. This is the existence of the solution, its uniqueness and stability. And if at least one of these conditions is not met, then the task is incorrectly set. Hadamard's authority in the mathematical world was so great that mathematicians concluded that if they met such a problem, then an attempt to solve it in itself is incorrect.

Almost like Aristotle...

Yes, these tasks have not been solved for almost half a century. Tikhonov made his first attempt during the war. He reformulated the original incorrect problem into a conditionally correct one. And in 1963 he proposed a general method for solving such problems. My tasks in the area of thermal conductivity were set precisely incorrectly. I studied Tikhonov's works, which required a fairly deep immersion in mathematics. I got acquainted with Andrey Nikolaevich, we have good relations now. It was Andrey Nikolaevich who submitted one of my articles to the Reports of the Academy of Sciences for publication. So, I had to become a mathematician to some extent. Based on the general theory of incorrect problems, I later proposed my own method of solving them, which has taken root in various practical studies, not only in the field of heat transfer and thermophysics.

What is its difference from Tikhonovsky’s?

I proposed the so-called iterative regularization in relation to gradient methods - for example, to the methods of rapid descent and conjugate gradients. Such methods can be regularized by making them stable by choosing the number of iterations.

A waste of public money

What does it look like practically?

Practically since then, a whole scientific direction began to develop, a school of research with many applications in thermophysics and thermal engineering were created. It became famous, and not only in our country.

What role did all this play in the development of thermal protection systems?

There are a lot of applications. For example, this knowledge was useful when creating heat-protective coatings for Buran. We have proposed a method for measuring the heat flow on the surface of the thermal protection along the entire descent trajectory during its flight tests on the Bor-4 apparatus, as well as for studying the thermophysical properties of the thermal protection materials themselves. We convinced Gleb Lozinsky, who headed this project, that our research could be useful in creating an effective thermal protection of Buran. He said: "We are doing an industry laboratory in MAI!". In this laboratory, we were engaged in such research, in particular, the heat-protective tiles for Buran were also endowed with thermometric capabilities.

The entire surface of the Buran was covered with ceramic tiles, except for the nose and leading edge of the wing, where other materials were used due to the very high temperature. It was a light, highly porous material, which had a thin coating of a special material on top, which gave the tile hardness and operability.

In all four launches of "Bor-4" (and this was an automatic device returned from space, on which the thermal protection of the "Buran" was tested) we took part with the installation of similar thermometric tiles on the surface of the apparatus, and according to temperature measurements in them, we solved the corresponding inverse problems of thermal conductivity, in particular, to determine heat flows. But for this we needed to know the thermophysical properties of the material. We solved this problem in advance at the stands at MAI, TsAGI and TsNIIMash, also involving techniques based on solving the corresponding inverse problems of thermophysics. For the first time, non-stationary heat fluxes on the surface of the lander along the trajectory of its movement in the atmosphere were measured. Since the Bor-4 simulated the flight of the Buran, it was assumed that the same thing would happen there.

Now it is often said that the future belongs to reusable space technology, such as the Buran was. Do you agree with this?

Yes, I agree. Buran was a great machine, but it is over-sized. That's what ruined him. By the way, Vasily Mishin stood against "Buran". He stated that the Energia-Buran rocket and space system was being created prematurely and would not be needed. He did not interfere with anyone's work, but he believed that Buran was doomed, that it was a waste of public money. I did not agree with him, I proved to him that everything was different. Here, they say, the Americans are flying! And he replied that they would soon stop flying, because it was an incorrect, unreasonably expensive solution to implement. Because of this opinion, by the way, he almost went to prison.

Really?!

In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. Then pluralism, publicity and freedom of speech began to come into fashion. Vasily Pavlovich was invited to speak on television. There were three years left before the Buran flight, it was under active development, but Vasily Pavlovich, with his characteristic directness, spoke critically.

A few months have passed, I come to work to MAI. Boris Pankratov was then the dean of our faculty, and I was Mishin's deputy as the head of our department. And Pankratov invites me to come to him. He looked pale. He said: "We are in trouble. Vasily Pavlovich is accused of disclosing secret information (as it later turned out, it was related to the Energia-Buran system), and today or tomorrow he will be arrested, in connection with which we have been instructed "from above" to exclude him from the party and dismiss him." We began to discuss what could be done in this situation, and decided to seek help from the Academy of Sciences.

One of my colleagues and I went there urgently. At that time, Academician Anatoly Alexandrov was the President of the Academy. But on that particular day he was on a business trip. He was replaced by First Vice-President Konstantin Frolov. He was friends with Mishin. After listening to us, he was indignant: "This can't be, I won't allow it." And he called the chairman of the KGB Viktor Chebrikov. Explained the situation to him, told him that Vasily Pavlovich was a man of crystal honesty with a lot of services to the country, including in ensuring its security, then became silent and listened to the answer on the other end of the wire. His face darkened. He put down the phone and tolds us: "Nothing can be done, the decision has been made."

We were urgently going home to Vasily Pavlovich and trying to convince him to write a letter to Gorbachev. And he balked: "I won't write anything."

Did he not understand the danger that threatened him?

You need to know Mishin. He was such a man: if he was sure he was right, he didn't care about the consequences, especially with regard to himself personally. “Let them do what they want”, he said, “I don't care”.

We wrote a letter instead of him. It was already late night, we were in a hurry. I brought it to Vasily Pavlovich - he corrected it in two places. His daughter quickly typed the letter on a typewriter. I said "Sign it!". Barely persuaded him. Got it signed. And what to do next? How to pass it over? And then we recalled that we had some acquaintance in the government apparatus. "Vasily Pavlovich," I say, "Do you have his phone number?" - "Yes, it seems there it is." We phoned, and he turned out to be the assistant Secretary General and he himself had great respect for Mishin. And although it was already late, he told me to take the letter to him immediately. And early in the morning I put it in front of Mikhail Sergeyevich, who, as I later learned, put a resolution on it: "Figure it out, but not arrest."

Optimism is always to the point

So, you saved your teacher. Did they figure it out finally?

For a month or two after that Vasily Pavlovich was brought "on the mat". Then, thank God, this "case" completely collapsed, there was not a single fact that confirmed Mishin's guilt in a slightest way.

Who could have organized this?

I don't know. This, of course, was some kind of revenge, most likely related to his public position on the project. If it hadn't been for the letter, he would have been arrested.

Now do you think he was right?

Yes, he was right. At first we, and then the Americans, abandoned this idea, and now they have only an automatic winged spacecraft of a significantly smaller dimension - X-37. They also classified why it was created, and what kind of thermal protection there is, and the luggage compartment there, generally speaking, is quite impressive. He has considerable opportunities. It is dangerous.

Do you think manned cosmonautics is needed at all, or would automatic machines be enough?

Manned cosmonautics is certainly needed. Not everything can be done by automats. Yes, there are still many problems on Mars and even on the Moon, especially those related to radiation safety, there is still a lot of research and development to be done before sending people there for a long time, but we still need to strive for this.

What for? Can't automatic stations deliver valuable materials from the Moon?

I think we can't do without people anyway. I agree with Tsiolkovsky, who believed that humanity would not be on Earth forever. In the future, they will probably learn how to create large ships for 200-300 people, where it will be possible to conduct serious scientific experiments using the opportunities that space provides.

Is our country a space power or is it all history?

Yes, we are still a space power. We are actively working on the International Space Station. By the way, at a recent meeting of the Space Council, I expressed the opinion that we do not need to hurry to leave the ISS, because important scientific tasks are being solved there. Project studies have begun on the creation of a new large-scale ROSS space object - the Russian Orbital Service Station. There are space projects that, however, are often postponed, but I believe that they will be created. The Moon, of course, must be our priority for the near future. This is the closest celestial body to us, useful for further use and study. Missions to Venus are being prepared. It was once called the "Russian planet" because it was our compatriots who sent the first research stations there. Venus is on schedule, Lavochkin NGO has already started work on the creation of new devices. So, Venus, I hope, will remain "Russian".

Do you think optimism is to the point now?

Optimism is always to the point. I think everything will work out. We need to do science in space, and not just make movies. I understand that it sounds tempting to be the first to make a movie in space, but I think it's not always necessary to be the first in everything. The main thing is to benefit science and people. Space exploration is an expensive undertaking. But it is impossible not to master it.

At the beginning of our conversation, you said that you are an enthusiastic person. What are you interested in now?

I'm still fascinated by my work. This topic is far from exhausted, the boundaries are still somewhere out there, unseen. Other hobbies are postponed.

What about drawing?

I haven't painted for a long time, although once I couldn't live a day without it. I remember studying in a group at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. I especially liked the hall of Michelangelo's works. I used to go there and paint these masterpieces for hours. I recently found a folder with those works - not so bad, by the way. But then all my creative energy was captured by science and rocket and space technology.

By the way, did you know that the first student artificial satellite launched into space in the world was made in MAI? It was in 1978 at Mishin’s department. The Student Space Design Bureau (SKKB) was created on it under the scientific guidance of such a famous scientist as Mikhail Tikhonravov, an associate of Korolev since the 1930s, since the time of the famous GIRD. It was he, at that time a professor of the department, who laid the foundations for designing small satellites with the direct participation of students. Unfortunately, Mikhail Klavdievich did not live to see the launch of the MAI satellite into space.

And another achievement, also recognized in the world, is the launch of one space object from another space object. These were two small-sized satellites weighing about 35 kg, sent into space in 1982 from the Salyut-2 orbital station by a graduate of our department, cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev.

With your hands?

No, there was an airlock provided, through which everything unnecessary was thrown into space. It was through this camera that our satellites went on a flight. The satellite was considered international, allegedly made by the forces of all the countries of the socialist camp. In fact, all the work was done in our Design Bureau, but since it was already officially announced that the satellite was international, each of the participating countries made their own emblem, which were then pasted on the satellites. After returning from space, Valentin says to me: "Do you think I launched them like that?" It turns out that before launching the satellites, he managed to carefully chip off these emblems and take them as a souvenir.

Text by Natalia LeskovaPhoto by Andrey Afanasyev, Kommersant