Rockets and People, Volume II: Creating a Rocket Industry - Memoirs of Russian Space Pioneer Boris Chertok, Sputnik, Moon, Mars, Launch Pad Disasters, ICBMs (NASA SP-2005-4110) by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Progressive Management
Published: 2011-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

In most narratives on missile technology and cosmonautics—whether nonfic-tion, memoirs, or fiction—cosmonauts, chief designers and their associates, and flight directors seen in the lush interiors of mission control centers are the ones that stand out. Rarely does an officer standing in a bunker at a periscope or as an extra pressing the buttons on some obscure control panel flash onto the movie or television screen.

Jumping ahead, I will mention that in 1970 Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces Colonel General Mikhail Grigoryevich Grigoryev and I agreed to act as consultants for the film Ukroshcheniye ogonya (Taming the Fire), written and directed by Daniyl Khrabrovitskiy.27 The screenplay included numerous missile launches with their various aftereffects. I insisted that everything should be authentic: the officers and soldiers should be dressed "by the book." Khrabrovitskiy responded, "That's out of the question." To my astonishment, Grigoryev agreed with him. Those who saw this film might have been pleasantly surprised to see the launch site personnel in gorgeous, multicolored costumes that look more like Olympic team outfits. The few initiated mercilessly reviled me, "How could you agree to such a sacrilege?!" But this desecration struck the fancy of Ustinov—Communist Party Central Committee secretary at that time—and the staff of the Central Committee defense industries department, which endorsed the film and permitted its release.28 Khrabrovitskiy spelled it out for me in no uncertain terms that "if we had portrayed everything as it really was, the film never would have appeared on the screen." I realized that he was right and waved it off; at least, the movie tried to come close to a true portrayal of the technology. In that regard, Khrabrovitskiy certainly succeeded with the frames depicting the failed R-7 launches and blastoffs. I would like to note that for all the plot shortcomings in Taming the Fire, to this day it remains the only feature film in which a director tried to portray the creative process of developing a missile in all its dramatic variety.

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