To the day of cosmonautics. Continuation of the history of the Soviet ballistic center

"The earth is listening." Nesterov. V.D. 1965

My last article, with perhaps a pretentious title, sparked a lively discussion. To give answers to some of the questions, I decided to post Platonov’s letter in full, without any editing. Moreover, it is of historical interest. Of course, this letter was the answer to mine. But all the questions that I asked are well read from the answers.


- Thank you very much, Pavel Sergeevich for the letter and the photos sent!
My answer is in the stack mode:

1. I will certainly read with pleasure what you wrote (although I admit, I live in continuous time pressure: “Cases are divided into important and urgent, but done - necessary!”)

There are two reasons why I am pleased communication:
- I respectfully see in you a person who is interested in the truth of the past, and not only in his events, but also in content, and in methods, and in circumstances, and errors, and +++.
I see my soulmate in this. The fact is (I will allow myself these few personal memories) that my parents met in early childhood precisely at museum work at the Kharkov Institute of IRE - the Institute for the Dissemination of Natural Sciences. This is a very interesting, instructive and little-known story of those years. Imagine, the 20s, Kharkov, then white, then red, then the NEP and from somewhere there were a lot of goods, crime ...

And a number of older people in the city decided that they needed to do something with the youth, to somehow develop it. And with the support of Soviet power, they organized this institution. It was a room on the second floor of a Kharkov house, given to the IRE for lectures and a museum, and - with the only employee on a salary - as a guard at the entrance, which was also listed as a manager.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, lectures were given on a variety of topics, with posters pasted throughout the city. Tours were organized and a local history museum was built, in which my father was trained to make stuffed animals and birds that were killed for this museum on a hunt near Kharkov by the participants in the creation of the museum.

Omitting many details, I can only say that both mother and father, as a result of preparations and even their independent lectures, learned a great deal from biology, and from the history of philosophy and much more, from conversations with their patrons (father always didn’t call one of them name, and with a capital letter: Teacher). From the youth of this IRE came some very famous people. One of them is the famous Soviet planetologist Barbashov.
What is important here is that from childhood, my parents tamed me to respect the romance of the history of knowledge and the history of people and to honor the passion of museum work in the past.
And I like what you do, and, most importantly, how you do it.
Your one opus about the Surveyor is worth a lot!
- And the second reason: I like the way you write and what you write ...
In a word, you will certainly find in me a "dear reader."

2. Thanks for Pennant. I’ll go to the museum, of course. This is a very expensive present for me (in the civilized world we keep the memory of our lives in pieces of paper, photographs and souvenir items, and they say that the Indians had pebbles, pieces of wood and scalps for this). As a young man, these Pennants made me laugh, to whom do we send them there? And now the sign. and the significance of this is absolutely understandable, thanks to the one who invented and organized it! It could well have been a joint venture; he was an indestructible romantic of affairs and events.

Here is an example: 61 - they take the rocket out of the MIK to the launch line, and Zhora and I quickly go to see how it goes. We are still before the checkpoint but already behind the crossing (with its inscription “Saktan is train!”, Which, according to the idea of ​​Boris Skotnikov, became a general greeting, with the obligatory answer: “Saktan is train!”) - the green Victory overtakes, which suddenly stops, the front door opens, and someone, to my surprise, waves our hand - come here! It turns out the joint venture! He noticed Zhora! And then there was such a romantic affair - I was delighted! We drove up from the inside of the prickly fence of the 1st platform, right at the time when, from the huge now open gates of the MIK, with a large number of people around them, 7 engines with their red caps began to appear. We left after the joint venture and silently stood next to him, until the entire rocket with its then 3 more steps and the locomotive pushing it slowly (almost solemnly) passed us. But that was only the beginning!

We sat back in Victory and right across the field overtook a hundred meters rocket, stopped, went out and stood again, escorting the rocket to it short-range, and for the joint venture (and for me) - a very long way. And so it was at least 4 times! And the three of us were alone in this field! All others looked at the export and went about business. And the joint venture escorted the rocket to the start from the heart!
He was indestructibly young in the soul and romance of his affairs, his soul, in spite of all his enormous life experience, did not grow old until his tragic death. And I have felt it more than once at different moments of my presence with something or even good moments of communication with him.

In a word, to send Pennant to the moon or far away could well come up with a joint venture. The authorities were very sober people, and if they came up with it, then for completely different reasons ... And it is very interesting to figure out how it came about, and who came up with it?

3. Concerning the MCC hall.
Here you hit me for a living string. I will answer with pleasure.

The story of the Control Hall (as it was called at first), and then the MCC is rather long, curious, partly dramatic, partly comical (this is in my sensation, although, of course, the people who organized it did as they could and what they could).

The first control room that I saw was and was simply called the big room in the future TsNIIMASH in Podlipki (at first there was NII-88 with a German cone above the gate on the Yaroslavl highway, we went there, and then this area arose in Podlipki with our trips already there.).

I was there, it seems, only once, and there was no control there, but the name was. Most likely this hall was also used to receive business travelers. Then this was our work on the Lavochnitskaya winged Storm, and Dima German and I from Tolstousov discussed the problems with the leader of these works - senior Kheifets (this was an elderly and very competent person who was in the “Control Room” (- “Where to go?” - “Go to the Control Room” on the 4th (?) Floor) set the task for us and Dima of calculating the trajectory of taking the Storm to the march mode with all the details of the trajectory restrictions on the first BESM. Unfortunately, he soon died, as I was told, from blood clot - it was in this room when he climbed tkryvat the window on the window. But I really remember, I liked his head and business understanding of the importance of details. A "senior" because he, that later in Khimki, already during flights to Mars and Venus, for many years we worked very fruitfully with a very outstanding person - Volodya Kheifets - a ballist from the Design Bureau named after Lavochkina, and then - an employee of IKI, who unexpectedly turned out to be the son of that memorable "senior" Kheifets for me).

At that time, and later - when flying to the Moon, the Office Hall was called a large room with only tables and nothing more. Only desks and a large number of telephones were associated with control procedures.

After the launch of the first satellites, control processes passed to NII-4 in Bolshevo (they were led by P.E. Elyasberg responsible for issuing “target designations” to all observation points). And now, during the very first of the unsuccessful flights to Mars, I (responsible for correction and other control operations on the trajectory from our BC) ended up in the first real Control Room in my life! He made a big impression on me - and first, and - then.
First impression: a large hall with one or two desks with telephones at the entrance (behind them sat G.S. Narimanov - the head of space affairs of the NII-4 - one of the many very cultured military people I met in life) and K.D. Bushuev - Deputy. The Queen, an impeccably calm and business man, looks strictly, but speaks without pressure and on the case), and then behind them there is a translucent wall of this hall, long under the ceiling, with a world map on it and with soldiers shining behind it, which they put on this Map marks of points and trajectories.

And in front of the wall and to the windows on the opposite side of the hall, there are two or three rows of identical oak-plywood operator panels with a semicircular recess of the table, with telephones and a high desk counter with a clock and two rows of some dial gauges.
The first impression was respectful - I realized that they gave us the flight control hall of completely different products.

We, the ballistics, were allotted a place behind the remote control that was the most remote and farthest diagonally from the entrance. And so the three of us sat there - with Leonid Shevchenko - a ballistic from NII-4 (later, when flying to Venus, a leaky 2MB object, it was he who saw an opportunity that nobody noticed and somehow thoughtfully in our ballistic team offered immediately understood and ardently picked up, and later and the realized idea of ​​a more reliable solar correction) and - with Alexander Dashkov - a ballist from Korolev (the joint venture jokingly called him “Count Dashkov.” Sasha Dashkov, a graduate of Moscow State University, a selfless enthusiast in celestial mechanics of interplanetary flights was the person who, together with his subordinate Slava Ivashkin, found a surprisingly beautiful random (not related to celestial mechanics, but simply a gift of a ballistic event) property of the lunar vertical, zeroing out possible scary 20 m / s lateral speed with vertical “soft” landing on the Moon, which actually saved Project E-6 from closing). And so we sat down, and here with great surprise and disappointment I found out that there is a clock on the remote control, and the remaining devices with arrows are painted! I went to look at other remotes, - there - everything is real!

In a word, on this farthest and possibly unnecessary remote control, made according to the laws of symmetry and beauty of the hall, in case the generals looked from afar, these missing instruments were simply drawn.

So we sat for a number of months at this console in NII-4. And this was the Monday era on Saturday of the Strugatsky brothers with their research institute FAQ and research institute KOVO. I did not despise NII-4 for this, but I saw the truth of his life.

At that time of the very beginning of flights, the role of these control rooms was only in the implementation of the necessary special communications with the training ground and with observation points.
With each next flight to Venus, Mars, or to the Moon during the time of the "head" of NII-4, we found ourselves in various places - where such special communication was free at that moment.

Once it was on Gogolevsky Boulevard, once somewhere in Khamovniki (there, in the courtyard, a soldier pointed to the large gate and said that S.M. Budenny's favorite horse had been standing and living behind them for many years, and S.M. often came to see with him).

As a rule, these were premises with tables, and a table with a large number of telephones and their operators. The big bosses, as a rule, were either absent altogether (when there were already ordinary events of the next orbit correction) or was somewhere in the next room, from where someone would sometimes come with a question about current knowledge of flight parameters.
The most striking impression on me was one of these cases when we all turned out for the same reason the need for special communications — not somewhere else, but in the office of Marshal Vasilevsky in the old General Staff building on Frunzenskaya Street!

Omitting the details of the internal routine, I can only say that I, with a certain shock and curiosity, suddenly found myself in the room, from which came the control over many events of our history. The impression was outstanding. A huge room with a huge oak desk, a soft sofa and armchairs and their surroundings - with no less than fifty telephone sets of all kinds. I think that this was only a waiting room for the office, because, as the joint venture, MV and others were in the next room a little smaller behind the door and the situation was similar there, it was visible when someone came in or out.

Later, when Yu.K. Khodarev made the famous Evpatoria long-range space communications station, PUVDs appeared for transmitting received radio data. these data and all telemetry via channels began to come to TsNIIMASH. Therefore, our gatherings firmly moved there. At first there was still this hall, which I described above, with a separate room for bosses, but later all the ballistics began to sit in their premises, and the Control Hall became similar to what is in your picture. I remember both the big screen and the running clock above them.

We were commanded by Mikhail Alexandrovich Kazansky, very significant in the history of Soviet space. His task was to formulate the procedure for performing next ballistic calculations, to compare our results and, most importantly, to ensure that messages were filtered into the control room from the point of view of their reliability and timeliness. He was very seasoned as a servant to the king, and by responsibility he was a father to his ballistic soldiers. Thanks to him, the Ballistic Management Group worked together, without mistakes like clockwork.

I remembered him here because I was constantly convincing him that our work (and it consisted of writing out on the paper by telephone the data of operational calculations transmitted from my computer center, understanding them and transferring some of them to the control room) - it was necessary to somehow automate !
And one way or another, but further the development of control automation led to the installation of several televisions in the control room (probably more for solidity - usually there was a tuning picture on their screen, which reminded me of the drawn devices in NII-4), and later on they put a reading chamber in the ballistic room, under which we could put handwritten text, which they would then see in the control room with its televisions and telephones.

Much later, Ariston's screen appeared under the digital clock in the Control Room. It was said that with this Ariston Shvernik's niece solved the acute problem of showing a TV program on a large screen. This was realized using a mirror in the form of a rotating disk with oil poured on it, the profile of which was changed by the electric field generated by the TV signal. A powerful ray of light illuminated this disk, and the relief of such a liquid mirror formed on the screen a reflection of the desired TV image. All equipment was behind the screen and the image was shown "in the light".

On the huge screen of Ariston in this room, we, in a narrow circle of guests, watched the intercepted transmission of Apollo 11 with their jumps on the moon.

The same Ariston was also installed in the now destroyed building with its controls for the lunar rover at a point near Simferopol, where we, with great delight, sitting on the Earth, traveled on the moon in real time low-frame television!
In a word, then it was a big noticeable step forward.

Then the situation has changed a lot. Our IPM engineers under the direction of A.N. Myamlin was made ILU - Information Logical Device - for the implementation of "teletype communication over the telephone channel" of computers in NII-4, IPM and TsNIIMASH. The three of us (Kolya Teslenko, Tanya Frolova and I, as a digger and their boss) quickly wrote the necessary programs (each of the CCs performed this operation in their own way: Slava Nagorny - head of ballistics in Khimki - joked that his specialty is now “Ballistic Telegraphist ". We all had to deal with the MTK-international telegraph code, with its 5-track punched tape, three teletype and ++ registers. Computers and teletype with ILU in this technique exchanged data through a teletype punched tape.

In a word. we connected the computer of the ballistic centers together and rewrote the columns of numbers by hand, and it became no longer necessary to sit near the Control Room. All the problems of documenting moments of time (who - when did you get the right answer) and the received values ​​disappeared - they now remained in the form of teletype printouts. And this process of communication channels began to develop rapidly. Then Minsk-32 appeared for this channel purpose, which already connected the BESM-6 into the system, and later the last domestic AC-6 machine with great channel capabilities was made at the Ministry of Radio and Radio. But this is all from another topic of the sad history of domestic computers ...

In a word, we began to travel to TsNIIMASH less often, and were quite used to direct communication between our computers.

But in addition to the Ballistic Group, there was also a Management Group in the flight control loop, which played a significant role in operational decision-making processes. Naturally, the main role in it was played by the creators of the flying object. In the course of time and during the life of the joint venture and after its death, this activity began to acquire the color of Khimki more and more, moreover, it was completely deserved in the case.

And I felt some confusion from our engine room - where is this flight control center now? On lunar flights (during the creation of the first satellites of the moon), control almost came from Khimki, and there were rumors that they wanted to make the Control Center at home.

And L1 flights, according to a decision from above, were controlled from TsNIIMASH, and there they began to actively improve their MCC (we passed on to them all our experience in algorithms and programs and helped, as we could, develop our ballistic center for them, because they were all the same people with whom we worked at the time of Kazan).

The head of the operational management of the Ballistic Group was a skilled commander and a very noticeable technically and humanitarian educated military specialist - G.P. Melnikov from NII-4 (its leader was M.V. Keldysh, and the current operational management was always selected from the MCC people, which was correct in real time), and as a result, in preparation for flights, we again began to go to NII-4 . During these trips, then and later I noticed strong changes in their control center - already in another room there were a large number of tables, first with televisions. and many years later - with monitors, with a keyboard and display screens on the wall.

In a word, there was already not one, but several centers (including ours - right next to the engine room), which were now needed not for telephone communications (it was already everywhere. - which types of loud-speaking devices I didn’t master, the brightest of them is the huge "Acorn"). These mini-PCs were functionally needed to manage data content in connection with their computers. and through them with other centers. And for general display later, instead of Ariston, portable installations for projecting computer monitors onto a small screen appeared.

So, all control processes came from where it was more convenient from where. It is there that the chairman of the State Commission and his entourage will go to decisive sessions.
But. apparently (I don’t know, but I think that it was) in different departments there were different points of view where exactly it is necessary to concentrate management.

In addition, once there was a certain unpleasant collision: from Evpatoria through PUVDs to the BC machines punch cards of radio measurements data with errors began to come. It lasted long enough, there was a debate about who is to blame - the equipment of the antenna or communication channel. The case began to take on a scandalous character, and someone who was the smartest got the wonderful idea: to give these measurements to punch cards directly at the point (before entering the PUVD), bring this deck of punch cards on an airplane to Moscow and transfer it to TsNIIMASH from the Bogomolov antenna Moscow, where there were also PUVD input devices for transferring their measurements (it was impossible to directly enter these punched cards into the machine, because data were encrypted at the input of punched cards for transferring to the PUVDs. And the question was solved (who was to blame or did not recognize or forgot). Another thing is important: "There were spoons,

Generally. it suddenly turned out that, at the request of the Khimki Management Group, all management processes had been decided during flights to Venus and Mars in order to unload communication channels (during the correction or landing sessions, vacationers in Yevpatoria stood for hours at the post office to call home) and to reduce any delays and mistakes to Evpatoria.
It was a big blow for us: the M-20 was at the point, and we had two BESM-4s well developed with exchange channels. Formally, BESM-4 and M-20 were software compatible machines, but in fact they were absolutely incompatible!

How at one time I had to take a sip of the difference in the capabilities of the first BESM and ARROW. so here we personally felt what is good and what is bad.

I was already familiar with this problem, since the first M-20 appeared precisely in our OPM, and we worked for a rather long time, but then after the appearance of BESM-4, it was immediately replaced by these more reliable and convenient machines ( the history of the struggle for the creation of the M-20 and BESM-4, very characteristic for that time of industrial feudalism, deserves a separate description with the background of the same struggle during the creation of BESM and ARROW and with the after-history of the same struggle during the creation of BESM-10 + AC-6 and the EU Series + Elbrus).

And the M-20, despite its shortcomings, undoubtedly played a huge role in the country and in the development of programming theory (its command system was created in the PKO under the leadership of M.R.Shur-Bura, many organizations in many cities equipped this machine, and us at IPM for many years the M-20 User Association worked, where people from all over the country came).

I must say that our software package for calculating the methods and parameters of the flight path correction with estimates of the accuracy of correction and with calculations of its on-board settings - by the number of teams at one All-Union Programming Conference, suddenly turned out to be the largest in the country But it was only one of 5 or 6 of the same other program complexes - taking into account the necessary programs for processing measurements, flight forecasting, calculating a photographing session and, most importantly, a landing session (one of the reasons for transferring control to Yevpatoriya was and the fact that the calculations of the settings of the last correction with the simultaneous formation of the settings of the session of entry into the atmosphere and landing was less than an hour).

And all these with a long history of their creation and transformation of a deck of punch cards had to be not only carried to Yevpatoria, but also remade and redrawn to match the features of the M-20!
Those who made such a decision did not even know about it (a good topic about the fundamental property of leadership incompetence (known after Parkinson's Laws - Peter’s Principle - “Every leader is stuck at the level of his non-competence”), and - about the influence of this circumstance on the course of affairs his subordinates ...

In a word, we were again at TsNIIMASH in the circle of friends and colleagues who were already working on L-1 work at that time, and now with their help they began to debug their systems on their M-20s. And then - we had to continue to do the same thing in Evpatoria (drove de their characteristics, and the Devil - in the details).

At the same time, we continued to carry out all L-1 Probe flights at home, and at TsNIIMASH we began to develop our new MCC to control flights to the Moon.

Miraculously, I also had a chance to take part in this.

This is also a curious story.

So the circumstances were that in 1969, as part of our delegation, headed by academician B.N. Petrov, I ended up in Japan with a report on the Venus correction system. For this report, they gave me a large photo of the 2-MV on a slipway in Khimki (it is now well known), and my report aroused some interest from the Americans.

And this was the year of the already landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, and many of its developers came to the space conference in Tokyo. In the center of Tokyo, a plywood mock-up of the Lunar Module stood proudly, and at the conference there were detailed reports on its systems.

One of these reports - an employee of the Houston Flight Control Center Ebker - was especially interesting to me: he described in detail the arrangement and organization of work of their VC in the basement and two Control Rooms at the top. As Ebker said, "The Relationship of NASA People and the IBM People."

The report was particularly interesting in a detailed description of the arrangement of these two control rooms and the purpose of their consoles with monitors in them - from the flight director to a special console for interacting with the press.

Separately, it was told about the organization of work with several simultaneously flying objects, and about the two-month preparation for each of the flights.

All this was so similar to our affairs due to the circumstances of the organization of work, and so unlike the ways of its implementation. You can imagine how I listened to all this. I have always been a supporter of the maximum use of computers in our work, and here I have shown a great example of how this can be done and how not just can this be done instead of slipping handwritten pieces of paper under the camcorder.

Among the Americans there was also a well-known specialist in flight dynamics models Levin, a descendant of Odessa Jews who had fled from pogroms before the revolution.

He spoke Russian well and we talked with him on the topic of his and my reports. - my spoken English was and is one-way - I speak, but I don’t understand, but here it was easy to discuss everything.

He turned out to be a chess master, and one day we played with him (I have no ranks, and in MAI strong guys at the level of 1st rank and higher beat me, but not very easily). And then I ran into it, and in the first installment, to his surprise, I made a draw with him - with the master. He was very offended (I did say at his suggestion to play that I have no achievements, but it turned out almost according to Gogol: “We know how you don't know how to play checkers ..”). In a word. he did not calm down until three times after that he won against me. And we somehow made friends, which helped a lot in the future.

The fact is that one day before the end of this symposium, he suddenly comes up and sends me a request from one of their delegation to give them this photograph of the Venusian object. And I’ll answer him, I’ll give if he gets me the slides of Ebker’s report. And we parted on this - he is to Ebker, and I am to BN for permission to do this. BN gave the go-ahead, and Levin brings me a report and slides. but with the words that Ebker after Tokyo flies to Hong Kong (they, it turns out, used this very much - close to Japan, and everything is very cheap there) and should do this report there again. Can’t give.

And then my adventures began: I tried through the organizing committee to find a company in Tokyo, where slides would be copied to me in one day. It turned out - not less than a week.

Then I asked the Japanese to open a conference room for me and turn on the slide projector. They obediently did this, and then, under their amazed faces, with my Kiev, in the role of Jim Bond, I began to slide this whole box of Ebker from slide on a huge screen ... It turned out pretty badly, but readable.

In Moscow, I told this story and showed slides to Ochotsimsky. He asked me to speak at the Seminar and invited our colleagues to this seminar.

Then we organized a translation of the Ebker report with the addition of drawings containing the content of the retrieved slides, and its text was distributed among the ballistics TsNIIMASH and NII-4.
It ended with the fact that Mikhail Dmitrievich Kislik (a well-known military ballist) unexpectedly came to us at the IPM, sat me down in an empty room and meticulously questioned me with this publication in my hands and delved into all the details of Ebker's report.

I do not know to what extent this adventure of mine influenced the creation of our modern MCC, which is ideologically very similar to Houston. Apparently, there was some kind of a drop, but later, in connection with the work on the Soyuz-Apollo project, a lot of our people visited Houston and could see and understand everything with their own eyes. But, the truth, you will not see some details from this report with your eyes ...

4. Concerning memoirs, - here you have pushed me, and I have suffered.
It’s impossible without a stick ...
And - you never know, is it interesting for someone other than you to write?
And here, I apparently wrote a lot of unnecessary things to you. It could have been shorter ...

With respect and with best wishes - Alexander Konstantinovich Platonov
- June 10, 2017.