Monday, Nov. 18, 1963
University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Russian "Chief Designer" Mysterious, Omnipresent
CAPE CANAVERAL — (UPI) — Into the mysterious fabric of the Soviet Union's space program is woven an elusive figure identified only as the "Chief Designer."
He is honored as the creator of the giant Vostok spaceships that have taken six Russian Cosmonauts on spectacular voyages into orbit.
He constantly crops us as a voice at the other end of the line in radio conversations with the high-flying Soviet spacemen.
HE MAKES pronouncements about Russian space programs ranging from weather satellites to plans for building huge platforms in orbit around earth and for landing Cosmonauts on the moon.
And, if only one-fourth of the accomplishments the Soviets give him credit for are true, the Chief Designer is a scientific genius fit to stand beside Albert Einstein, Robert Goddard, Neils Bohr and Werner von Braun in science's hall of fame.
No one this side of the Iron Curtain seems to have any idea.
But just who is the Chief Designer?
And Russia isn't saving-yet
In 1926, when only 21 years old, Glushkio wrote an article for a Leningrad scientific journal in which he speculated on the use of an earth satellite to "observe and photograph inaccessible countries."
In the same article, Glushko mentioned that, with the aid of giant mirrors on such a satellite, "one can detonate munitions factories, provoke whirlwinds and storms, annihilate
One name, however, is getting more and more mention in speculation as to the identity of the chief designer. He is Valentin P. Glushko, a member of the Soviet academy of sciences.
marching troops, burn cities and, in general, wreak colossal devastation."
GLUSHKO seems nearly as mysterious as the man he is supposed to be. He is 58 years old, has been a full member of the Academy of Sciences since 1958 and has been a bureau member of the Soviet Department of Technical Sciences since 1960. He is identified variously as a military technologist and as a combustion and rocket expert.
In the outpouring of papers, treatises and studies by Russian scientists, Glushko's name appears rarely.
Yuri A. Gagarin, Russia's first orbiting astronaut, described his initial meeting with the Chief Designer:
"We saw a broad-shouldered, merry, witty man, a real Russian . . . and he treated us as equals, as his chief assistants."
GHERMAN TITOV, who followed Gagarin into space by four months, spoke of a scientist called the "Chief Constructor." The chief designer and the chief constructor, however, are probably one and the same.
"None of us will ever forget our first meeting with the chief constructor, a man of tremendous willpower and wide erudition," said Titov. "He personally showed us the first spaceships, conceived and designed by many teams of scientists ...
On another occasion, Titov said,
he was checking out his Vostok-2
spaceship. "The Chief Constructor
watched me. Everything about him
— eyes, smile, voice, movements —
was wouthful."
But the descriptions by Gagarin,
Titov and others have been mostly generalities, with few specifics.
And the Chief Designer remains as much a mystery as ever.
THE CHIEF DESIGNER is at the scientific top of the monolithic organizational structure of the Soviet space program.
The U.S. space effort appears to have no comparable position.
James E. Webb is administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. But his forte is politics, not science.
The closest approximation might be Wernher von Braun, the ex-German V-2 rocket expert who is spearheading development of the mighty Saturn-5 rocket for manned flights to the moon. But Von Braun in no sense possesses the wide-sweeping power evidently wielded by the Chief Designer over the entire Soviet space program.
Yale Professor Returns to U.S. After 16 Days in Moscow Prison
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — (UPI)—Yale political science Prof. Frederick C. Barghoorn, 52, spent 16 days in a small lighted cell in Lubianko prison at Moscow, it was learned today.
Mrs. Elizabeth Barghoorn, 80,
mother of the mild-mannered
professor, said, "The food was very
poor, and he lost 10 pounds."
The professor's mother, who lives in an apartment adjacent to her son's, said two Russian policemen arrested him "and he was handcuffed." She said they took her son to a "little cell" where a light burned 24 hours a day.
Mrs. Barghoorn said that, when her son was freed, "They took him right to the plane. They didn't allow him to get in touch with the people at the (U.S.) embassy. He had cocktails there the night before he was supposed to leave (prior to his arrest)."
"THE RUSSIAN GUARD looked in on him all the time," she said.
She said her son "came home dead tired," and went to bed early last night. He "was in a state of complete exhaustion," she said, but noted that he was up bright and early today.
Barghoorn had been silent on details of his arrest Oct. 31 in Moscow while on sabbatical leave to research a book and "investigate methods of political instruction and indoctrination."
"HE WAS WAITING for a call from Washington," she said. Mrs. Barghoorn indicated her son probably would go to Washington to report on his imprisonment.
The Soviets have also declined to elaborate on his arrest but insisted they had evidence indicating the sandy-haired bachelor was on a mission for American intelligence.
BARGHOORN WAS released Sat-
urday from Russian custody "in view of the personal concern expressed by President Kennedy." He
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indicated he would not be admitted again, having been expelled under guard.
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