Leonid Alexandrovich Voskresenskiy was a Soviet rocket engineer and long-time associate of famed Chief Designer Sergei Korolev.
Background
Voskresenskiy was born on June 14, 1913 in the town of Pavlovsky Posad. His mother was Catherine Veniaminovna Sokolov (1880-1956). His father, Alexander G. Voskresenskiy (1875-1950), was a priest at Saint Nicholas Church in Pavlovsky Posad and later was the senior priest at the Church of Saint John the Warrior in Moscow.
Education
Moscow Power Engineering Institute.
Career
He served as launch director for Sputnik and for the first manned space flight, Vostok 1. The lunar crater Voskresenskiy is named in his honor. This section incorporates information from the equivalent article on the Russian Wikipedia.
From 1929 to 1936 he worked as an electrician while also studying at Moscow Power Engineering Institute.
In 1936 he was drafted into the army, where he served as an engineer In 1945, he was sent to Germany with a team that was trying to identify engineers and German rocket equipment, such as the A-4 and the V-2.
In 1946, he led the Vystral group, which performed test flights of the V-2 rockets, at the Soviet missile institute in Nordhausen, Germany. Voskresenskiy continued to head several rocket test programs until 1953, when he was appointed as a Deputy Chief Designer of the primary Soviet rocket design bureau, OKB-1, under Sergei Korolev.
In 1963, health issues led Voskresenskiy to become an instructor at the Moscow Aviation Institute.
He also continued to serve as a consultant with OKB-1, as "acting head of department of scientific tests." Leonid Voskresenskiy died December 14, 1965. At his funeral, his eulogy was delivered by Sergei Korolev. He was buried with honors in Moscow"s Novodevichy Cemetery.
Due to the secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program at the time, he was only identified in the press as "a scholar in the field of the elaboration and testing models of new machinery." Historian Asif Siddiqi described Voskresenskiy as "one of the most colorful characters of the Soviet space program" Anecdotes of his adventures are featured in several histories of the space race.
In Rockets and People, scientist and historian Boris Chertok recounted how Voskresenskiy reacted when a missile being tested developed a leak of a supposedly radioactive substance. As others rushed away, he calmly walked up to the rocket and climbed the gantry.
He ran his finger through the liquid, and in full view of the launch crew, put his finger on his tongue to demonstrate that the substance was harmless. He then called on everyone to return to work.
Author Matthew Brzezinski documented an unusual technique that Voskresenskiy developed for fixing some issues with the R-9 missile: Korolev"s head of testing, the equally crotchety Leonid Voskresenskiy — the only person among the thousands of NII-88 and OKB-1 employees permitted to address Sergei Korolev by his first name, without the formal patronymic — had a decidedly low-tech method for dealing with leaks.
He would wrap his cap over the faulty valve and urinate on lieutenant The minus-297-degree liquid oxygen would freeze the urine on contact, sealing the leak. This section incorporates information from the equivalent article on the Russian Wikipedia.
Politics
Hero of Socialist Labor (1958) for Sputnik-1.