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Obituary of Boris Chertok
Boris Chertok, who has died aged 99, was a Russian rocket engineer and a key architect of the Soviet space programme; he played a crucial role in launching the Sputnik satellite and ensuring that Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.
In 1957, Chertok was busy testing the newly-created R-7 rocket, one of the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles, which he had helped build with one purpose in mind: carrying nuclear bombs to drop on American cities. At the same time there were Soviet plans to launch the world’s first satellite, an idea which Chertok dismissed as a “kid’s game”. “Let those guys busy themselves with toys,” he recalled thinking at the time. “We are doing the honourable and necessary work of building an H-bomb carrier. Who needs a satellite?”
I read Two Sides of the Moon by cosmonaut, Alexei Leonov a few years ago. He seemed surprisingly disinterested in the propaganda side of the space race. Chertok seems to have been far more political as the last sentence shows,
In the 21st century, he said, he was resigned to the fact that success would come only from international co-operation.
