Abstract

This article analyzes how scientific research and experimental design work was organized in the Soviet Union to create rocket engines powered by nuclear energy. At the center of the study are state methods of governing advanced R&D that made it possible to develop and test a production technology for nuclear rocket engines. The article highlights the advantages of intersectoral cooperation in the development of cutting-edge rocket technologies based on nuclear reactions, and it surveys the principal directions and results of theoretical and applied investigations carried out in more than one hundred organizations across multiple ministries and agencies. The Soviet government succeeded in coordinating key institutions of the defense-industrial complex — above all the Ministry of Medium Machine Building and the State Committees responsible for aviation and defense technology — while also mobilizing enterprises and design bureaus from other departments and from the Councils of National Economy. Leading Soviet universities and organizations of the Academy of Sciences likewise played an active role, contributing to advances in thermodynamics and plasma physics. The article further considers the personal contribution of the principal designers of nuclear rocket engines in addressing organizational and theoretical problems at the initial stage of the program. Such engines were complex to produce and to operate. Standard liquid-propellant rocket engines were cheaper, far easier to master in mass production, and simpler to maintain in military units. Nuclear engines also posed environmental risks if used in the atmosphere and could expose servicing personnel to radiation. These factors meant that, in the Soviet Union, nuclear-powered rocket-engine technology for ballistic and cruise missiles was relegated to a reserve line of development. At the same time, research undertaken during the Khrushchev Thaw yielded beneficial consequences for space propulsion, since it contributed to the creation of more efficient electric, plasma, and ion engines for spacecraft.