Portal:Space exploration/Biography/Week 48 2006

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Valentin Petrovich Glushko (born September 2, 1908 in Odessa, Ukraine, died January 10, 1989) was a Soviet engineer of Ukrainian descent, and one of the three principal Soviet "Chief Designers" (along with Vladimir Chelomei and Sergei Korolev) of spacecraft and rockets during the Soviet/American Space Race.

On March 23, 1938 he became caught up in Stalin's Great Terror and was rounded up by the NKVD, to be placed in the Butyrka prison. By August 15, 1939 he was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag. Despite his supposed imprisonment, however, Glushko was put to work on various aircraft projects with other arrested scientists. In 1941 he was placed in charge of a design bureau for liquid-fueled rocket engines. He was finally released in 1944 by special decree.