More on Ukrainian space scientist (07/25/99)

More on Ukrainian space scientist

Dr. Lubomyr Onyshkevych wrote the original entry for the Encyclopedia of Ukraine on Yurii Kondratiuk. Since Ukraine's independence, more complete information has appeared on the scientist, and it will be included in the revised edition of the encyclopedia. Based on the entry in the encyclopedia and on a recent conversation with Dr. Onyshkevych, additional information about Yurii Kondratiuk is offered below.

Yurii Kondratiuk was born June 9 (or 21, according to the Julian calendar) 1897, in Poltava. His name at birth was Oleksander Sharhei. He was orphaned in 1910. In 1916 he finished the gymnasium in Poltava with honors and went on to study at the St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute, where he drafted the first version of his work on rocket flight.

In 1917 he was sent to the front. In 1918 he was demobilized and, en route from the front to Poltava, he was captured by Deniken's White Army forces. He escaped, only to be recaptured in 1919. Again he fled, and hid until 1921. In 1921 he acquired the documents of a young man named Yurii Kondratiuk, who had died in 1921, and assumed his name. He never resumed using his original name. Apparently Sharhei was afraid that the Communists, who had come to power, would seek reprisals for his service in the opposition White Army, even though he was in its ranks unwillingly.

He worked at various plants in Ukraine, Russia, the northern Caucasus, and Siberia. In 1930 he was arrested and imprisoned until the spring of 1932. After his release, he entered a wind energy engineering design competition in which he won first place. From 1933 he headed a task force at the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Industrial Power Engineering in Kharkiv, designing the largest wind-powered electric station in the world.

In 1919 he had published "Tem, Kto Budet Chitat, Chtoby Stroit" (To Those Who Will Read in Order to Build), which he expanded and revised 10 years later in "Zavoievanie Mezhplanetnykh Prostranstv" (The Conquest of Interplanetary Space), of which 2,000 copies were printed.

In this work Kondratiuk developed the basic equations for rocket motion, calculated optimal flight trajectories, explained the theory of multi-stage rockets and advocated the use of new rocket fuels, including the boron fuels used today. He proposed that orbiting supply bases be used to supply spacecraft, that atmospheric drag be used for braking descending spacecraft, that small excursion vehicles be used to land men on planets and return them to spaceships, and that the gravitational fields of celestial bodies be used for accelerating and braking spaceships.

Kondratiuk's ideas and equations were widely used by both Soviet and American engineers. The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) translated his work into English and has used many of his concepts in the Apollo moon flights.

Reports of Kondratiuk's death vary. One report has him dying near the city of Orel, Russia, during battle on February 23, 1942.

On June 21, 1997, Ukraine issued a stamp in honor of the 100th anniversary of Kondratiuk's birth, and a film titled "Under a False Name" was recently released in Ukraine.

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