About academician Boris Yevseyevich Chertok - the creator of the domestic school of spacecraft control.
For more than half a century, the movement of almost all domestic ships, satellites, stations, both in orbit and above, in the emptiness of space, has been controlled by the design thought of Chertok. And all these "half a century" Chertok was known "only by sight". A secret employee of a classified industry, he came out of the shadows when he was already over 80 years old. He wrote the book "Rockets and People" - a four-volume encyclopedia about all the secrets of Soviet cosmonautics - about how and by whom it was created. The author's knowledge and his phenomenal memory amazed even our former rivals in the space race. NASA republished the four-volume work in English, and now "Rockets and People" is a reference book for specialists of the American space agency. Boris Chertok is 97 years old, and he still works. He gives lectures to students. And at the rocket and space corporation Energia, where until the age of 80 he was deputy to all chief and general designers, Chertok is now the chief scientific consultant for control systems.
Rockets, astronauts, R-2, R-5M, R-7, Rauschenbach, Korolev, Leonov, Soyuz-1, Soyuz-11, von Braun, Soyuz-Apollo, shuttle Atlantis, Mir station
Academician Chertok walks down the street.
Old war photos.
Newsreel: Lenin’s funeral.
Newsreel: people in a laboratory, a man looking through a microscope.
Chertok walks down the street.
MAI professor Valery Burdakov speaks.
Rocket take-off.
Spacecraft in space, docking. B. Chertok’s eldest son Valentin Chertok speaks.
Chertok walks (in the building), sits down at the table, gives autographs, accepts flowers.
Oleg Ivanovsky, a veteran of the rocket and space industry, speaks.
Newsreel from 1945: Germany, Berlin.
Soviet traffic controller on the street.
Old photos: Chertok in military uniform, etc.
Newsreel from 1945: Wernher von Braun.
V-2 rocket.
Rocket launch.
Buildings burn, collapse.
Streets of Berlin.
Soldiers fraternize on the streets.
War photos.
Newsreel from 1965: Athens.
Airport.
International Congress.
Cosmonauts Leonov, Belyayev.
Pilot-cosmonaut, twice Hero of the Soviet Union Alexei Leonov speaking.
Newsreel: Korolev in the laboratory.
Rocket.
Chertok speaking.
Newsreel from the 1940s: people near the rocket, rocket launch, people loading boxes.
A train is coming, a man in the train.
Kapustin Yar proving ground.
Launch of the R-1 rocket.
Valentin Chertok speaking.
Old photo: Chertok with his son.
Newsreel: first meeting of the council, Korolev with colleagues.
Rocket explosion.
R-2 rocket takeoff.
Pilot-cosmonaut, twice Hero of the Soviet Union Alexei Eliseyev speaking.
Old photos.
Veteran of the rocket and space industry Vakhtang Vachnadze speaking.
R-5M rocket.
Nuclear explosion.
Chertok speaking.
Old photos.
Valentin Chertok speaking.
Newsreel: Moscow Aircraft Plant No. 22, plant workshop, production.
Photo by Ekaterina Golubkina, Boris Chertok's wife.
Chertok speaking.
Moscow streets.
Chertok on the street.
Newsreel: store, counter.
Chertok in the laboratory.
Chertok's youngest son, Mikhail Chertok, speaking.
R-7 rocket.
Newsreel: rocket takeoff.
Rockets in the workshop.
They are transporting the rocket.
People in the design bureau.
Rocket takeoff.
Newsreel from the 1950s: the first satellite, people at the equipment.
Khrushchev walking, Khrushchev with the people.
USA. Statue of Liberty.
City streets.
Academician Sedov.
R-7 rocket, rocket takeoff.
Newsreel: radio announcer's message about the conquest of space, man at the radio, listening to satellite signals, man looking through a telescope, plant workshop, Korolev, designers, drawings.
Mathematician Rauschenbach.
Korolev ascending in a lift.
Design bureau.
Rauschenbach with colleagues.
Korolev.
Academician Rauschenbach’s wife Vera Rauschenbach speaking.
Newsreel: station for photographing the moon.
Filming the far, invisible side of the moon.
Newspapers with photographs.
Rauschenbach, Chertok and others getting out of the car.
Khrushchev with officers.
Red Square.
Demonstration.
Fragment from the film “Aelita” Newsreel: America, design bureau.
Khrushchev on the podium.
Korolev by the telephone.
Design bureau, spacecraft.
Korolev on the launch pad.
Professor Lebedinsky.
Rocket launch.
Boris Chertok.
Newsreel from 1961: Vostok spacecraft, takeoff.
Korolev at the cosmodrome.
Gagarin driving through the streets.
Chertok being awarded.
Mikhail Chertok speaking.
Chertok with Luzhkov at the unveiling of the monument to Korolev.
Laying flowers at the monument.
Valentin Chertok speaking.
Chertok at the table, drinking tea.
Photos: Korolev with Gagarin, Korolev with colleagues, etc.
Newsreel: Korolev applauding the cosmonaut, the cosmonaut in a spacesuit near the rocket.
Newsreel: burning debris from the Soyuz-1 rocket, people near the debris, the cosmonaut’s funeral.
Newsreel: report of the commander of the Soyuz-11 spacecraft, Lieutenant Colonel Dobrovolsky.
Volkov, Patsayev, Dobrovolsky, walking along the cosmodrome, climbing into the rocket.
Debris from the rocket.
Carrying the wounded, attempts at resuscitation.
Alexey Eliseyev speaking.
Newsreel: Chertok in the design bureau with colleagues.
USA. Von Braun.
Cosmonauts, preparing for a flight to the Moon.
USSR. Chertok at the table with colleagues.
Academician of the K.E. Gumilyov Academy of Cosmonautics speaking.
Tsiolkovsky Georgy Priss.
Newsreel from 1969: rocket lift-off with the word USA, Americans on the Moon.
America, people on the streets, greeting the cosmonauts, flags.
Newsreel: creation of the orbital station, Chertok with colleagues in the laboratory.
The Soyuz-15 spacecraft in space.
Meeting, Chertok.
Alexey Eliseyev speaking.
Newsreel: Chertok at the drawing, American and Russian cosmonauts in space.
Docking system.
Vakhtang Vachnadze speaking.
Docking.
Newsreel from 1975: docking of the Soyuz and Apollo, American and Russian cosmonauts greeting each other, watching in the Mission Control Center.
Newsreel from 1995: celebration of the docking of the shuttle Atlantis and the Mir station.
Chertok at the celebration.
Congratulating the cosmonauts.
Newsreel: Launch of the 1st block of the Mir station.
The Mir station.
Cosmonaut training.
Cosmonauts working in outer space.
Chertok walks down the street, sits on a bench.
Mikhail Chertok speaks.
Chertok at his wife's grave.
USA. New York.
City (from a helicopter).
City streets.
Chertok gives autographs, signs his books, photographers.
The head of the Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, speaks.
Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Chertok speaks at the Korolev Readings.
Alexey Leonov speaks.
Chertok with colleagues, listeners, signs books.
Mikhail Chertok speaks.
Chertok drives in a car.
Moscow streets.
Chertok wearing awards, speaking.
Chertok speaks in front of an audience.
Chertok at a lecture with students at NPO Energia.