FROM BAKU TO OUTER SPACE

The first rocket in the Soviet Union with a GIRD-9 liquid jet-propelled engine was launched 82 years ago on 17 August 1933, at the launch pad outside the settlement of Nakhabino in the environs of Moscow. The Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD, from whence the rocket takes its name) headed by 26-year-old Sergey Pavlovich Korolev was busy doing this. This 2.4-metre-long rocket weighing 19 kg managed to reach a height of 400 metres on that day, which was the maximum in Europe at the time. 

This launch might not have happened if the outstanding engineer had not been helped by Baku chemists who had developed the first successful sample of liquid fuel.

"Condensed" benzene

In actual fact, the fuel was not even liquefied, but semi-liquefied, a kind of "kissel" [viscous fruit puree] made from carefully measured proportions of benzene and rosin. There was the most successful fuel of this type back in 1933. Properly speaking, the

fuel was (and remains to this day) the most important part of any rocket. Korolev was well aware of that. For two years after the rocket engine was developed they were not able to launch it. Either the fuel exploded, tearing the rocket to shreds, or it had a very weak thrust, just lifting the apparatus a few metres off the ground. But chance came to Korolev's aid. 

This is what his daughter Natalya wrote in her book of reminiscences titled "Father". "This component has its very own story. The senior engineer in the second brigade, N. I. Yefremov, recounted that, after spending his holiday in Gagra in the summer of 1932, he went to Baku on the orders of her father to read lectures on rocket technology. While he was travelling there by train, he read a notice in the newspaper about the development of a solid alcohol in Germany and it suggested to him the idea of developing a solid fuel for the rocket. In Baku he became acquainted with an activist of 'Osoaviakhim' (a society involved in assisting defence, aviation and chemical construction), a member of staff of the Azerbaijan Oil Institute, F. M. Gurvich, who prepared and handed over to N. I. Yefremov the 'condensed' benzene he had requested."

The most important properties of the fuel provided by Baku's "Osoaviakhim" were that it was simple and cheap to produce, which was something needed. Korolev then came to Baku personally, met with the specialists and convinced them of the effectiveness of the fuel offered by the Baku scientists. It must be said that in rocket-construction issues Korolev was a man of the future. He tried to convince the Soviet authorities of the need to develop this branch of science with varying success. He met the head of the Soviet of People's Commissars, Mircafar Bagirov, who had been newly appointed at that time. With great difficulty Korolev managed to persuade Baghirov to focus the capacities of Baku's "Osoaviakhim" on creating the first Soviet professional rocket.

Science is always needed

In the mid-1930s the situation suddenly changed, and many progressive sectors like genetics and cybernetics were put on the back burner, generally being referred to as false sciences. In 1938 Korolev was arrested, accused of taking part in organising a coup d'etat. He was tortured and sent to a labour camp. Rocket construction began to experience hard times. It was only later on, during the war, that Korolev was released and concentrated on developing the famous "Katyusha" rockets, an unprecedented rocket artillery which did in fact decide the outcome of the war. It was created on the basis of that same GIRD, which had been developed together with Baku's "Osoaviakhim". Here it should be noted that during the Great Patriotic War [Second World War] more than 130 types of weapons and the spare parts for them were produced in Baku, among them the "Katyusha" rockets. They were making the fuel for the Soviet rockets here too. 

"In general, Baku's experts had enormous experience in developing fuel," the historian Mahir Racabov says. "Back in 1857, the first commercial oil refinery was built in [the present Baku suburb of] Suraxani and its initial capacity was 1.6m poods [one pood is 16.38 kg] of kerosene per year. Throughout the 19th century numerous interested entrepreneurs and engineers tried to improve the quality of the kerosene extracted on the Abseron peninsula." The historian recounts that, when in 1927 a branch of "Osoaviakhim" opened in Baku, many specialists, who had been busy working on fuel for decades, found employment there.

Chemists and outer space

Azerbaijan's participation in the space age (1960s-1970s) is most often linked to the names of the cosmonauts Musa Manarov, the outstanding aerospace engineer Karim Karimov and the astrophysicist Tofiq Ismayilov. But in those "space years" major chemists also worked together with those in Baku. We can primarily recall the outstanding scientist Shikhbala Aliyev. 

Back in the 1960s he was one of the leading specialists in the Soviet Union on high-density and high-colloid fuel for contemporary aviation technology. Previously, from 1941 he had been head of the Institute of Chemistry (later the Mammadaliyev Institute of Petrochemi-cal Processes). During the war years, he worked on developing insulation and lubricant materials, besides fuel, of which quite a few helped the front, for which he received numerous awards and prizes in recognition of his services. Yusuf Mammadaliyev whom the institute is named after, Lev Gurevich (who was incidentally directly involved in developing fuel for Korolev's first rockets at the beginning of the 1930s), Nikolay Zelinskiy, one of the oldest professors at the institute and an outstanding pedagogue, and many other specialists worked on aviation fuel as well.

At a certain stage the space race played a dirty trick. During the 1960s-1970s the competition for space between the USSR and the USA became increasingly heated and kept on gathering momentum. The former launched the first satellite [sputnik] and sent a man into space, while the latter put a man on the Moon and sent probes to Venus and Mars. In those years, Azerbaijan went on developing rocket fuel as it had been doing before. When the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed and people had better things to do than explore the expanses of outer space, it turned out that Azerbaijan was left with 1,400 tonnes of rocket fuel which posed a threat to the environment. A use for this unwanted cargo was, alas, only found in 2009.

The contribution of Azerbaijani chemists to world science is naturally not restricted to developing rocket fuel alone. A member of the Academy of Sciences, Professor Yusuf Mammadov, Ph.D (Physics and Mathematics) has noted that the local school has brought up a whole pleiad of scientists who have been engaged in progressive analytical chemistry: "These are Academician Habibay Saxtakhtinski, Dr. Allahverdi Verdizada (Chemistry) and Professor Isgandar Bagbanli. It is hard to overestimate the work of these and hundreds of other scientists in household chemistry, agrochemistry, petrochemistry and many other fields.