Valentin Glushko
Soviet rocket engineer (1908-1989)
Valentin Petrovich Glushko (Russian: Валентин Петрович Глушко; Ukrainian: Валентин Петрович Глушко, romanized: Valentyn Petrovych Hlushko; 2 September 1908 – 10 January 1989) was a Soviet engineer who was program manager of the Soviet space program from 1974 until 1989.
Glushko served as a main designer of rocket engines in the Soviet program during the heights of the Space Race between United States and the Soviet Union, and was the proponent of cybernetics within the space program.
Biography
Valentin Glushko was born on 2 September 1908 (21 August according to the old calendar) in Odesa to a Ukrainian cossack father and a Russian peasant mother.
At the age of fourteen he became interested in aeronautics after reading novels by Jules Verne. He is known to have written a letter to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1923. He studied at an Odessa trade school, where he learned to be a sheet metal worker. After graduation he apprenticed at a hydraulics fitting plant. He was first trained as a fitter, then moved to lathe operator.
During his time in Odessa, Glushko performed experiments with explosives. These were recovered from unexploded artillery shells that had been left behind by the White Guards during their retreat.
“Valentin Glushko” enters the record as soviet rocket engineer (1908-1989). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Valentin, Glushko and Soviet can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Valentin Glushko” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Valentin, Glushko and Soviet provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q342397. VIAF identifies the subject as 22183419. The Library of Congress control number is n81017019. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1989, 1974 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Valentin Glushko” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.