Abstract
Georgiy Moiseyevich Priss was born on July 11, 1925. In 1948 he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute and joined the Scientific-Research Institute No. 885 (NII-885), which designed control systems for rocketry. Since 1963 Priss worked at the Scientific-Research Institute of Automatics and Instrument Building (NII AP), which separated from NII-885 and was led by the chief designer of autonomous control systems Nikolay Pilyugin. In 1992 NII AP and its experimental factory formed the Scientific-Production Association of Automatics and Instrument Building (NPO AP). In 1997 the association was reorganized into the Pilyugin Scientific-Production Center for Automatics and Instrument Building (NPTs AP). Georgiy Priss worked on gyroscopic equipment for the first Soviet rockets and served as the principal integration engineer designing control systems for the R-5 and the R-7 rockets. In 1956 he became Pilyugin’s deputy in charge of equipment and the test-and-launch complex. Priss was the principal developer of control systems for the N1 and the Buran projects. Currently he is the head of the Integration Department at the Pilyugin Center.
May 23, 2002
Moscow, Russia
Interviewer: Slava Gerovitch
The interview was conducted in Russian and translated by Slava Gerovitch.
Georgiy Priss, a leading designer of control systems for rocketry, explains the engineering philosophy professed by Chief Designer Nikolay Pilyugin. Pilyugin’s organization developed onboard guidance systems that give rockets “autonomy” from ground control and freed rocketry from the vulnerability of interference-prone radio communications. Pilyugin strove for similar autonomy in his design principles: all components of the control systems were to be designed at his own organization, rather than outsourced to other companies. Priss further discusses the role of onboard computing and its impact on the division of function between human and machine in spacecraft control. The twists and turns in the collaboration between Pilyugin and Chief Designer Sergey Korolev are also presented from the perspective of Pilyugin’s organization.
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Notes
This refers to the USSR Council of Ministers Decree No. 1017–419 (top secret) of May 13, 1946, “On Questions of Reactive Armaments.” For the full text of the decree, see Boris Chertok, Rockets and People: Creating a Rocket Industry, NASA SP-2006–4110 vol. 2 (Washington, DC: NASA, 2006), pp. 10–15.
On the postwar organization of the Soviet missile program, see Asif Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974, NASA SP-2000–4408 (Washington, DC: NASA, 2000), chapter 2.
See Georgiy M. Priss, “O sozdanii sistemy upavleniya rakety-nositelya ‘Vostok,’” Iz istorii aviatsii i kosmonavtiki, vyp. 70 (1997): 41–49; Yuriy P. Portnov-Sokolov and Georgiy M. Priss, “Prehistory of the On-Board Complex of Control Systems of the R-7 Launcher,” Automation and Remote Control, no. 6 (1999): 31–41.
Pilyugin’s firm developed its own onboard computer, S-530, for the N1–L3 lunar landing program. The S-530 was also incorporated into the control system of the Mars spacecraft and launched for the first time in May 1971; see A. G. Glazkov, “Kosmicheskaya odisseya BTsVM S-530,” XXIX akademicheskiye chteniya po kosmonavtike (Moscow: IIET RAN, 2005), p. 115, accessed May 21, 2014, http://www.ihst. ru/~akm/6t29.pdf. The Mars-71S orbiter, launched on May 10, 1971, failed because of an erroneous command and was publicly announced as Kosmos-419.
See Brian Harvey, Russian Planetary Exploration: History, Development, Legacy and Prospects (Chichester: Springer/Praxis, 2007), pp. 128–130, 138–139. The failure was reportedly caused by a computer operator error;
see Vladimir G. Perminov, The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the Soviet Union, Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 15, NP-1999–06–251-HQ (Washington, DC: NASA, 1999), p. 53. This failure had serious repercussions for the leadership of Pilyugin’s firm. Pilyugin’s (unnamed) deputy was reportedly fired and the head of the computer programming department demoted.
See S. I. Krupkin, “Georgiy Nikolayevich Babakin,” Vestnik FGUP NPO im. S.A. Lavochkina 1 (2009): 39. The Mars-71P lander was launched a few days later, on May 19, 1971, and publicly announced as Mars-2 . It crashed on the surface of Mars, apparently because of a software error; see Perminov, The Difficult Road to Mars, p. 57; Konstantin Lantratov. “Na Mars!” (Part II), Novosti kosmonavtiki, no. 21 (1996). The Mars-3 spacecraft, launched on May 28, 1971, successfully landed on Mars.
The Special Design Bureau No. 692 (OKB-692), currently the Scientific-Production Association Khartron. On the development of on-board computers at OKB-692, see S. A. Gorelova, “Istoriya sozdaniya bor-tovoy vychislitelnoy mashiny i sistemy proverki ‘Elektronnyy pusk’ na NPO ‘Khartron,’” Vestnik NPU “KhPI” 48 (2009): 17–29, accessed May 21, 2014, http://goo.gl/HF75DE.
During the development of the Buran-Energiya complex, this organization (Korolev’s former design bureau) was called the Scientific-Production Association Energiya. In 1994, it was renamed the Rocket-Space Corporation Energiya. For an Energiya engineer’s perspective on the development of the computer complex for Buran, see German Noskin, Pervyye BTsVM kosmicheskogo primeneniya (St. Petersburg: Renome, 2011), pp. 213–223.
On the question of software compatibility of different Bisser models, see B. N. Vikhorev and A. G. Glazkov, “Evolyutsiya razrabotki operatsionnykh system dlya BTsVM raketnykh kompleksov razrabotki NPTsAP,” XXXI akademicheskiye chteniya po kosmonavtike (Moscow: IIET RAN, 2007), pp. 416–418, accessed May 21, 2014, http://www.ihst.ru/~akm/17t31.pdf.
Filipp Georgiyevich Staros (true name Alfred Sarant, 1918–1979) and Iosif Veniaminovich Berg (true name Joel Barr, 1916–1998), American electronics engineers who spied for the Soviets during World War II. After the war, they defected to the Soviet Union and were placed in charge of the Special Laboratory No. 11 for electronic technology in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), later the Design Bureau No. 2. See Steven T. Usdin, Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 219–220, 227.
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Gerovitch, S. (2014). Control Engineer Georgiy Priss. In: Voices of the Soviet Space Program. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481795_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481795_6
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