Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev ' onMouseout='HidePop("53654")' href="/topics/Novozybkov">Novozybkov

Novozybkov

Novozybkov is a historical town in Bryansk Oblast, Russia. Population: -History:It was founded in 1701 and granted town status in 1809. Novozybkov was a major hemp supplier in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly for the production of ropes for the Russian Navy...

, Chernigov Governorate

Chernigov Governorate

The Chernigov Governorate , also known as the Government of Chernigov, was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate with an administrative centre of Chernigov...

 (now Bryansk Oblast

Bryansk Oblast

Bryansk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Bryansk. Population: 1,278,087 .-History:...

), Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 – February 9, 1980, Gorky

Nizhny Novgorod

Nizhny Novgorod , colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with the population of 1,250,615, the fifth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg...

, USSR) was a designer of highspeed shipbuilding. He invented and designed the world's first Ekranoplans. His work has been compared to that of A.N. Tupolev

Andrei Tupolev

Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev was a pioneering Soviet aircraft designer.During his career, he designed and oversaw the design of more than 100 types of aircraft, some of which set 78 world records...

 in aviation

Aviation

Aviation is the design, development, production, operation, and use of aircraft, especially heavier-than-air aircraft. Aviation is derived from avis, the Latin word for bird.-History:...

 and S.P. Korolev

Sergey Korolyov

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev ; died 14 January 1966 in Moscow, Russia) was the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer in the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1960s...

 in space flight

Spaceflight

Spaceflight is the act of travelling into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft which may, or may not, have humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the Russian Soyuz program, the U.S. Space shuttle program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station...

.

Hydrofoil ships

Alexeev was the first to create high speed ships on the so-called low submerged underwater wings, the most popular ones being passenger ships Raketa

Raketa (hydrofoil)

Raketa was the first type of hydrofoil boats commercially produced in the Soviet Union. They were manufactured from 1957 until the early 1970s...

, Volga, Meteor, Kometa, and Burevestnik, with passenger capacity up to 150 persons and cruising speed up to 100 km/h (62.1 mph; 51 kn).

Ekranoplans

Alexeyev revolutionised the shipbuilding

Shipbuilding

Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to before recorded history.Shipbuilding and ship repairs, both...

 industry (though in secrecy) by inventing crafts that use ground effect, whereby (in very simple terms) a wing traveling close to the ground is provided with extra lift by the "cushion" of air compressed under it - thereby enabling a combination of greater aircraft weight for less power and/or enhanced fuel economy.

The KM or "korabl-maket", the largest ekranoplan ever built, was one of the first very successful vehicles designed by Alexeev and built by his Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau. The KM was intended as a test platform to examine the possibilities of the "Wing In Ground" (WIG) effect.

The KM, powered by eight Dobryin VD-7 turbojets on the front of the fuselage, and two on the tail for extra thrust during take-off, first took to the air in October 1966. During its extensive test career, it was continually modified. The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 was altered to between 32m and 40m, and the length varied from 92m to 106m.

The KM crashed in 1980, apparently due to the pilot ill-advisedly attempting to take off without giving it full throttle

Throttle

A throttle is the mechanism by which the flow of a fluid is managed by constriction or obstruction. An engine's power can be increased or decreased by the restriction of inlet gases , but usually decreased. The term throttle has come to refer, informally and incorrectly, to any mechanism by which...

. An attempt to recover the leviathan from the depths was thwarted by its vast weight. While the KM programme was ongoing, Alexeev began work on a medium-sized ekranoplan suitable for military transportation duties. Dubbed A-90 "Orlyonok" ("Eaglet")

A-90 Orlyonok

-External links:* * * * * *...

, the 140 tonne, 58 metre long aircraft had its maiden flight in 1972. The A-90 boasted two turbojets and one turboprop engine which propelled it to a speed of 400 km/h for 1,500 km at a cruise altitude of 5–10 m.

Death & legacy

After the crash of the KM, Soviet military heads used the incident as an excuse to remove Alexeev from the ekranoplan projects. He spent the rest of his life away from scientific work, concentrating mostly on sports. He died in 1980.

After the fall of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, the details of Alexeev's work became known to the public and generated a lot of interest from around the world. He is now generally considered as the father of ground effect vehicle design. Several documentaries have shown details of his work (including the KM), most recently on Russia Today

Russia Today TV

RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a global multilingual television news network based in the Russian Federation run by the state-owned state-run RIA Novosti....

channel on March 13, 2007