Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) (Russian: Газодинамическая лаборатория) was the first Soviet research and development laboratory to focus on rocket technology. Its activities were initially devoted to the development of solid propellant rockets, which became the prototypes of missiles in the Katyusha rocket launcher, as well as liquid propellant rockets, which became the prototypes of Soviet rockets and spacecraft. At the end of 1933 it became part of the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII). A number of craters on the far side of the Moon are named after GDL employees.
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Gas Dynamics Laboratory in the context of Soviet space program
The Soviet space program (Russian: Космическая программа СССР, romanized: Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR) was the state space program of the Soviet Union, active from 1951 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Contrary to its competitors (NASA in the United States, the European Space Agency in Western Europe, and the Ministry of Aerospace Industry in China), which had their programs run under single coordinating agencies, the Soviet space program was divided between several internally competing design bureaus led by Korolev, Kerimov, Keldysh, Yangel, Glushko, Chelomey, Makeyev, Chertok and Reshetnev. Several of these bureaus were subordinated to the Ministry of General Machine-Building. The Soviet space program served as an important marker of claims by the Soviet Union to its superpower status.
Soviet investigations into rocketry began with the formation of the Gas Dynamics Laboratory in 1921, and these endeavors expanded during the 1930s and 1940s. In the years following World War II, both the Soviet and United States space programs utilised German technology in their early efforts at space programs. In the 1950s, the Soviet program was formalized under the management of Sergei Korolev, who led the program based on unique concepts derived from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, sometimes known as the father of theoretical astronautics.
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