Project VR-190

VR-190—short for Vysotnaya Raketa, or “high-altitude rocket”—was the earliest Soviet effort aimed at sending a person on a suborbital, ballistic trajectory into space. The project spanned the 1940s and 1950s. According to official records, it never reached its intended goal. Unofficial accounts, however, suggest that cosmonauts were actually launched into space during that decade.

Origins

The project’s roots trace back to a secret government decree on 13 May 1946 that established large-scale rocket research in the USSR. Before that, a working group led by Mikhail Tikhonravov and Nikolai Chernyshev at the NII-4 institute, part of the Academy of Artillery Science, had already begun its own stratospheric rocket program in autumn 1945. That effort produced the VR-190, a system designed for vertical flight carrying two pilots to an altitude of 200 km, using captured German V-2 (A-4) rockets as a base.

In February 1946, the project was presented to N. G. Bruevich, Secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and then to Academy President Sergey Vavilov the following March. It received a positive reception and was introduced to Aviation Industry Minister Mikhail Khrunichev in June.

Testing and development

Testing—both uncrewed and crewed—took place at Kapustin Yar in the Astrakhan region. Reported flights lasted about 20 minutes, reaching altitudes above 100 km (the Kármán line). Payloads separated from warheads, and all pilots descended by parachute, landing a few kilometers from the launch site.

Around the same time, high-altitude rockets with sealed warheads and life-support systems were also being tested. Animal passengers flew to study factors that might affect humans. Several suborbital dog flights occurred: on R-1B and R-1V rockets in 1951 (when Dezik and Roma became the first animals to complete a successful suborbital spaceflight), on R-1D and R-1E rockets from 1954 to 1957, on R-1E rockets from 1957 to 1960, and on R-2A and R-5A rockets.

Officially, the project never progressed to human flight and was canceled in the late 1950s due to lack of success. Work then shifted to the orbital Vostok capsule. The entire project was kept highly secret; designers, scientists, and even the dogs operated under pseudonyms. The first public information emerged in the 1980s, but only as theoretical discussion.