Jet Scientific Research Institute RNII

an institute established in Moscow in September 1933 through a merger of the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) and the Group for the Study of Jet Propulsion (GIRD). I. T. Kleimenov, director of the GDL, was appointed director of the new institute, and S. P. Korolev, director of the GIRD, was appointed deputy director. In January 1934, G. E. Langemak, former deputy director of the GDL, was named deputy director of the RNII. The institute staff maintained close ties with K. E. Tsiolkovskii.

The RNII has worked on all the fundamental problems of rocket technology. It completed the development of rocket projectiles using smokeless powder, which was begun at the GDL. It also created a series of experimental ballistic and winged missiles and rocket engines for them. During the years 1937–38, the RNII conducted ground tests of the RP-318 rocket aircraft equipped with an ORM-65 engine. In 1939 flight tests of the winged missile 212 were carried out, again using the ORM-65 engine (seeEXPERIMENTAL ROCKET MOTOR). In 1940 the RP-318 was successfully flown, with V. P. Fedorov as pilot; in 1942, G. Ia. Bakhchivandzhi flew a Bi-1 rocket-powered airplane whose engine was designed at the RNII.

In 1966, a 540-km chain of craters on the far side of the moon was named after the RNII in honor of the institute’s pioneering contributions to the development of the Soviet rocket industry.