Yuri Kondratyuk (1897-1942) was a Soviet scientist, one of the founders of astronautics. At the beginning of the 20th century, he calculated the optimal trajectory of a flight to the Moon and developed theoretical foundations and practical recommendations for to-be astronauts.
Yuri Kondratyuk was born on June 21, 1897, in Poltava. As a young man, he became carried away by the problem of interplanetary flights.
In 1916, he entered the Mechanical Department of the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, but in November of the same year, he was called into the Army and enrolled in the school of warrant officers attached to one of the St. Petersburg cadet schools.
In 1929, Yuri Kondratyuk published in Novosibirsk as a private venture his book Conquest of Interplanetary Space in the quantity of 2,000 copies, which defined the sequence of the first stages of space exploration.
After the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Yuri Kondratyuk volunteered for the people’s militia. He was enrolled as a ranker wireman in a communications company of the 2nd rifle regiment of the 21st Moscow Militia Division of the Kievsky district of the 33rd Army of the Reserve Front. After breaking out of the Vyazma encirclement in October of 1941, Yuri Kondratyuk served in a communications platoon of the 470th rifle regiment of the 194th rifle division; afterwards, he was a squad leader and a platoon assistant commander in the liaison platoon of the 1st battalion of the 1281st rifle regiment of the 60th rifle division of the 49th Army in the Western Front.
He was killed on February 25, 1942.
The commemorative stamp provides a symbolic image of a carrier vehicle for launching into space; the main image features a portrait of Yuri Kondratyuk and the cover of his manuscript Conquest of Interplanetary Space.
In addition to the issue of the postcard with a commemorative stamp, JSC Marka produced special cancels for Moscow, St. Petersburg, Oryol and Novosibirsk.
Design Artists: A. Drobyshev (stamp), R. Komsa (illustration).
Quantity: 15 thousand cards.
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