Konstantin Bushuyev

Bushuyev was born on 23 May 1914 in the village of Cherten,^[1] in the district of Mosaik, Kaluga Oblast, in what was then the Russian Empire.^[2] He was the son of rural teachers. Bushuyev graduated in 1930 from an industrial college in Pesochnya (later known as Kirov). He was then a foreman and later a deputy shop manager at the P.L.Voikov Moscow Iron Foundry^[1] before earning an admission to the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1936. Bushuyev graduated with a degree in aircraft mechanical engineering in 1941.^[1][2]

It is presumed he joined the Soviet rocketry program shortly after the end of WWII; his area of expertise appears to have been applied dynamics. By 1948 he was head of a rocketry design office.^[2] Along with other members of Sergei Korolev’s team, Bushuyev was awarded a Stalin Prize in 1951 "for the development of instrumentation for temperature measurement for the R-1 missile flight tests."^[1] The launch of Sputnik earned Bushuyev the Hero of Socialist Labour, the highest civilian award in the Soviet Union. He earned a Lenin Prize in 1960.^[2]