Laser steps to Dancing Cloud

By Igor Troitski

The book about the laser steps made by me to be in my house on Dancing Cloud Ave. The reader will learn how the geographical center of the USSR was opened, and how the son of the Minister of Defense, drunk from the sound of pouring vodka, supervised the construction of the first Russian laser locator. Together with the academicians, the reader will visit to the military laser training ground and see how the helicopter falls when the laser beam hits its air intake. The reader will be able to observe how the two Russian Nobel laureates, the inventors of the laser, hated each other and find out how both deputies of the General Designer, who worked on the creation of military laser systems, died. The reader will be introduced to the Confessions of a Colonel of the State Security Committee, Deputy General Designer for the regime of secrecy. Finally, the reader will learn how an unexpected event helped me move from creating laser weapons systems to working on new laser medical devices, such as laser punches, and fine arts, such as holograms and laser volumetric images in transparent materials.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Accent Graphics Communications
• Release date: Jun 25, 2023

Book preview

Igor Troitski is a doctor of technical sciences, a professor and an author of more than 200 scientific papers, books, monographs and tutorials. His contributions are focused on the following topics: laser location, holography, tomography, adaptive optics and creation of optical laser images inside transparent material. He has 79 Soviet inventor’s certificates and 29 US patents.

/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Troitski/

FROM THE AUTHOR

The book about the laser steps made by me to be in my house on Dancing Cloud Ave. The reader will learn how the geographical center of the USSR was opened, and how the son of the Minister of Defense, drunk from the sound of pouring vodka, supervised the construction of the first Russian laser locator. Together with the academicians, the reader will visit to the military laser training ground and see how the helicopter falls when the laser beam hits its air intake. The reader will be able to observe how the two Russian Nobel laureates, the inventors of the laser, hated each other and find out how both deputies of the General Designer, who worked on the creation of military laser systems, died. The reader will be introduced to the Confessions of a Colonel of the State Security Committee, Deputy General Designer for the regime of secrecy. Finally, the reader will learn how an unexpected event helped me move from creating laser weapons systems to working on new laser medical devices, such as laser punches, and fine arts, such as holograms and laser volumetric images in transparent materials.

Contents

The first Soviet laser locator

The head of the theoretical laboratory. The opening of the geographical center of the Soviet Union and the punishment for this discovery. The firm of the son’s USSR Minister of Defense.

From laser locating to laser weapons

Administrative purge. Laser shooting at military objects. Dinner in the archbishop's cell with developers of laser weapons. Interdepartmental Coordination Council. Feud between two academicians, inventors of lasers. The visit to the military training ground with the entire staff of the Presidium. The death of both deputy General Designer. The intrigues of the CIA. Dismissal for discrepancy in the level of secrecy for that work that I headed.

Confessions of a Colonel of the State Security Committee

An unexpected vacation with my enemy. How Tishin became a KGB officer. The conspiratorial apartment. The celebration of Orthodox Christmas

If not science, then at least its history

The beginning of the end of RPA Astrophysics. Former General Designer is becoming the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology (IHNST). My last day at RPA Astrophysics. Features of work in the IHNST

Instead of laser weapons - medical laser perforator

First American pizza and a laser puncher. How I got my first dollars. American visa and how a not-so-desirable guest got it. Russians in an American home, and Americans in the home of a scientist who created the first Soviet atomic bomb. The first Russians in the restaurant in Little Rock. How I ended up in New York, and why I gave up big dollars. The collapse of the US-Russian business

The Optical Research Laboratory in New Jersey

The permanent exhibition Optics from Russia and Engineering and Marketing Center. The American government's SABIT program. The main research in the Optical Research Laboratory

The first Soviet laser locator

The head of the theoretical laboratory

In 1972, I moved to the Research and Production Association, code named Astrophysics (RPA Astrophysics), where scientists and engineers developed military systems using high-power lasers. The reasons why I decided to change the direction of scientific research related to the creation of a missile defense system are described in detail in the book The First Six Steps on the Ladder to the Dancing Cloud.

In the new enterprise, I headed the theoretical laboratory, which was part of Dr. Bakut's department. Nikolai Ustinov, the son of the Minister of Defense of the USSR, was the General Designer of the RPA Astrophysics. At the same time, at the educational department of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, I began to lecture on the fundamentals of the statistical theory of laser location.

By the time I came to RPA Astrophysics, two of my former classmates, Vadim and Victor had already successfully worked at this enterprise. Vadim was the head of a neighboring laboratory in the same department of Bakut, and Victor headed the graduate school and acted as deputy head of the educational department of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Thus, the three of us again found ourselves close but now we have turned from students into teachers.

In general, the life of a theoretician is not very burdensome. Bakut and Vadim, just like me, conducted seminars, lectured to students and graduate students, wrote articles and, in parallel, carried out some research on assignments from developers. And all this was with pleasure and without any tension.

The opening of the geographical center of the Soviet Union and the punishment for this discovery

I

The main hobby of Bakut was tourism in hard-to-reach and sparsely inhabited places in Russia. Gradually, a small group of such amateurs gathered, among whom was a friend of Bakut, Matveev, the head of one of the Astrophysics departments. They became active members of the All-Russian Geographical Society, what made them possible to use helicopters for free to deliver their friend company to deserted, inaccessible places, where they fished and hunted.

Once, by the fire, baking a piece of fresh bear meat, Bakut and Matveev came up with, as it seemed to them, a great idea: to determine the location of the Soviet Union center and to organize holding an annual tourist meeting in this place. They calculated this center as the center of gravity of a geometric figure that has the borders of the Soviet Union. According to calculations, this center was located in the endless Siberian swamps between the Urals and the river of the Ob.