Tell HN: I Found Out Who the Russian Chief Designer Was Who Spat on Elon Musk
by freefaler | 2025-08-27 18:21:12+00:00
In October 2001, Elon Musk, Jim Cantrell (a "space/rocket" fixer with Russian contacts), and Mike Griffin (future NASA administrator) flew to Russia. They wanted to buy a cheap launch to Mars for the "Mars Oasis" project. I read Elon Musk's biography, and there was an interesting episode where, at one of the companies, the "old school" chief designer spat on them. This was corroborated in a podcast by Jim Cantrell.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Haoq1xAuCeU)

As a technology history buff with a special interest in Soviet rocket and aviation history, this is what I found. It may be interesting to other aviation/rocket/technology buffs on HN. So, based on Jim's interview and books, the facts are:

- In November 2001, they got to "NPO Mashinostroyenia," which built the "Strela" conversion of their ICBM.

- They went into an old building that was cold, with padded doors—it was super cold.

- They met with the Russians, including a translator and the chief designer. He wasn't impressed with Musk and frequently called him "this boy" (Jim knew Russian but didn't reveal that to the Russians) and said he wouldn't sell this serious machine of war to "this boy."

- The chief designer abruptly ended the meeting and spat on their shoes.

This got me thinking, and from what I knew, I decided to find out who this guy was. Well, I didn't expect the fish to be this big at the end of my research.

So, NPO Mashinostroyenia (The Scientific Production Association of Machine Manufacturing) is the only one of the Soviet design bureaus (basically integrated military-industrial corporations) that not only designed strategic rockets, but also satellites and cruise missiles. It's one of the three "original" companies that created the nuclear delivery capability for the USSR. Started in 1954 by V. Chelomey, who in 1944 worked on Soviet V-1 style pulse-jet flying bombs, it grew during Nikita Khrushchev's time.

In 1962, the company created the first efficient silo-based hypergolic rocket, UR-100 (SS-11), which, with many upgrades, was used until 1987, with more than 950 produced. This is the rocket they used as a basis for their "Strela" conversion, because a lot were available, and with slight modification of the "bus" (the platform where the reentry vehicles are maneuvered into position), they could use it to deliver satellites. Since the name of the company and the name of the rocket match Jim's description, I was sure they had the meeting there.

So, who was the chief designer at NPO Mashinostroyenia in 2001 who spat on them?

Gerbert (Herbert) Yefremov, born in 1933, and at that time he was the CEO and the chief designer, at 68 years old. Fits perfectly with the description and matches the official record of the company.

This guy is a legend in the Soviet and Russian military-industrial complex. He was one of the designers of the SS-11 and the chief designer of the Strela conversion. He also supervised work on cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, the military space station Almaz with a space cannon for defense, and finally the hypersonic glide vehicle Avangard that entered service in 2019. To understand his stature, he was personally congratulated by Putin via video and is the second person to be both Hero of Socialist Labour (highest civil title in the USSR) and Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation. Also, in a recent interview, he bashed SpaceX's Starlink constellation because it will become "a giant pile of space garbage." So, he's kind of a "Soviet Elon Musk" or more like a "Soviet Wernher von Braun" and is a hardcore dude: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Herbert_Efremov.png