The stamp shows the portrait of Yurij Vasylovych Kondratiuk as a young man. His real name was Oleksandr Hnatovych Shahreyj. To the right of the portrait, there is a picture of a spacecraft completing a flight to the moon. There is stylized symbol of the Ukrainian flag on the left side of the portrait. |
| Face Value | 20k |
| Colour | Multicolour |
| Design | Vasyl Dvornyk |
| Printing Method | Offset |
| Printers | "Derzhznak" - Kyiv |
| Perforation | 12.25 by 11.75 |
| Stamp Size | 52 by 25 mm |
| Sheet(s) | 40 ( 5 by 8 ) |
| Issue | 250,000 |
A pictorial cancellation was used for the First Day of Issue. Cancellation was done in Kyiv.
Oleksandr Shahreyj was born on June 21st, 1897 in Poltava. He studied at St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute. In the late 1920s, he published his major work "The Conquest of Interplanetary Space", a forerunner to contemporary space travel. In his work, he
- developed the equations for rocket motions,
- calculated flight trajectories,
- developed the theory of multi-stage rockets,
- talked about the need for new rocket fuels,
- suggested the use of orbiting supply bases for flying space crafts,
- suggested the use of small excursion vehicles to be used to land astronauts on planets and to return them to their space ships,
- use the gravitational fields of celestial bodies for accelerating and decelerating space crafts,
- use atmospheric drag to decelerate the entry of a spacecraft back to Earth.
His ideas and concepts were eventually accepted and used by both American and former Soviet space agencies for their space programs.
He worked on various projects throughout the Soviet Union. In 1933, he headed a work group in Kharkiv to design the largest wind-powered electric station in the world. Towards the later part of the 1930s, he was on Stalin's black-list. To avoid arrest, he took the name and papers of his friend Yurij Kondratiuk, who was killed during the start of World War II. During this time he was drafted into the Army. He died about 1942 in Siberia under unknown circumstances.
Y. Kondratiuk's true identity was not made public until the mid-1980s. One of the Moon's craters is named after him.