Valentin Petrovich Glushko was appointed chief designer of the newly founded OKB-456 design bureau on July 3, 1946. The company was quickly tasked with the production of a Russian copy of the German V2 rocket engine, under the supervision of Glushko and 234 German designers added to the company in October, 1946. At the end of that year, OKB-456 took up residence in an aviation factory near the city of
Khimki, just outside Moscow. Here, the bureau constructed facilities to build and test fire its engines. The RD-100 performed admirably, and low-pressure LOX/Ethanol engine development continued, in the form of the RD-102 and RD-103. However, the development of high-pressure engine technology allowed propellants with a higher energy density to be used, and so LOX/Kerosene quickly replaced LOX/Ethanol as the propellant of choice. In 2013, the Russian government began a major effort to
renationalize the Russian
space sector, and created
United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC) to consolidate its space holdings. In December 2013 President Putin issued a
presidential decree setting up the URSC corporation. The decree stipulated that the corporation will take over manufacturing facilities. The industry reorganization continued into 2014 with a
Sberbank cooperation agreement. ==Storable propellants and hypergols==