Alexander Alexandrovich Bolonkin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Боло́нкин; 14 March 1933 – 25 December 2020[1]) was a Russian-American scientist and academic who worked in the Soviet aviation, space and rocket industries and lectured in Moscow universities, before being arrested in 1972 by the KGB as a dissident. He served terms of imprisonment and exile for 15 years until 1987, when he emigrated to the US as a political refugee.
After that he lectured at American universities and worked as a researcher at NASA, U.S. Air Force, and for the National Research Council. He was a member of the board of directors of the International Space Agency;[2] chairman of the Space Flights section; member of the advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation and its Space Settlement Board; the founding president of the International Association of Former Soviet Political Prisoners and Victims of the Communist Regime (IASPPV);[3] and co-founder and co-chair of the board of directors of American Russian-speaking Association for Civil & Human Rights (ARA).[4]
In 1972 he was arrested by the KGB for dissemination of an underground dissident newsletter,[6] listening to the Voice of America and reading and disseminating works by Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Bolonkin was sentenced to 4 years in a labour camp and 2 years in exile in Buryatia.[6] Shortly before his sentence of exile ended Bolonkin was given a sentence of 2 years in a labour camp on a charge of stealing state property.[6] For 15 years he was tortured, imprisoned, and exiled in Mordovia and Siberia.[5] In 1981 Sakharov appealed for international support to have him freed.[7] In April 1982 he made a televised recantation[8] that Amnesty International ascribed to threats of beatings and rape.[9]
By 2009, Bolonkin held 17 patents. Among his innovations in space exploration are a cable space launcher, a hypersonic tube launcher,[12] a kinetic anti-gravitation system,[13] a multi-reflex propulsion device,[14] space towers, an electrostatic solar sail, an electric ramjet space propulsion device, and the cable aviation[15] device.[5] In an Izvestia interview in 1998, he predicted the achievement of cybernetic immortality by 2020,[16] and in 2011 he was consulted as an expert by the 2045 Initiative.[17] He also developed the idea of domed cities as a protection against fallout,[11][18] and in physics researched the production of what he called "AB-Matter" through femtotechnology.[11]
Board memberships and foundations
Bolonkin was a member of the board of directors of the International Space Agency and chairman of the space flights section.[5][19]
He is also a member of the advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation and its space settlement board,[20] and the founding president of the International Association of Former Soviet Political Prisoners and Victims of the Communist Regime (IASPPV) and co-founder and co-chair of American Russian-speaking Association for Civil & Human Rights, an organization for the civil and human rights of Russian-Americans.[5][10] In this role, he co-authored with Dmitri Glinski a testimony for the hearings on the Magnitsky Act held by the U.S. House of Representatives' Tom LantosHuman Rights Committee before the passage of the Act in November 2012.[21]
^ abcdeMorgulis, Mikhail (January 21, 2009). "Alexander Bolonkin". Russian-American Business. Archived from the original on January 2, 2015. Retrieved February 8, 2015.
^ ab"Dr. Alexander Bolonkin". Great Immigrants. Carnegie Corporation of New York. 2014. Archived from the original on February 8, 2015. Retrieved February 8, 2015.