A session of the Presidium of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences was held in mid-2005 in the town of Miass on the territory of the Federal Missile Design Center named after Acad. V. Makeev. The Center is a vital part of the unique R&D potential of the region. The importance of close ties between Academy scientists and specialists of the local research and development centers has been recognized for quite some time and the session participants signed a formal cooperation agreement. Details have been supplied in an article (by Andrei Ponizovkin) which appeared in the newspaper Nauka Urala (Science of Ural). The Miass R&D center is located near the Ilmen National Forest Preserve stretching for tens of kilometers-almost to the banks of the Lake Turgoyak. It owes its origin to a copper smelter founded there in 1773. Later on gold deposits were also discovered there which are being mined to this day. During the Great Patriotic War with Nazi Germany Pages. 10 many Moscow plants and factories were moved to Miass and an automobile plant built there produced ZIS-5 trucks which carried the famous KATYUSHA missiles. In 1959 the "super-secret" military research center headed by Acad. Sergei Korolyov* (founded in 1937) was moved to the northern sector of Miass from the neighboring Zlatoust. And the building was started of the premises of the new R&D Center and housing accommodations for its staff. The new R&D Bureau focused its efforts on building what they called a national missile complex. The first "fruit" of these efforts was the R-1** missile - a Soviet analogue of the German V-2 missile. With time engineers of the Center began to put into practice engineering and scientific ideas of their own. Their efforts were focused on the development of missiles for surface naval vessels and submarines. The motto of the Center staff has been: "From the depths of the ocean - into the depths of outer space." Center scientists support their good int ... Read more