Ministry of General Machine-Building

Ministry of General Machine-Building

Министерство общего машиностроения
Buran at the 1989 Paris Air Show
Agency overview
Formed	2 April 1955; 70 years ago (1955-04-02) (initially) 2 March 1965; 60 years ago (1965-03-02) (reestablished)
Preceding agency	State Committee on Defense Technology [ru]
Dissolved	10 May 1957; 67 years ago (1957-05-10) (initially) 1 December 1991; 33 years ago (1991-12-01) (permanently)
Superseding agency	Russian Space Agency
Jurisdiction	Government of the Soviet Union
Employees	1,000,000–1,500,000
Minister responsible	Minister of General Machine-Building
Parent agency	Military-Industrial Commission
Child agencies	OKB-1 Glavkosmos Research Institute of Machine-Building Technology

The Ministry of General Machine-Building (Russian: Министерство общего машиностроения; MOM), also known as Minobshchemash, was a government ministry of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1957 and from 1965 to 1991. The ministry supervised design bureaus that managed the research, development, and production of ballistic missiles as well as launch vehicles and satellites in the Soviet space program.

While Soviet rocketry organizations date back to 1921, the Ministry of General Machine-Building, upon being founded in 1955, became a dedicated department for aerospace technology. It was dissolved in 1957 but was reinstated in 1965. Various projects of the Soviet space program were developed at the ministry. It also began commercially providing launch services abroad through its Glavkosmos agency during the perestroika reforms of the late 1980s. The ministry was permanently abolished in 1991 amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Russian Space Agency, which would later become Roscosmos, was created in 1992 as its successor.