The Moscow-based Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD, Gruppa izucheniya reaktivnogo dvizheniya) was a Soviet research bureau founded in 1931 to study various aspects of rocketry. In 1933 it was incorporated into the Reaction-Engine Scientific Research Institute (RNII, Reaktivnyy nauchno-issledovatel’skiy institut). There were a number of amateur groups and solitary researchers in existence, but GIRD was the Soviet Union’s first large professional rocketry program. The group was organized as four brigades and ten projects to study rocket engines and winged and wingless missiles. Aeronautical engineer Sergey Korolev, the future leader of the Soviet space program, was its director, as well as a brigade leader and the chairman of its technical council. Friedrich Zander headed the GIRD's 1st Brigade, which comprised a research team transferred from the Institute of Aircraft Engine Construction (IAM). Tsander had speculated on the use of a rocket for space travel as early as 1907 and was one of the founding members of the short-lived Society for the Study of Interplanetary Communication in 1924.
