Exactly 50 years ago, on January 14, 1966, the outstanding Soviet scientist, designer and founder of practical cosmonautics Sergei Pavlovich Korolev passed away. This outstanding Russian figure will forever go down in history as the creator of Soviet rocket and space technology, which helped to ensure strategic parity and turned the Soviet Union into an advanced rocket and space power, becoming one of the key figures in human space exploration. It was under the direct supervision of Korolev and on his initiative that the first artificial earth satellite and the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin were launched. Today in Russia there is a city that was named after an outstanding scientist.
Sergei Korolev was a man of amazing destiny. He could have crashed on a glider, but did not crash. He could well have been shot as an "enemy of the people", but he was sentenced to prison. He could have died already in the camps, but he survived. Was supposed to drown on a ship in the Pacific Ocean, but missed the ship, which crashed 5 days later. This great scientist survived in order to literally go through thorns to the stars and be the first to take humanity into space. Probably, there was no other such person on the planet who loved the sky so much and loyally.
Sergey Pavlovich Korolev was born on January 12, 1907 (December 30, 1906 according to the old style) in the city of Zhitomir in the family of the teacher of Russian literature Pavel Yakovlevich Korolev and the daughter of the Nezhinsky merchant Maria Nikolaevna Moskalenko. He was three years old when the family broke up, and by the decision of his mother he was sent to be raised by his grandparents in Nizhyn, where Sergei lived until 1915. In 1916, his mother remarried and, together with her son and new husband Georgy Mikhailovich Balanin, moved to Odessa. In 1917, the future scientist entered the gymnasium, which he did not manage to finish due to the outbreak of the revolution. The gymnasium was closed, and for 4 months he studied at a unified labor school, and then received his education at home. He studied independently according to the gymnasium curriculum with the help of his stepfather and mother, who were both teachers, and his stepfather, in addition to teaching, had an engineering education.
While still at school, Sergei Korolev was distinguished by exceptional abilities and a great desire for aviation technology, new for that time. When a detachment of seaplanes was formed in Odessa in 1921, the future missile designer became seriously interested in aeronautics. He made acquaintance with the members of this detachment and made his first flights on a seaplane, deciding to become a pilot. At the same time, his passion for the sky was interspersed with work in a school production workshop, where the future designer learned to work at a lathe, he turned parts of a very complex shape and configuration. This "carpentry" school was very useful to him in the future, when he began to build his own gliders.
At the same time, the future rocket designer did not manage to get a secondary education immediately, he did not have the conditions for this. Only in 1922, a construction professional school was opened in Odessa, in which at that time the best teachers taught. 15-year-old Sergei entered it. Naturally beautiful memory allowed Korolev to memorize whole pages of text by heart. The future designer studied very diligently, one might say, with enthusiasm. His class teacher told his mother about him: "A guy with a king in his head." He studied at the construction vocational school from 1922 to 1924, studying in parallel in many circles and in various courses.
In 1923, the government appealed to the people with an appeal to create their own Air Force in the country. In Ukraine, the Aviation and Aeronautics Society of Ukraine and Crimea (OAVUK) was formed. Sergei Korolev immediately became a member of this society and began to study intensively in one of its gliding circles. In the circle he even gave lectures on gliding to the workers himself. Korolev acquired knowledge on the history of aviation and gliding on his own, reading specialized literature, including a book in German. Already at the age of 17, he developed a project for an aircraft of the original design, the "K-5 non-motorized aircraft".
In 1924, Sergei Korolev entered the Kiev Polytechnic Institute in the profile of aviation technology, in just 2 years he mastered general engineering disciplines and became a real athlete-glider. In the fall of 1926, Korolev transferred to the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School (MVTU), where he studied at the aeromechanical faculty. The young student always studied with his characteristic industriousness, he spent a lot of time on his own, visiting the technical library. Particularly popular in those years were the lectures of the young 35-year-old aircraft designer Tupolev, who taught the students an introductory course on aircraft construction. Even then, Tupolev noticed Sergei's outstanding abilities and later considered Korolev one of his best students.
While studying in Moscow, Sergei Korolev was already well known as a young and promising aircraft designer, an experienced glider pilot. Starting from the 4th year, he combined study and work in the KB. From 1927 to 1930 he took part in the All-Union glider competitions, which were held on the territory of the Crimea near Koktebel. Here Korolev flew himself, and also presented models of his gliders, including SK-1 Koktebel and SK-3 Krasnaya Zvezda.
Of great importance to the life of Sergei Korolev was his meeting with Tsiolkovsky, which took place in Kaluga in 1929 on the way from Odessa to Moscow. This meeting predetermined the further life of the scientist and designer. The conversation with Konstantin Eduardovich made an indelible impression on the young specialist. “Tsiolkovsky then shocked me with his unshakable belief in the possibility of space navigation,” the designer recalled many years later, “I left him with one single thought: to build rockets and fly them. The whole meaning of life for me has become one thing - to break through to the stars."
In 1930, he began working at the Central Design Bureau of the Menzhinsky plant, and from March of the following year he became a senior flight test engineer at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI). In the same 1931, he took part in the organization of the GIRD - the Group for the Study of Jet Propulsion, which he would head already in 1932. Under the leadership of Sergei Korolev, the first launches of Soviet missiles were carried out on the GIRD-9 hybrid engine, which took place in August 1933, and on the GIRD-X liquid fuel in November of the same year. After the merger of the Leningrad Gas Dynamic Laboratory (GDL) and the Moscow GIRD at the end of 1933, and the Jet Research Institute (RNII) was created, Sergey Korolev was appointed its deputy director for scientific affairs, and since 1934, he became the head department of rocket flying vehicles.
In 1934, the first printed work of Sergei Korolev was published, which was called "Rocket Flight in the Stratosphere". Already in this book, the designer warned that the rocket is a very serious weapon. He also sent a sample of the book to Tsiolkovsky, who called the book meaningful, reasonable and useful. Even then, Korolev dreamed of getting involved in the construction of a rocket plane as closely as possible, but his ideas were not destined to come true then. In the fall of 1937, the wave of repressions that swept the Soviet Union reached the RNII.
Korolev was arrested on false charges on June 27, 1938. On September 25, he was included in the list of persons subject to trial by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court. On the list, he went through the first category, which meant: the punishment recommended by the NKVD is execution. The list was approved personally by Stalin, so that the verdict could be considered practically approved. However, Korolev was "lucky", he was sentenced to 10 years in the camps. Prior to that, he spent a year in the Butyrka prison. According to some reports, the future space explorer was severely tortured and beaten, as a result of which his jaw was broken. The designer got to Kolyma on April 21, 1939, where he worked at the Maldyak gold mine of the Western Mining Directorate, while the designer of rocket engines was engaged in “general work”. On December 2, 1939, Korolev was placed at the disposal of Vladlag.
Only on March 2, 1940, he again ended up in Moscow, was convicted a second time, this time he was sentenced to 8 years in the camps, sent to a new place of detention - to the Moscow special prison of the NKVD TsKB-29, in which, under the leadership of his teacher Tupolev, he took part in the development of Tu-2 and Pe-2 bombers, at the same time initiating work on the creation of a guided air torpedo and a new version of the interceptor fighter. These works became the reason for his transfer in 1942 to another design bureau, but also of a prison type - OKB-16, which worked in Kazan at the aircraft factory number 16. Here, work was carried out on the creation of new types of rocket engines, which were later planned to be used in the aviation industry. After the start of the war, Korolev asked to send him to the front as a pilot, but Tupolev, who by that time had already recognized and appreciated him well, did not let him go, saying: "Who will build planes?"
Sergei Pavlovich was released ahead of schedule only in July 1944 on the personal instructions of Stalin, after which he continued to work in Kazan for another year. A prominent specialist in the field of aviation equipment L. L. Kerber, who worked at TsKB-29, noted that Korolev was a cynic, skeptic and pessimist and looked rather gloomy to the future, attributing to the designer the phrase "Slam without an obituary." At the same time, there is a statement by the pilot-cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who noted that Korolev was never angry and never complained, did not give up, did not curse or scold anyone. The designer simply did not have time for this, he perfectly understood that anger would not cause a creative impulse in him, but only his oppression.
After the end of World War II, in the second half of 1945, Sergei Korolev, as part of a group of specialists, was sent to Germany on a business trip, where he studied German technology. Of particular interest to him was, of course, the German V-2 rocket (V-2). In August 1946, the designer began work in Kaliningrad near Moscow, where he became the chief designer of long-range missiles and the head of department No. 3 at NII-88 for their development.
The first task that was set by the government to Korolev as the chief designer and all organizations involved in rocket armament at that time was the development of a Soviet analogue of the German V-2 rocket from domestic materials. At the same time, already in 1947, a new government decree appeared on the creation of new ballistic missiles with a flight range greater than that of the V-2 - up to 3 thousand km. In 1948, Korolev conducted flight design tests of the first Soviet ballistic missile R-1 (analogue of the V-2) and in 1950 he put the missile into service. Over the next several years, he worked on various modifications of this rocket. During only one 1954, he completed work on the R-5 rocket, outlining five of its possible modifications at once. Work was also completed on the R-5M missile equipped with a nuclear warhead. In addition, he worked on the R-11 rocket and its naval version, and his future R-7 intercontinental missile also acquired more and more clear outlines.
Work on the R-7 two-stage intercontinental missile was completed in 1956. It was a missile with a range of 8 thousand kilometers and a detachable warhead weighing up to 3 tons. The rocket, created under the direct supervision of Sergei Pavlovich, was successfully tested in 1957 at a test site No. 5 specially built for this purpose, located in the Kazakh steppe (today it is the Baikonur cosmodrome). A modification of this R-7A missile, which had a launch range increased to 11 thousand kilometers, was in service with the Strategic Missile Forces of the Soviet Union from 1960 to 1968. It is also worth noting the fact that in 1957 Korolev created the first ballistic missiles based on stable propellants (mobile land and sea-based); the designer became a real pioneer in these new and very important directions in the development of missile weapons.
On October 4, 1957, a rocket designed by Sergei Korolev launched the first ever artificial satellite into earth orbit. From that day on, the era of practical astronautics began, and Korolev became the father of this era. Initially, only animals were sent into space, but already on April 12, 1961, the designer, together with his colleagues and like-minded people, successfully launched the Vostok-1 spacecraft, on board of which was the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin. With this flight, which would not have been without Korolev, the era of manned astronautics begins.
Also, since 1959, Sergei Korolev has been in charge of the lunar exploration program. Within the framework of this program, several spacecraft were sent to the natural satellite of the Earth, including soft-landing vehicles. When designing an apparatus for landing on the lunar surface, there was a lot of controversy about what it was. At that time, the generally accepted hypothesis, put forward by astronomer Thomas Gold, was that the moon was covered with a thick layer of dust due to micrometeorite bombardment. But Korolev, who was familiar with another hypothesis - the Soviet volcanologist Heinrich Steinberg, ordered to consider the lunar surface solid. His correctness was confirmed in 1966, when the Soviet apparatus Luna-9 made a soft landing on the Moon.
Another interesting story from the life of the great scientist and designer was the episode with the preparation of an automatic station for sending to one of the planets of the solar system. When creating it, the designers faced the problem of the extra weight of the research equipment on board the station. Sergei Korolev studied the drawings of the station, after which he checked the device, which was supposed to transmit to Earth information about the presence or absence of organic life on the planet. He took the device to a burnt Kazakh degree not far from the cosmodrome and the device transmitted a signal by radio that there was no life on Earth, which was the reason for excluding this unnecessary equipment from the station's equipment.
During the life of the great designer, 10 cosmonauts managed to visit space on the spaceships of his design, in addition to Gagarin, a man went into outer space (this was done by Alexei Leonov on March 18, 1965). Under the direct leadership of Sergei Korolev, the first space complex was created in the USSR, many geophysical and ballistic missiles, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile, the Vostok launch vehicle and its modifications, an artificial Earth satellite, flights of the Vostok and Voskhod”, the first spacecraft of the“Luna”,“Venus”,“Mars”, and“Zond”series have been developed, and the Soyuz spacecraft has been developed.
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev passed away quite early - on January 14, 1966, at the age of only 59. Apparently, the designer's health was nevertheless undermined in Kolyma and the unfair accusation (in 1957 he was completely rehabilitated) left an imprint on his health. By this time, Korolev had already done a lot to realize his dream of conquering space, he realized it in practice. But some projects, for example the lunar program of the USSR, turned out to be unrealized. The lunar project was canceled after the death of the outstanding designer.
In 1966, the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union established the Sergei Pavlovich Korolev Gold Medal "For Outstanding Services in the Field of Rocket and Space Technology". Monuments were erected to him in Zhitomir, Moscow and Baikonur. The memory of the designer was immortalized by a large number of streets named in his honor, as well as by a memorial house-museum. In 1996, the city of Kaliningrad near Moscow was renamed the science city of Korolev in honor of the outstanding designer of rocket technology who worked here. The Tien Shan pass, a large lunar crater and an asteroid were also named in his honor. So the name of Sergei Korolev continues to live not only on Earth, but also in space.
