Sergei Korolev

Korolev was born in Zhytomyr, Imperial Russia (now Ukraine) to Russian mother and father. Just a year after his birth his parents divorced, he stayed with his mother who soon remarried and along with her new husband and the young Sergei, moved to the port of Odessa (now Ukraine) as the Russian Revolution begun. In 1922, Sergei Korolev entered the Odessa construction professional school (graduated in 1924). At that time, he was already interested in aviation. In 1924, Korolev was admitted to the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, where he joined a group of glider enthusiasts. Showing considerable engineering talents, he studied at there until 1926, when he entered Moscow's Bauman High Technical School (MVTU) (graduated in 1929). In 1931 he joined the Central Aero-Hydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) in Moscow. In 1931 together with Friedrich Zander he participated in the creation of the Jet Propulsion Research Group (GIRD), one of the earliest state-sponsored centers for rocket development in the USSR. In May 1932 Korolev was appointed chief of the group. In 1933, the group was merged with Gas
Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) to form the Jet Propulsion Research Institute (RNII), where Korolev worked as Deputy Chief of the institute. At RNII, Korolev led the development of cruise missiles and of a manned rocket-powered glider. Sergei Korolev and Friedrich Zander launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933, which was called GIRD-09. In 1934 Korolev published the work "Rocket Flight in Stratosphere".

During the Great Purge of the 1930s, he was arrested on falsified charges of disloyalty on June 27, 1938 and sentenced for 10 years of imprisonment. After months of transport and abuse, he served a term in a Gulag at Kolyma, working as forced labour in the local gold mines. With the start of the German aggression in 1941 Korolev was allowed to pursue rocketry in a "sharashka", a research bureau staffed by repressed engineers and managed by NKVD.

Since 1946 he was at the head of the works on ballistic missiles which started off with building a prototype of the German V-2 rocket, designated as the R-1 rocket by the Soviets (launched October 9 1948). He then progressed to designing the R-7, the first ICBM, designed to lob a 5,000 kg nuclear bomb at the United States. Since 1956 he was the Chief Constructor of Soviet spacecraft and satellites:first man-made Earth satellite (Sputnik 1, launched October 4 1957) and Sun satellite (Luna 1, launched January 2 1959) Vostok, Voskhod, Molniya 1; first satellites of the Electron, Cosmos satellite series. Academician of USSR Academy of Sciences since 1958. Under the leadership of Korolev Soviet scientists achieved numerous firsts of space exploration: the first artificial satellite, the first animals in space, the first human space flight, the first walk in the outer space, and the first craft on the Moon and Venus, Luna 2 and Venera 3.

Korolev is often compared to Wernher von Braun as the leading architect of Space Race. Unlike Von Braun, Korolev had to compete continually with rivals such as Vladimir Chelomei who had their own plans for flights to the moon.

in early July 1969.

For the moon race, Korolev designed the immense N1 rocket, but he died before the first test during an operation to remove a cancerous tumor.

Awards and honors