Sergei Korolev 

Sergei Korolev

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (Russian: Сергей Павлович Королёв), the Chief Designer of the Soviet space program in the Experimental Design Bureau  No.1 (OKB-1), was born on January 12, 1907 (New Style), in Zhytomyr, the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine). He led the development of the world's first ballistic missile R-7, the R-7 derived family of launch vehicles, science, military and communications satellites, interplanetary probes and manned spacecraft. His identity was not made public until after his death in 1966. 

   Korolev was trained in aeronautical engineering at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute and then at the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School, graduating in 1929. In 1931 he joined the Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI). In July 1932, Korolev was appointed chief of Jet Propulsion Research Group, GIRD, one of the earliest state-sponsored centers for rocket development in the USSR. In 1933, the military, seeing the potential of rockets, replaced GIRD with the Reactive Propulsion Scientific Research Institute (RNII), where he was appointed deputy head. Korolev supervised development of cruise missiles and a crewed rocket-powered glider.

   In June 1938, at the height of Stalin's purges, Korolev was arrested and sent to concentration camps in Siberia. He first spent months in transit on the Transsiberian railway and on a prison vessel at Magadan. This was followed by a year in the Kolyma gold mines, the most dreaded part of the Gulag. Stalin soon recognized the importance of aeronautical engineers in preparing for the impending war with Hitler, however, and retrieved from incarceration Korolev and other technical personnel that could help the Red Army by developing new weapons. A system of sharashkas (prison design bureaus) was set up to exploit the jailed talent. In September 1940, Korolev was saved by the intervention of senior aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev (1888–1972), himself a prisoner, who requested his services in the TsKB-39 sharashka.

   In July 1944, the authorities paroled Korolev and in September 1945, he traveled to Germany for evaluation and restoration of A-4 ballistic missiles (V-2 rockets). In August 1946, Korolev was appointed chief of a department in the newly created NII-88 in Podlipki, in the suburbs of Moscow. This organization was made responsible for the development and industrial production of missile technology based on German hardware. The first Soviet tests of V-2 rockets took place in October 1947 at Kapustin Yar, with Korolev as management lead for the project. In April 1953, Korolev received approval from the Council of Ministers for development of the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7. The first successful flight of R-7 took place on August 21, 1957. A variant of the R-7 missile launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, on October 4, 1957.

   In the following years, Korolev led the development of several generations of ballistic missiles, launch vehicles, science, military and communications satellites, interplanetary probes and manned spacecraft. During the early 1960s, Korolev campaigned to send a Soviet cosmonaut to the Moon. Following the initial reconnaissance of the Moon by Luna 1, Luna 2, and Luna 3, Korolev established three largely independent efforts aimed at achieving a Soviet lunar landing before the Americans. The first objective, met by Vostok and Voskhod, was to prove that human space flight was possible. The second objective was to develop lunar vehicles which would soft-land on the Moon's surface to insure that a cosmonaut would not sink into the dust accumulated by four billion years of meteorite impacts. The third objective, and the most difficult to achieve, was to develop a huge booster to send cosmonauts to the Moon. His design bureau began work on the N-1 launch vehicle, a counterpart to the American Saturn V, beginning in 1962. Although the project continued until 1971 before cancellation, the N-1 never made a successful flight. On January 14, 1966 Sergei Korolev died in Moscow from a botched abdominal operation.

Korolev with Yuri Gagarin

© 2026, Andrew Mirecki