Aircraft engineer and rocket designer, born in Zhitomir, WC Ukraine. Educated at Moscow Higher Technical School, in 1931 he formed the Moscow Group for Investigating Jet Propulsion, which launched the Soviet Union's first liquid-propelled rocket in 1933. By 1949 he was engaged in high-altitude-sounding flights employing rockets. As chief designer of Soviet spacecraft, he directed the Soviet Union's space programme, launching the first artificial satellite (1957), the first manned space flight (1961), the Vostok and Voskhod manned spacecraft, and the Cosmos series of satellites.
Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov (Russian: Серге́й Па́влович Королёв), often transliterated less phonetically as Sergei Korolev (January 12, 1907 [O.S. December 30 1906], Zhytomyr, now Ukraine – January 14, 1966, Moscow), was the head Soviet rocket engineer and designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike his counterpart in America, Wernher von Braun, Korolyov's pivotal role in the Soviet space program was kept a closely-guarded secret until after his death. Throughout his period of work on the program he was known only as the "Chief Designer".
Although trained as an aircraft designer, Korolyov's greatest strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning. Following his release, he became a rocket designer and a key figure in the development of the Soviet ICBM program. He was then appointed to lead the Soviet space program, overseeing the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects. By the time he died unexpectedly in 1966, due to a botched surgical procedure, his plans to compete with America to be the first nation to land a man on the Moon had begun to be implemented.
Early life
Korolyov was born in Zhytomyr, a small provincial center in central Ukraine, then part of Imperial Russia. His parents, Maria Nikolaevna Moskalenko and Pavel Yakovlevich Korolyov, had wed in an arranged marriage and the union was not a happy one.
Sergei grew up in Nizhyn (Nezhin), under the care of his grandparents.
The year 1918 was tumultuous in Russia, with the close of the World War and the ongoing Russian Revolution.
Education
Korolyov continued his schooling at the Odessa Building Trades School (Stroyprofshkola No.
In 1923 he joined the Society of Aviation and Aerial Navigation of Ukraine and the Crimea (OAVUK). In 1924 he personally designed a glider called the K-5, which was accepted by the OAVUK as a construction project. At about the same time he also trained to become accomplished as a gymnast, but his academic work began to suffer from his distractions with these other interests.
In 1925 he was accepted into a limited class on glider construction.
Until 1929, Korolyov studied specialized topics in aviation at the school. In addition to his studies, Korolyov had more opportunities to fly gliders and powered aircraft, and he reveled in the experience. He also designed a glider in 1928, and flew it in a competition the next year. Korolyov could obtain a diploma by producing a practical aircraft design, and had the design completed and approved by the end of the year.
Early career
Having graduated, Korolyov began work at an aircraft design bureau designated OPO-4, or 4th Experimental Section. It was headed up by a Frenchman named Paul Richard and included a number of Russia's best designers. He did not stand out in this group, but while so employed he also worked privately on a pair of personal design projects. One of these was a glider design that was capable of performing acrobatics. By 1930 he became a lead engineer on Tupolev's TB-3 heavy bomber
In 1930, Korolyov finally earned his pilot's license. It was during 1930 that Korolyov became interested in the possibilities of liquid rocket engines. In 1931, together with Friedrich Zander, a space travel enthusiast, 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 Korolyov was appointed chief of the group.
During the following years the GIRD group developed three different propulsion systems, each more successful than the last. In 1933 the group accomplished their first launch of a liquid-fueled rocket, which was called GIRD-09. This was just seven years after Robert Goddard's first little-publicized launch in 1926. In 1934 Korolyov published the work "Rocket Flight in Stratosphere".
With growing military interest in this new technology, it was decided by the government in 1933 to merge the GIRD organization with the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) in Leningrad. However this merged group contained a number of people who were enthusiastic proponents of space travel, including Valentin Glushko. Korolyov became the Deputy Chief of the institute.
On April 10, 1935, Sergei's wife gave birth to their daughter, Natasha. Both parents had careers, and Korolyov always spent long hours at his design office. Korolyov was a charismatic leader who served primarily as an engineering project manager. Korolyov personally monitored all key stages of the programs and paid meticulous attention to detail.
Gulag
On June 22, 1938, during the Great Purge, men from the NKVD entered his apartment and summarily took him away. He was accused of subversion, apparently due to his desire to work on liquid-rocket powered aircraft rather than solid rockets. Korolyov was not given a trial, but was beaten by his captors and a "confession" was thus extracted. Korolyov later learned that he had been denounced by Valentin Glushko, and this resulted in a life long animosity between the two men as well as Korolyov's constant suspicion of the other Chief Designers.
After months of transport and abuse, he finally arrived at the notorious Kolyma gulag camp in Siberia.
Other members of the RNII had also been arrested and the group's military leader was executed. Every person of significance who worked at the institute was executed during 1937-8, leaving Korolyov very fortunate to have even survived.
Sergei survived the gulag experience, but he lost all of his teeth, suffered a broken jaw, and developed a heart condition.
Following the reinvestigation, Korolyov's sentence was reduced to eight years.
The Central Design Bureau 29 (KB-29, ???-29) of the NKVD, served as Tupolev's engineering facility, and Korolyov was brought here to work for his old mentor. During World War II, this sharashka designed both the Tupolev Tu-2 bomber and the Ilyushin Il-2 ground attack aircraft.
In 1942 Korolyov managed to be moved to another "sharashka" under the rocket engine designer Glushko. Korolyov was kept in this sharashka and isolated from his family until 1944. On June 27, 1944, Korolyov (along with Tupolev, Glushko and others) was finally discharged by special government decree and his prior convictions were dismissed. The design bureau was handed over from NKVD control to the government's aviation industry commission. Still Korolyov continued working with the bureau for another year, serving as deputy designer under Glushko and studying various rocket designs.
Ballistic missiles
In 1945 Korolyov was awarded the Badge of Honor, his first decoration, for his work on the development of rocket motors for military aircraft. In 1946 it was decided by the Soviet government to ship some 5,000 German rocket workers back to Russia, effectively kidnapping them, although they were treated relatively decently.
Stalin had decided to make missile development a national priority, and the German "recruits" were placed into a new institute created for the purpose, the NII-88. Development of ballistic missiles was put under the military control of Dimitri Ustinov, with Korolyov serving as chief designer of long-range missiles. Korolyov demonstrated his organizational abilities in this new facility, keeping a dysfunctional and highly-compartmentalized organization operating.
With the documents reproduced, thanks in part to disassembled V-2 rockets, the team now began producing a working replica of the rocket. The Russians continued to utilize the expertise of the Germans on their rocket designs until about 1952 when the first groups began to return home;
In 1947 the NII-88 group under Korolyov began working on more advanced designs, with improvements in range and throw weight.
That same year work began on the R-5 (code-named SS-3 Shyster by NATO) which had a more modest 1,200 km range. After several test failures, the R-7 successfully launched on August, 1957, sending a dummy payload to Kamchatka Peninsula.
It was in 1952 that Korolyov joined the Soviet Communist Party, a tactical necessity if he was to request money from the government for his future projects.
Personal life
The Soviet emigre Leonid Vladimirov relates the following description of Korolyov by Glushko at about this time:
"Short of stature, heavily built, with head sitting awkward on his body, with brown eyes glistening with intelligence, he was a skeptic, a cynic and a pessimist who took the gloomiest view of the future.Korolyov was rarely known to drink vodka or other alcoholic beverages, and chose to live a fairly basic lifestyle.
About 1946 the marriage of Sergei and Xenia began to break up.
Space program
In spite of the Soviet progress on ICBM technology, Korolyov was preoccupied with the use of rockets for space travel. In 1953 he first proposed the use of the R-7 design for launching a satellite into orbit.
In 1957, during the International Geophysical Year, the concept of launching a satellite began to appear in the American press. However Korolyov's group followed the Western press, and they thought it possible to beat the US to the punch.
The actual development of Sputnik was performed in less than a month. Korolyov personally managed the assembly, and the work was very hectic. Finally on October 4, 1957, launched on a rocket that had only successfully launched once, the satellite was placed in orbit.
The effect of this launch was electric, and produced many political ramifications for the future.
This new spacecraft would weigh six times the mass of the Sputnik 1, and would include as a payload the dog Laika. The entire vehicle was designed from scratch within four weeks, with no time for testing or quality checks. There was no mechanism designed in this vehicle to bring the dog back to earth and so it died soon after succumbing to heat exhaustion.
This string of successes ran out with the launch of Sputnik 3. This instrument-laden spacecraft was sent into orbit on May 15th the following year.
Moon
Korolyov now turned his attention to reaching the Moon. The engine for this final stage was the first designed to be fired in outer space. It was launched only two years after Sputnik 1, and was the first spacecraft to photograph the far side of the Moon.
Korolyov's group was also working on ambitious programs for missions to Mars and Venus, putting a man in orbit, launching communication, spy and weather satellites, and making a soft-landing on the Moon.
Manned flight
Korolyov's planning for the manned mission had begun back in 1958, when design studies were made on the future Vostok spacecraft.
On May 15, 1960 an unmanned prototype performed 64 orbits of the Earth, but failed to return. After gaining approval from the government, a modified version of the R-7 was used to launch Yuri Alexeevich Gagarin into orbit on April 12, 1961, the first man in space.
This was followed up by additional Vostok flights, culminating with 81 orbits completed with Vostok 5 and the launch of the first woman cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6.
Following Vostok Korolyov planned to move forward with Soyuz craft that would be able to dock with other craft in orbit and exchange crews. Korolyov was reported to have resisted the idea, since he currently lacked a rocket of sufficient capability to lift a three-man capsule into space. However Khruschev was not interested in technical excuses and let it be known that if Korolyov couldn't do it, he would hand the work off to his rival Vladimir Chelomei.
Voskhod
To complete this task his group designed the Voskhod, an incremental improvement on the Vostok. One of the difficulties in the design of the Voskhod was the need to land it via parachute. This gave Korolyov pause, but the problem was solved through the use of new parachute material.
The resulting Voskhod was a stripped-down vehicle from which any excess weight had been removed. Another modification was the addition of a backup retrofire engine, since the more powerful Voskhod rocket used to launch the craft would send it to a higher orbit than the Vostok, thus eliminating the possibility of a natural decay of the orbit and reentry in case of primary retrorocket failure. This spacecraft made one unmanned test flight, then on October 12, 1964 a crew of three cosmonauts was launched into space and made sixteen orbits. This craft was designed to perform a soft landing, thus eliminating a need for the ejection system.
With the Americans planning a space walk with their Gemini program, the Soviets decided to trump them again by performing a space walk on the second Voskhod launch. After rapidly adding an airlock, the Voskhod 2 was launched on March 18, 1965, and Alexei Leonov performed the world's first space walk. In the meantime the change of Soviet leadership with the fall of Kruschev meant that Korolyov was back in favour and given charge of beating the US to landing a man on the moon.
For the moon race, Korolyov's staff designed the immense N1 rocket. He also had in work the design for the Soyuz manned spacecraft (which went on to carry the first space tourists), as well as the Luna vehicles that would soft land on the Moon and unmanned missions to Mars and Venus.
Death
On December 3, 1960, Korolyov suffered his first heart attack. However Korolyov reasoned that once the Soviets lost their leadership in space, the capricious Khruschev would likely cut off the funding for his programs.
By 1962 Sergei Korolyov's health problems were beginning to accumulate and he was suffering from numerous ailments.
The actual circumstances of his death are somewhat uncertain.
Under a policy initiated by Stalin then continued by his successors, the identity of Korolyov was never revealed until his death. As a result the Soviet people didn't become aware of his accomplishments until after his death. His obituary was published in Pravda on January 16, showing a photograph of Korolyov with all his medals.
Korolyov is often compared to Wernher von Braun as the leading architect of Space Race. Unlike Von Braun, Korolyov had to compete continually with rivals such as Vladimir Chelomei who had their own plans for flights to the moon. He also had to work with less advanced technology than was available in the U.S.
Korolyov's successor in the Soviet space program was Vasily Mishin. Mishin was a highly competent engineer who served as Korolyov's deputy and right-hand man. After Korolyov died he became Chief Designer and inherited what turned out to be a flawed N-1 program. In 1972 Mishin was fired and replaced by the rival Valentin Glushko after four N-1 launches failed.
Awards and honors
Among his awards, he was twice bestowed the Hero of Socialist Labor in 1956 and 1961.
A street in Moscow was named after Sergei Korolyov in 1966 and is now called Ulitsa Akademika Korolyova (Academician Korolyov Street). The memorial home-museum of akademician S.P.Korolyov was established in 1975 in the house where Korolyov lived from 1959 till 1966 (Moscow, 6th Ostankinsky Lane,2/28). In 1986 the USSR produced a 10k postage stamp to honor Sergei Korolyov.
The town of Kalingrad (formerly Podlipki) is the home of RSC Energia, the largest space company in Russia. In 1996, Boris Yeltsin renamed the town to Korolyov. Korolyov located in the town square.
There are some astronomical features named after Korolyov, including Korolyov crater on the far side of the Moon and another crater on Mars. The asteroid 1855 Korolyov is also named for him.
The 2005 BBC docudrama "Space Race" focussed on Korolyov's work in Soviet rocketry and the space program, as well as that of Wernher von Braun in the USA. Korolyov was played by Steve Nicolson in the programme.
In his book The Right Stuff US novelist Tom Wolfe constantly refers to Sergey Korolyov as "the mighty Integral" or "the omnipotent Integral" to characterize him as being the secret mastermind of the Soviets early Space Program.
A fictional spacecraft, the Korolev, in the TV series Stargate SG-1 is named after him.
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