TRANSCRIPT OF PART 1 OF 60 YEARS OF THE SPACE RACE: SERGEI KOROLEV THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND

The journey of human beings into the final frontier of outer space began with the work of two brilliant men at the Beginning of the 20^th Century. 

Both men had worked for their respective governments the technological leaders of the time Germany and Russia, to build never before seen rocket weapons of awesome power  during the most destructive conflict of human history. World War 2.

Deep down, both of these legendary pioneers of rocket technology believed in a shining vision of a human future in Outer Space although their inventions created in utmost secrecy and surrounded by controversy to this day could have completely eradicated any hopes for a human future in space before the journey to the stars could even begin.

One of them worked for the Nazi's.

Wernher von Braun the the German Army

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I believe deserve they title of “Legends of Humanity” in the same league as Newton, Beethoven, Nietzsche, and of course Kanye.

They were men who looked up despite the harsh troubles of the times during the 1930s until the heydays of the Space Race that they would largely influence. Against all odds both of these men would break free from the chains of nationalistic thinking of their Governments’ that mired their early work to usher in a new age of human history.

They were The Rocket Men

Sergei Korolev and Vernher von Braun

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From the now collapsed communist superpower of the Soviet Union came Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. A man so steeped in mystery those who worked with him would only refer to him as “The King” or “The Big Boss”. His true identity was declared a Soviet secret by the Ruling Communist Party for fear that the Americans would send an Assassin to take him out. But we now know that he kind of looked like Josh Hutcherson. So imagine Peeta Melark as a Soviet rocket engineer. Haha…

In any press broadcasts of Soviet achievements in the field of Rocket technology he was referred to as the “Chief” Designer. The mysteriousness of the man behind early Soviet Success in Space only heightened the anxiety of America and its Allies regarding the potency of Soviet involvement in outer Space. “The Chief Designer” would later play a major role in getting the first human into space. Yuri Gagarin.

Dont mess with the Chief Designer

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Sergei Korolev Born in 1907 in Ukraine and Educated in Moscow. Sergei Korolev spent his early career as an aircraft designer before recognizing the potential of rockets as vehicles on their own right and as a means of traveling beyond the atmosphere of planet Earth and into the unknown of outer space.

With World War 2 tension widening in the 1930s Russian Military strategists turned to him to exploit the potential of rockets as tactical battlefield weapons. These basic rockets would be the precursors of the much larger ICBMs Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that are these large and scary things that could be used to influence a war on not just a small scale tactical level on individual battlefields but on a much larger global strategic level. We’re lucky they haven’t been used yet for that purpose.

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The Soviets put Sergei Korolev along with other rocket engineers like Valentin Glushko, and Ivan Kleymenov to work from secret factories in St. Petersburg and Moscow designing rockets that could perform rudimentary tasks such as delivering bombs, measuring the weather and perhaps one day exploring space. While most of his comrades focused on designing fuel thrust chambers and fuel pumps, Korolev focused on rockets that could carry payloads driven by guidance systems. He aimed at designing rockets that would be practical.

Work was going well until 1937 when a certain Madman with a Moustache, no no the other one,  yeah that’s the one; Joseph Stalin enacted his Great Purge; where he got rid of members of the Communist Party that he deemed undesirable and a threat to his regime, an unfortunate and untimely event for Korolev. These purges are real nasty business within the old ways of the USSR, as an example Marshal Mikhail Tuchashevsky Korolev’s Boss at the time was arrested on June 11 and shot dead the same day.

Purge the Unclean!

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Joseph Stalin was suspicious of “independent minded” soldiers within the rocket program. All the rocket engineers of the Reaction Propulsion Laboratory in Moscow including Korolev and Glushko were arrested and charged with treason. In 1938 they were all sentenced to nearly 10 years of hard labor in Siberian. Nearly a death sentence for the men that only a few years before were prided as top scientists and engineers of the Soviet Union.

The years spent in a Soviet Gulag would have normally broken any ordinary man. I mean I spent 5 years in MMU and I’m pretty messed up. Soviet Correctional Labour Camps were plagued with harsh weather and were normally located in the Arctic North or the Siberian East away from any civilization. The inmates would be forced to build roads and mine for minerals with bad tools and barely any meals in between Ramadan x10. While not as bad as Hitler’s death camps like Auschwitz the Gulags were renowned for their harsh conditions.

Kolyma, still preferable to Auschwitz

It was definitely no place for a Sunday picnic. Regardless of the miserable conditions at Kolyma with mortality rates among prisoners within the thousands, this would not be the last we would see of Sergei Korolev.

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