Chief Designer Pt.1

One of the most important figures during the Best Aerospace Era.  The man who was responsible for starting the Space Race and who was the Chief Designer of the Soviet space program.

Transcript

Paula: 0:00

For the Best Aerospace Era this is mansplaining. Here is the host Anthony L Sealey

0:08

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Back in the 1900s when I was in grade school here in America, I learned about a great many accomplishments that the men and women of the United States have achieved in our history. From the American Revolution in 1776, to the first transcontinental railroad completed in 1869, to the Manhattan Project in the 1940s that started the nuclear age. However, I was shocked to find out in grade school that the U. S. was not the first nation to send a man into outer space. How could this be? We made the space shuttle, after all. Years later in college, I decided to find out in detail how the Soviet Union beat us into space. While I attended Reinhardt University as a history major, I registered to create my own course on the space race. This is known as an independent study. I outlined my goals for the independent study to one of my professors who authorized the project. This also counted as a multicultural credit, which I needed to graduate. My research led me to learn about a fascinating and paramount figure in the Soviet Space Program. Our subject today was only known as a chief designer. The man who started the space race, the man who made science fiction, science fact, the man who was behind such unprecedented achievements as the first satellite in orbit, the first man in space. The first man made object to hit the moon, just to name a few of his accomplishments. And the man who was not officially or publicly recognized for his achievements in his own lifetime, this man whose identity was unknown to the world and became a state secret in the Soviet Union to keep him safe from being captured or assassinated by foreign governments. This man was Sergei Popovich Korolev. Korolev was not Russian as you might have guessed. He was actually born in a small city called Zhytomyr near Kiev, Ukraine on January 12, 1907. Ukraine at this time was a part of the Russian Empire. Russia and Ukraine have been in the news lately, right? Korolev grew up like most people during the early 1900s of Eastern Europe in very hard times that included famines, diseases, conflicts, and revolutions. His father was a teacher named Pavel Korolev and his mother, Maria Moskalenko, a medical student. Their unhappy marriage ended when young Korolev was only three years old. Maria took young Korolev to live with her parents in Nishin Ukraine She wanted to continue her education in medicine and needed help raising him He never had contact with his father again after their separation Life of his grandparents was pleasant, however lonely, because there were no other children around for him to interact with at home. Korolev buried himself in his studies and excelled in school. Korolev was exposed to aviation at a very young age. His grandfather took him to an air show in 1913. A Russian aviator, also named Sergei, performed a short flight that mesmerized a crowd in Nishin with an early biplane. Apparently, the name Sergei is very popular in Eastern Europe. This short flight demonstration helped inspire the boy who would become the future chief designer. About a year after Korolev's first experience with this new aviation phenomenon, the Tsar of Russia Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov mobilized the Russian army against Germany in the greatest conflict the world has ever seen. Many great events were unfolding around young Korolev, who continued to demonstrate a remarkable memory, intellect, along with a stubborn attitude. His mother married an electrical engineer named Grigory Mikhailovich Balinin in 1916. Korolev's new stepfather got a job in Odessa, Ukraine in 1917, where he would spend the next turbulent years that shaped his life. The cost of war had drastic negative effects on the people in the Russian empire and its territories. Casualties were mounting, and shortages of food and necessities were crippling confidence in leadership. Civil unrest began to gain more traction. Demonstrations led to revolutions in the Russian Empire. Tsar Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov and his family were executed in 1918 by Bolshevik revolutionaries. The Russian Empire, whose history goes all the way back to 1721 with Peter the Great, whose size rivaled the British and Mongol Empires, came to an end. The world around young Korolev descended into civil war. Starvation and disease were prevalent. He caught typhus during this time. Growing up in this environment shaped Korolev into the man he would become. He continued to demonstrate a remarkable intellect and was very active in clubs involving gliders and aviation. Everything else seemed to just be a distraction from his prime interest. In the 1920s, the communist government led by Vladimir Lenin began to take and nationalize land and industries away from individuals, while the Red Army fought any opposition in Russia or its neighbors to exert its authority. By the early 1920s, things, however, began to settle down to some extent for Korolev. There was a military seaplane base in Odessa. Korolev, now a teenager, regularly swam out to the base to have a closer look at the airplanes. On one occasion, a mechanic called him over to help him with a motor. The base personnel got so familiar with having him around, that on some occasions, the squadron commander would take Korolev up in an airplane. He was involved In the Society of Aviation and Aerial Navigation of Ukraine and Crimea, an organization that had political ties all the way back to Moscow, Korolev worked on projects building gliders and simple airplanes, even entering in contests. Korolev enrolled in the Kiev Polytechnical Institute in 1924 because they had an aviation section. That same year, Lenin passed away and Joseph Stalin came to power. Absolute power. The following year, he worked on gliders with others for competition. Let's not forget, without experiments with gliders, airplanes would never have developed. Korolev flew on his creations that were launched with a catapult. That sounds safe. He loved the sensation of these short flights. He once wrote in a letter to his mother, Isn't it the greatest satisfaction and reward to fly by one's self in one's own machine? In the fall of 1926, Korolev moved to Moscow and attended the Moscow Higher Technical School. The courses that he took were. practical Aeronautical Engineering, Flight Mechanics, Aerodynamics, and Aircraft Engine Design. The young USSR government needed new advanced aircrafts to defend itself, after all. Legendary Soviet aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev, whose resume includes around 100 modern aircraft, was Korolev's advisor in Moscow. Not a bad mentor to have, right? We will cover Tupolev in the future. Tupolev had this to say about Korolev. He already made an excellent impression on me regards both his personality and his talent for design. I would say that he was a man with unlimited devotion to his job and his ideas. Korolev got his pilot's license in 1930. A year later, after a bout with typhoid fever, he designed a light airplane called the SK 4. The building materials of the aircraft and its engine were of poor quality. The SK 4 did not perform well and crashed after a test flight. The experienced test pilot survived without major injury, however. For someone so focused and determined as Korolev was, this failure would drive him to be more meticulous in his future endeavors. This was the early 1930s that Korolev shifted his intense focus from gliders and airplanes to rockets and space. russia has a deep and practical history with efforts aimed at not only flying, but remarkably, To space travel. Many years before the Wright Brothers first flight, a Russian scientist named Constantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky who was born all the way back in 1857, proposed the application of rockets as a means for space travel. Koralev was keenly aware of Tsiolkovsky work, however he may have. Initially viewed rockets as a superior means for getting one of his aircraft designs off the ground, rather into space. Tsiolkovsky work inspired two, determine amateur organizations that aimed to make his pioneering ideas a reality. One located in Moscow called the Group for Studying Reaction propulsion or GIRD. The other Gas Dynamic Laboratory or GDL of Leningrad that's St. Petersburg. I bring this up because a Soviet space rocket legend named Valentin Petrovic. Glushko was a member of GDL, I'll be mentioning him in the future. Korolev, however, joined GIRD to build the first Russian liquid fueled rocket. Now you may be wondering what's so special about using liquid fuel as a reaction mess for rocket engines. To be honest with you, I studied history in college, not rocket science. I will attempt to explain mankind has used solid fuel rockets almost as long as gunpowder has existed, like fireworks or signal flares. The application of liquid fuel means a rockets engine can burn longer, and the reaction mass can be directed. Meaning a liquid fueled rockets engine can burn longer to reach a higher elevation, and its trajectory can be planned with an intended target, meaning liquid fueled rocket engines could be used as a launch vehicle for spacecrafts and also a weapon. The first successful liquid fueled rocket was launched by an American named Robert Goddard in 1926. Standby for Mor on Goddard. Korolev and the other members at GIRD. Vigorous work paid off on August 17th, 1933 and 1900 hours. The 14 pound rocket powered by the G-R-I-D-O nine engine, designed by Mikhail Tikhonravov, lifted off in some woods, 20 miles west of Moscow. Its fuel consisted of one kilogram of solid gasoline and 13.4 kilograms of liquid oxygen or LOX the flight only lasted 18 seconds, however it was celebrated. Korolev lift said on the occasion, the GIRD collective. Must exert all our efforts so that this year will be reached and calculated for the rockets necessary for operation by the workers and peasants. Red Army in particular, special attention must be paid to the quality of work at the range. It is necessary also to master and release into the air other types of rockets as soon as possible. In order to thoroughly study and attain adequate mastery of reaction techniques, Soviet rockets must conquer space. Here you can clearly see Korolev's ambition as well as a possible jab at his GIRD colleagues. He also wrote in an article about the launch for a newspaper. Vechernaya Moskva titled towards the Rocket Plane in the article. He speaks of the persistent work needed because the Americans and the Germans were already working on rockets that could carry a man. Here, it sounds like in Korolev's mind that he was already in the space race all the way back in the 1930s. The efforts by the Americans and Germans was greatly exaggerated, but it does show that Korolev was paying attention also, when the title, he uses the word rocket plane. This is a long time before the space shuttle. Columbia lifted off for the first time or the Soviet Space Shuttle Buran Test launch in 1988, the Soviet military became interested in the work being done by both GIRD and GDL and created the Reaction Propulsion Institute, or RNII. On October 31st, 1933, this brought the personnel from both organizations to Moscow under one roof with the intent to develop weapons to defend the motherland. A man who worked on guidance systems at RNII named Boris Rauschenbakh said sometimes we work for 24 hours straight, but usually We started work at oh 800 and kept going until 2100 or 2200. We couldn't go home as long as he Korolev was there. It was exciting like a sport. The technical challenge was stimulating Korolev was the type of person who never just worked eight hours or left a job unfinished. Everything needed to be done to his highest standard. He must have been one of those people who could function on little to no sleep. If you work in the airline industry, you are this type of person. Or you know, a few people who seem to always be at work and never go home to sleep. Somehow during this time, Korolev found time to get married and start a family. He and his wife, Lyalya, tied the knot on August 6th, 1931, and they had a child named Natasha, born on April 10th, 1935. He was a workaholic who seemed to be able to balance many things at once. Now you may be thinking that it makes sense that the Russians made it to space first, although they did not have the most resources or the best technology. But with this collection of talented and dedicated rocket scientists, they'd be capable of launching satellites and humans into space in the coming years. However, that's not exactly how it happened. On June. 27th, 1938, Korolev was arrested and taken from his apartment and his possessions were confiscated by government officials. The late 1930s was an exceptionally dark period known as the Great Purge Korolev, along with thousands of the best and brightest living in the USSR were arrested for political purposes, by the NKVD. The NKVD is a secret police of the USSR and A precursor to the KGB. You've heard of them, right? Arvid Pallo, who worked at RNII and contributed to future Soviet space achievements said that was a peculiar period when two guys would say a third guy was bad. That was enough. We lost a gift to speech in those days. Some personnel at RNII wanted to work on conventional solid fuel rockets. However, Pallo said Korolev wanted to work on a winged vehicle powered liquid rockets. Some workers wrote to NK VD that Korolev was, was holding back progress. When Korolev didn't show up for work one day, the other workers knew that he had been arrested. It is hard to imagine living in a country under this kind of paranoia of espionage and metaphoric backstabbing. Valentine Glushko, who I mentioned before, was arrested three months prior and has been rumored to be, have been the one who accused Korolev of in some sources that I have read over the years. Korolev shared his experience with Cosmonauts, Yuri Gerrin and Alexi Leonov. Decades later in the 1960s privately, in the early morning hours after a party Korolev was taken to Lefortovo prison in Moscow, he was interrogated, beaten, and he was called an enemy of the people. One day, an official told him, today is your trial. And he was led down a long corridor into a room. The door opened and then came the interrogators. One interrogator shouted, gimme the list of accusations, Korolev said, I don't have it. The interrogator said, look in your hand. He shouted again. Korolev had been beaten so bad they did not even notice Someone had put some paper in his hand. Korolev said I didn't commit any crime. The interrogator replied, none of you swine have committed any crime. 10 years hard labor go next. That was the reality of those accused during the Great Purge. You either denied the false charges and were sent to a Gulag camp, or you could take the easy way out per se and confess to the charges. You would then be executed. Thousands were accused of treason for secretly working with the Nazis. Soviet leaders in the Nazis had signed a non-aggressive PAC in 1939, however, that agreement was short-lived as Germany invaded Soviet territories in 1941. Once again, pivotal events were unfolding around Korolev. Korolev was sent to a Gulag camp in Kolyma. Kolyma. Sounds nice, doesn't it? It's a region in Eastern Siberia. I located Kolyma on a map. It's in the Arctic Circle, west of the Bering Strait and Alaska. The average temperature there in the winter is somewhere between negative two and negative 36 Fahrenheit. And I thought the winters here in the Midwest were cold. Here, Korolev, who was in his early thirties, worked tirelessly and suffered along with millions of others. There were resources like gold and silver to be mined and railroad tracks needed to be built. Malnutrition and disease was rampant in the camps in Kolyma, as you would imagine. Some estimates indicate 30% death rate per year and possibly over 2 million deaths during the time of the Great Purge. Korolev's Health got so bad in Kolyma that his teeth fell out. He also suffered heart problems in addition to other minor injuries. He fortunately did not spend his entire sentence there. He probably would not have made it. If he was there much longer, Korolev was near death. When he was recalled back to Moscow for a re-sentencing. He was then sent to a forced labor prison in Moscow with other intellectuals on projects for the Soviet military. Korolev mentor Tupolev had a hand in picking experts that were needed to design new aircraft to fight back the German advance. The conditions there were better. However, it was still prison. Another reason I believe Korolev was moved back to Moscow was'cause Soviet spies had relayed new information about the progress of the secret German weapons like the V two rockets. Korolev held onto the belief that Stalin was unaware of his false arrest in forced labor. Thousands of other Soviets believed the same. Regarding the Great Purge, Korolev would actually meet face-to-face with Joseph Stalin on a few occasions, and on one such occasion, Stalin asked Korolev to look into the existence of UFOs, if you can believe it. But we're getting way ahead of ourselves here. After World War II came to an end, Soviet officials sent in experts to help determine what was worth taking back from Germany territories that the Red Army occupied the technological spoils of war included what remained of the German V two operation. The head rocket scientist behind the Nazi V two operation Wernher von Braun and about a hundred of his top men surrendered to the US Army. They, along with most of their work was taken back to the US in Operation Paperclip Korolev was among those who were tapped to have a look at what was left and what and who was worth taking back to Moscow. He himself was not overly impressed with the German engineering and regarded the V two rockets in the work of Wernher Von Braun as outdated. after the Red Army's victory in World War ii, the Soviet hierarchy favored German scientists that surrendered over their own. And you may be saying, why did Joseph Stalin and the Communist government arrest and or execute many of its own intellectual talent, under the charge of espionage for Germany only to later employ thousands of Germans after World War ii? This is completely beyond me and honestly, it's painfully ironic. One thing became clear. The Soviet rocket effort needed a leader among the various design bureaus, and this is where Korolev began to emerge as a chief designer. In the aftermath of World War ii, the arms race of the Cold War began in 1949. The US SR successfully detonated a nuclear bomb breaking the US monopoly on nuclear weapons. The US had superior bombers capable of delivering these weapons anywhere on earth. Something the USSR did not have. This is why the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs were prioritized Korolev, who still needed to resolve the false charges and clear his name with communist officials. Competed against old rivals like Glushko and new ones like the German Helmut Grottrup to prove he was a man to deliver such launch vehicles for nuclear warheads. However, Korolev had a different payload in mind. We'll have to pick up Korolev's story here in part two of Chief Designer. I learned a lot about the Soviet Space program during my independent study. On the space race. However, I wanted to learn more about Korolev himself because he is such a monumental figure behind the best aerospace era. So I read a book simply titled Korolev by James Hartford, that I highly recommend. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, there's always a light at the end of the runway.

Paula: 29:39

Follow mansplaining for more stories from the Best Aerospace Era. Or go to Best Aerospace Era.com or find us on social media.