Serhiy Korolyov National Museum of Cosmonautics
Korolyov was born in Zhytomyr. He studied in Kyiv. Then he was imprisoned by the Soviet authorities without cause. Conquered space. This is a life summary of the outstanding product engineer Serhiy Koroliev.
He was born in this building in 1907. At the age of 17, he developed his first glider design, which was successful enough to be recommended for production. Despite his rapid career growth and non-political interest in science, Korolyov did not escape Soviet oppression. In the summer of 1938, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. During the interrogations he was tortured, and his jaw was broken, which could not heal properly in imprisonment. The outstanding product engineer spent a total of 6 years in prison.
The advocacy of famous pilots and scientists helped mitigate the sentence, resulting in Korolyov being transferred to a secret design bureau for imprisoned scientists to develop airplanes and weapons. Even given the conditions, the Ukrainian managed to prove his worth. In just a few years, he was appointed the Chief Designer of ballistic missiles. By 1956, he was heading the largest design bureau association in the USSR. All this time, he remained a “public enemy” – he was rehabilitated only in 1957.
The next 10 years seem fantastic:
- the first satellite was launched into space;
- a probe reached the Moon for the first time with the Luna-2;
- Luna-3 took photos of the far side of the Moon;
- the first man in space;
- the first group flight and interaction of Vostok-3 and Vostok-4 spacecraft;
- the first multi-seat ship with three cosmonauts on board;
- Venera–2, the first flight to another planet;
- the first human entered open space.
During the last event, Aleksei Leonov, the first cosmonaut outside the ship, sang Korolyov's favorite song, “Watching the Sky and Thinking a Thought.” The brilliant designer never forgot his native culture and that small building in the Zhytomyr oblast.
It now hosts a Korolyov memorial exhibition with his personal belongings. This was how the history of the National Museum of Cosmonautics began. The collection includes more than 25,000 artifacts, including 9 mg of lunar soil, a Soyuz-27 lander, life-size models of Lunokhod-2 and Gagarin's Vostok lander, as well as cosmonauts' flight items and space food.
Korolyov died in 1966 during a surgery. According to some reports, he was unable to properly receive anesthesia through his breathing tube because of his jaw being broken during the interrogations many years earlier...