Sergei Korolev and Sputnik

 

Sputnik 1 was launched on 4th October 1957, thus giving the Soviet Union the lead in the superpower space race. This achievement was primarily due to the drive and genius of one man – Sergei Korolev, the scientist who masterminded the top-secret space programme.

Born in 1906, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was the chief engineer at Russia’s Jet Propulsion Research Institute in the mid-1930s. However, in 1938 he became a victim of Stalin’s purges and was tortured and sent to the eastern Siberian gulag, where he worked in a gold mine and suffered from scurvy. He also suffered a heart attack during his time there.

Released in 1944, he was appointed head of the secret Soviet space programme. It was his idea to launch a satellite that was heavier than anything the Americans could have considered launching at that time. It was a relatively simple craft, comprising a metal sphere containing a radio transmitter and  batteries. For three weeks it orbited Planet Earth sending out a simple beep that was designed to be heard by every territory over which it passed and which chose to tune in, with the United States being the chief intended target.

After the batteries ran out, Sputnik ran in silent mode until 4 January 1958, when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up. By this time it had completed 1440 orbits and travelled some 43 million miles.

On 3 November 1957 Sputnik 2 was launched. This was a larger satellite, particularly notable for carrying a dog into space. Named Laika, the three year old female mongrel had been picked off the streets of Moscow to become the first living creature to leave Earth’s atmosphere. There was never any possibility that she would return to Earth, but she actually died sooner than expected when a system aboard Sputnik failed and the capsule overheated.

Korolev continued to have many successes with Soviet space missions, each one having the desired effect of catching the United States by surprise. He designed the Vostock spacecraft that launched Yuri Gargarin into space on 12th April 1961 and brought him back safely. In 1963 Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, and two years later the first two-man crew was able to complete the first spacewalk.

The United States could only play catch-up with the Soviet Union at this time, but all that changed after 1966, when Korolev died. He had suffered poor health for many years as a result of his earlier ill-treatment in the gulag, and he died on the operating table during colon surgery.

Korolev had always been a magnetic personality who was able to control a highly complicated enterprise, but without him everything became embroiled in politics and bureaucracy. The Soviet space programme thus came to a virtual halt while the Americans went from strength to strength, culminating in the Apollo moon missions that landed a man on the moon in 1969.

© John Welford