January 12, 1907
He was born in Zhitomir, into a teacher's family. Sergey Korolev - an outstanding rocket scientist.
People will fly into space on trade union vouchers.
He saw an airplane at age 4, which was a shock. At 14, he befriended pilots, and at 17, he designed a motorless aircraft.
How are we doing it? Today in our heads, tomorrow in drawings, the day after tomorrow in metal, and then in flight.
During his studies at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, he designed three aircraft: one of them performed aerobatic maneuvers, and another was capable of a 12-hour nonstop flight, setting a distance record at the time.
At the age of 36, he successfully launched a liquid-propellant ballistic missile, and two years later he became head of the rocket aircraft department at a military research institute.
He was arrested in June 1938 for "counterrevolutionary activity"—the reason was the explosion of a cruise missile during testing. He received a 10-year prison sentence and went to mine gold in Kolyma, where he nearly died of scurvy.
In 1940, he was transferred to a special NKVD prison—the "Tupolev sharaga." He designed bombers and radio-controlled missiles. After the war began, he began developing rocket engines. In 1944, on Stalin's personal orders, he was released, but for the rest of his life he often said, "They'll kill us without an obituary."
After the war, he was responsible for the design of several intercontinental missiles. He also used them as a basis for developing space launch vehicles.
I'm sitting here like I'm on a hot frying pan - you have to keep turning around.
In 1957, he launched the first artificial satellite into orbit, in 1959, he launched three unmanned probes to the Moon, and in 1961, he sent the first man into space. Over the next five years, he sent 10 more cosmonauts into orbit, one of whom performed a spacewalk.
He died on January 14, 1966, on the operating table. According to one theory, doctors were unable to insert a breathing tube because his jaw was stiff after it was broken by NKVD officers during interrogations in 1938.
