June 2: the birthday of Yaroslav Golovanov, the journalist who revealed the "secret" Korolev to readers
On June 2, 1932, Yaroslav Golovanov, a journalist, writer, and science popularizer, was born in Moscow. He authored a biography of Sergei Korolev and the first books about Soviet spacecraft designers. He worked as a special correspondent at Baikonur for over a decade, and nearly went into space himself.
A dream cannot literally take a person to the stars, but one cannot embark on such a flight without a dream.
From Aelita to rocket technology
Golovanov came from an artistic family. His father was the founder of the Moscow Traveling Drama and Comedy Theater (now the Gogol Center), and his mother was an actress.
After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, he was evacuated with his parents to Omsk. There, at the age of 10, he read Alexei Tolstoy's novel "Aelita" and decided to dedicate his life to rocketry.
Just think, isn't it wonderful: in Turkish, the concepts of "paradise" and "flight" are expressed in one word!
Special correspondent at Baikonur
In 1956, Golovanov graduated from the rocket department of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. He initially worked at a research institute, and in 1958, he joined Komsomolskaya Pravda. For over ten years, he worked as a special correspondent at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the Mission Control Center.
In 1965, he co-founded an unusual project—a journalist's mission into space. According to another version, it was Sergei Korolev's own idea. The 33-year-old Golovanov, along with two colleagues, even underwent a medical examination as part of the journalist's spaceflight training program, but in 1967, after Korolev's death, the program was canceled.
20 books about astronautics
Golovanov is the author of 20 books, more than 1200 newspaper articles and 160 magazine articles on the topic of cosmonautics.
The first widely known book was "Thundersmiths" (about the preparations for the first manned flight to Mars). This science fiction story was based on real events and people. It was the first book to feature Soviet spacecraft designers as its protagonists.
My patriotism is objective. Our homeland has contributed so much to rocketry that it truly doesn't need credit for others' accomplishments. The first road to the cosmodrome ran through its soil—that says it all. (Road to the Cosmodrome)
How Golovanov declassified Korolev
In the 1990s, he revealed the "secret" Korolev to readers by publishing his biography, "Korolev: Facts and Myths." He worked on it for about 30 years.
"I'll tell you a joke," Korolev said unexpectedly. "A twenty-year-old woman, when someone introduces her to a man, asks, 'What's he like?' A thirty-year-old: 'Who is he?' A forty-year-old: 'Where is he?' So I, a forty-year-old woman, ask, 'Where is he? Where's the engine?'"
Kissing Gagarin was difficult: the helmet was in the way. Everyone kept bumping their foreheads on the top edge of the transparent visor. Andriyan Nikolaev even got a bump on his forehead. Korolev kissed Yura on the cheek, like a child.
Other well-known books include "The Truth About the Apollo Program," "Etudes about Scientists," "Etudes about the Great," "The Architecture of Weightlessness," "Our Gagarin," "The Martian," "Cosmonaut No. 1," and "The Road to the Cosmodrome." Golovanov is a laureate of prestigious journalism awards.
Reports from all continents
He brought reports from Ukraine, the Baltics, the Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia, Central Asia, the Pamir and Tien Shan Mountains, the Far East, Kamchatka, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. He visited 25 countries on every continent (except Antarctica). He swam in every ocean on Earth.
In 1990, he repeated his attempt to become the first journalist in space, but he was rejected for health reasons (the first journalist was 47-year-old Japanese Toyohiro Akiyama).
Family and later years
Golovanov was married three times and raised a daughter and three sons. His grandson from his third wife, Evgenia Albats, was born in 2022 and named after Alexei Navalny.
He died in Moscow in 2003, at the age of 70, from a stroke. He worked until his last days, writing a sequel to his famous three-volume work, "Notes of Your Contemporary."
They're looking for a definition of homeland. No, homeland isn't a birch tree or a primer. It's not even old toys, school friends, or first love. Homeland is the clear feeling that without all of these and a thousand other things, you'll be miserable.
In life, only stupidity grows straight, while every sound thought inevitably bends, branches, and becomes intertwined with errors.
