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The First Manned Space Flight Was the Rocket Designer's Victory as Much as Yuri Gagarin's (smithsonianmag.com)
From an article on the Smithsonian magazine: On this day in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. And given the risks inherent to early spaceflight, he certainly deserves his place in history. But what about the man who designed the rocket that got Gagarin there? His name was Sergei Korolev, and his influence on the Soviet space program stretched much farther than Gagarin's 108 minutes of fame -- the time it took to make a single orbit of Earth. The flight of Vostok 1, Gagarin's craft, "was a defining moment of the 20th century and opened up the prospect of interplanetary travel for our species," writes Robin McKie for The Guardian. For Gagarin, it was the moment that made him a famous figurehead for the Soviet Union. As Gagarin toured the globe, the space program's chief designer remained at home and unknown. That Sergei Korolev ran the Soviet Union's rocket program wasn't revealed until after his death. "Gagarin became the face of Soviet space supremacy," McKie writes, "while Korolev was the brains. The pair made a potent team and their success brought fame to one and immense power to the other. Neither lived long enough to enjoy those rewards, however."
It's on Netflix and does well explaining Korolev's role.
Think Soyuz 1.
At least with Challenger and Columbia you could say it was an accident, it did work before and it was some freak problems that occurred that should not, and the design itself was at least mostly ok.
Soyuz 1 was murder. Plain and simple.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The history of Soviet and Russian rocket design beyond just the headlines is really interesting. The closed cycle rockets that we have today, that at one point no one thought possible, came about from the Soviet moon programme. Korolev realised that they simply didn't have the time or resources to design a new engine comparable to the F-1 so he had to cluster together thirty smaller rocket engines. Even then, to get the lift necessary the cycle had to be closed, so the Soviets embarked on a long trial and error research and development project (and some massive explosions) which resulted in the NK-33.
On face value the Soviet moon programme was a failure, but this was arguably its greatest contribution. It's all the more remarkable since the Soviet leadership wanted to hide any notion they had ever had a moon programme so ordered everything scrapped. Soviet engineers hid around sixty NK-33 engines in a warehouse until they were re-discovered over twenty years later.