Slashdot Mirror
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."
Unless Yuri took a far more active role in the launch than seems likely, Yuri was basically payload.
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.
...that we celebrate the astronaut and hardly notice the rocket scientist and the engineers.
Yes, it takes impressive balls/ovaries to get into a small tin can mounted on top of a giant tube of explosives and ride that into space. (Though this could also be stupidity or insanity..)
Yes, it takes an impressive amount of composure, skill, and training to handle a trip into space, especially if anything goes off-plan. More than I'll ever have.
But NONE of that would be useful or necessary at all if someone hadn't conceived of and built the hardware, and there are a lot fewer people capable of designing an orbit (or beyond) capable rocket than there are people of capable of riding one. And that was even more true in the early days when a lot of the theory and best practice wasn't available with a Google search.
It's nice when you read about the astronauts acknowledging that. Outside of astronauts and space enthusiasts, you find a lot more people who know an astronaut's name than that of the engineer behind the equipment that made them an astronaut...
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.
Challenger and Columbia were not dissimilar. Like Soyuz 1 a lot of people were very well aware of the problems that could occur, and had in the case of Columbia, and they chose to do nothing. You then got a lot of virtue signalling about space exploration being 'worth the risk' and every moon shot being a triumph of technology, and other such crap from people who have no clue whatsoever.
Soyuz 1 did show how vital Korolev was. Not only was he a brilliant technologist but he also needed to be an exceptional politician when dealing with the Kremlin.
No, Hu was ON first.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
We won it with the manhole cover.
Have gnu, will travel.
The BBC produced a documentary called "Space Race" in 2005 that covered both the US and USSR space programs. Sergei Korolev and Werner Von Braun were main characters in the documentary. Many people in the US didn't like it because they felt it was overcritical of Werner Von Braun. Since I was already aware of the controversy regarding Werner Von Braun's nazi past, it wasn't surprising to me, and I thought it was reasonably balanced in its approach. Note that the subject is fairly controversial, so opinions span the spectrum from he should have been sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes, to he was completely innocent. I believe that he did get a pass on a thorough investigation of his involvement due to his value to the U.S., and it is not clear from the details (biographies and documentaries tend to spin the facts differently) what the true story is. Anyway, if you want to learn more about Korolev you can search for "BBC space race" on youtube. The entire four part series is still available for viewing, and I thought it was well done.
Korolev remained unknown? Who is writing this tripe? He was a much more celebrated figure in the Soviet culture. It could be because Gagarin died in an while flying an experimental aircraft a few years later, but there were movies made about Korolev. Not even documentaries. They were full-feature movies glamorizing his life. Soviet Union featured distinguished scientists in movies roughly at the same rate as Hollywood features stock brokers. It's not surprising, either. Both do something esoteric to most people while it is something that the society-at-large views as its archetype.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
He had been denounced by his colleagues who wanted his job, nearly died in the Gulags, then released under Khrushchev.
He was completely unknown during the space race. His identity hidden.
He was resurrected during Glasnost, and only recently became a public hero. I spoke to a Russian back packer recently who was very proud of Korolev but completely unaware of the purging.
Ultimately this cost them the race to the moon. Korolev's mistreatment in the Gulags lead to his early death, after which their space program collapsed. A very Soviet story.
Personally, I always wondered why the Soviets did not just send a cosmonaut to moon one way. Much, much easier than the return. And they had already successfully landed a probe on the moon, just put a body inside and repeat. Cosmonauts are cheap.
You can't blame Korolyev for that though the mission failed over 2 years after Korolyev's death and most of the faults were in systems that had been redesigned after his death. Many of those redesigns were reverted back to Korolyev's original and are still there on Soyuz capsules to this day. The loss of all three Cosmonauts in Soyus 11 was again due to a redesigned element of the space craft. If you take those two out of the equation Soyuz has an excellent track record if you keep them in the equation Soyuz is on a par with NASA on safety (Remembering that the Nedelin Disaster was an experimental ICBM and nothing to do with Korolyev or Soyuz)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.