Sergei Korolev

Enjoyment of a 1913 air show inspired interest in aeronautical engineering.

He made an independent study of flight theory, and worked at the local glider club.

A detachment of military seaplanes had been stationed in Odessa, and Korolev took a keen interest in their operations.

In 1914 World War 1 commenced with social unrest in the Kiev area.

No one had time for the seven year old Korolev during this period and he was noted as being stubborn, persistent, and argumentative.

Korolev began reading at an early age from his grandfather's newspapers, and his pre-school teacher noted he had an excellent memory with abilities in mathematics, reading and writing.

His mother divorced Pavel in 1915 and in 1916 married Grigory Mikhailovich Balanin, an electrical engineer who had been educated in Germany but who had to attend the Kiev Polytechnic University because German engineering diplomas were not recognized in Russia.

Grigory was an excellent step-father, positively influencing Korlev's manners and study habits.

After getting a job with the regional railway, Grigory moved the family to Odessa in 1917, where they endured hardships with many other families through the tumultuous years following the Russian Revolution and continuing internecine struggles until the Bolsheviks assumed unchallenged power in 1920.

Local schools were closed and young Korolev had to continue his studies at home, where he suffered from a bout of typhus during the severe food shortages of 1919.

Korolev received vocational training in carpentry and academics at the Odessa Building Trades School (Stroyprofshkola No. 1).

In 1923 he joined the Society of Aviation and Aerial Navigation of Ukraine and the Crimea (OAVUK).

He had his first flying lesson after joining the Odessa hydroplane squadron and had many opportunities to fly as a passenger.

In 1924 he designed an OAVUK construction project glider called the K-5 when he was 17 years old.

He briefly trained in gymnastics until his academic work suffered.

Korolev hoped to attend the Zhukovsky Academy in Moscow, but he did not meet the academy's standards.

He attended the Kiev Polytechnic Institute's aviation branch in 1924 while living with his uncle Yuri, and earned money for his courses by doing odd jobs.

His curriculum included engineering, physics and mathematics classes.

He met and became attracted to a classmate, Xenia Vincentini, who would later become his first wife.

In 1925 he was accepted into a limited class on glider construction, and suffered two broken ribs flying the training glider they built.

He continued courses at Kiev until he was accepted into the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (MVTU, BMSTU) in July 1926, having the famous aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev as his mentor, who was a professor there.

Sergei never saw his father after the family break-up, and Pavel died in 1929 before his son learned the truth.

Korolev grew up in Nizhyn, under the care of his maternal grandparents Nikolay Yakovlevich Moskalenko who was a trader of the Second Guild and Maria Matveevna Moskalenko (née Fursa), a daughter of a local cossack.

Korolev's mother also had a sister Anna and two brothers Yuri and Vasily.

Maria Koroleva was frequently away attending Women's higher education courses in Kiev, so Sergei was often by himself and grew up a lonely child with few friends.

Arrested on a false official charge as a "member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization" (which would later be reduced to "saboteur of military technology"), he was imprisoned in 1938 for almost six years, including a few months in a Kolyma labour camp.

Following his release he became a recognized rocket designer and the key figure in the development of the Soviet Intercontinental ballistic missile program.

He later directed the Soviet space program and was made a Member of Soviet Academy of Sciences, overseeing the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects including the first human Earth orbit mission by Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961.

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (Сергей Павлович Королёв, ;, ; – 14 January 1966) was the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s.

He invented the R-7 Rocket, Sputnik 1, and was involved in the launching of Laika, Sputnik 3, the first human-made object to make contact with another celestial body, Belka and Strelka, the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into space, Voskhod 1, and the first person, Alexei Leonov, to conduct a spacewalk.

Although Korolev trained as an aircraft designer, his greatest strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning.

Korolev's unexpected death in 1966 interrupted implementation of his plans for a Soviet crewed Moon landing before the United States 1969 mission.

Before his death he was officially identified only as Glavny Konstruktor (Главный Конструктор), or the Chief Designer, to protect him from possible Cold War assassination attempts by the United States.

Even some of the cosmonauts who worked with him were unaware of his last name; he only went by Chief Designer. Only following his death in 1966 was his identity revealed and he received the appropriate public recognition as the driving force behind Soviet accomplishments in space exploration during and following the International Geophysical Year.

Korolev was born in the city of Zhytomyr, the capital of Volhynian Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine).

His father, Pavel Yakovlevich Korolev, was born in Mogilev to a Russian soldier and a Belarusian mother.

His mother, Maria Nikolaevna Koroleva (Moskalenko/Bulanina), was a daughter of a wealthy merchant from the city of Nizhyn, with Ukrainian, Greek and Polish heritage.

His father moved to Zhytomyr to be a teacher of the Russian language.

Three years after Sergei's birth the couple separated due to financial difficulties.

Although Pavel later wrote to Maria requesting a meeting with his son, Sergei was told by his mother that his father had allegedly died.