Late great engineers: Sergei Korolev - designated designer

Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov described Sergei Korolev, one of the most important rocket scientists of the 20th century, as “the mastermind behind the Soviet space programme.” And although Korolev’s name is now legend, “he was only ever referred to by the mysterious title of ‘Chief Designer.’ For those on the space programme there was no authority higher.” His true identity shrouded in secrecy until his death, the Soviet authorities kept the name of their ‘Glavny Konstruktor’ hidden from the world. They claimed it was to protect the man they once sent to the labour camps of Siberia from assassination by the Americans.

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was born in early 1907 into the era of the Russian Empire under ‘the Last Emperor of All Russia’ Tsar Nicholas II, with both the First World War and the Russian Revolution looming in the decade that followed. The son of a Russian language teacher and a wealthy merchant, Korolev grew up in the city of Nizhyn (that’s now in Ukraine) periodically with his grandparents. A lonely child, his prodigious ability in mathematics exposed him to school bullies which, according to his biographer James Harford, only prompted Korolev to excel at his studies. On his mother’s remarriage to his stepfather – electrical engineer Grigory Balanin – the family relocated to Odessa where, suffering the effects of food shortages and typhus, Korolev sidestepped the lack of formal education created by the Russian Revolution of 1917, maintaining his studies at home under Balanin’s tutelage.