Sergei Korolev. Unnamed chief designer. Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. Through thorns to the stars Personal life of Sergei, the queen of the designer

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev is an outstanding Soviet designer, a key figure in our country's space exploration. He was a unique personality: a brilliant organizer, a man with an absolute sense of duty, a bright, impetuous life: a man of impulse. But few people know that the flip side of his temperamental character that did not tolerate monotony was the inconstancy of his feelings, which led him to personal loneliness. And the constant striving upward means that he “burned out” like a launch vehicle, not yet reaching the planned heights.
Sergei Korolev was born in Zhitomir on January 14, 1906 in the family of a teacher of Russian literature. He was about three years old when his parents divorced and his mother’s parents took care of his upbringing. After 9 years, his stepfather, who had an engineering education, had a great influence on the boy.
Already in childhood, he distinguished himself from his peers with his extraordinary abilities and indomitable craving for technology, including aviation. Thanks to his abilities, he enters the Moscow Higher Technical School named after Bauman and proves himself to be a capable aircraft designer. An indelible impression on him was made by K. E. Tsiolkovsky’s ideas about flights into the stratosphere, and he began to develop aircraft with jet propulsion. In 1933, Korolev became one of the leaders of the Jet Research Institute and under his leadership the first Soviet long-range ballistic missiles were created. He always had many unique ideas, but he never refined them, but transferred finished projects to other institutes and bureaus for further improvement. Sergei Pavlovich could easily abandon an almost completed project if he realized that something more relevant could be developed. The motto of his life became the words: “Forward!” and “Up!”.. He said to his friends: “You bend, but don’t break. Bend and bend your line... And then you will straighten up. It’s okay, it’s not scary.”
But life prepared trials for him in 1938, when he was arrested on charges of sabotage and was in the first (execution) category on the list of convicts. During torture during interrogation, his jaw was even broken, but he did not “break” or “bend in.” Fortunately, in those days the repressions had already reduced their scope and Korolev was sentenced to 10 years in the camps and dug gold-bearing soil in Kolyma. But in 1940 he was placed in the Moscow NKVD special prison, where A.N. Tupolev. And these “convicts” created the Pe-2 and Tu-2 bomber, as well as a guided air torpedo and a missile interceptor. In 1944, Korolev was released early. However, he was completely rehabilitated only in 1957.
The long years of imprisonment did not pass without a trace and, according to the recollections of some of his colleagues, Korolev became a skeptic, gloomily looking at the future with his favorite phrase: “They will be slammed without an obituary.” However, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov believed that Korolev “... was never embittered. He didn’t complain, didn’t curse anyone, didn’t scold anyone. He didn't have time for that. He understood that it is not a creative impulse that causes anger, but oppression.”

His colleagues perceived him as a commander, hot-tempered and courageous. He was even nicknamed “Ivan the Terrible” for his fits of rage, during which it was useless to explain anything to him. People usually waited until the morning, when, reassured, he came to the office and, patting the offender on the shoulder, said: “Well, did you get it yesterday? But he could have kicked him out. That is OK". But Korolev never forgave deception, and immediately removed a person from work if he noticed misinformation behind him.

The character of Sergei Pavlovich also affected his personal life. His first wife was his childhood friend, Ksenia Maximilianovna Vincenti, whom he sought for 7 years. The slender, blue-eyed beauty had many admirers, and Korolev made incredible efforts to have her become his wife. (I even stood on my hands on the roof of the house). Subsequently, he moved his beloved to Moscow (in 1931), where she began working in one of the Moscow clinics as a trauma surgeon. But soon Korolev lost interest in her and began to get involved with other women.

Driven to despair, Ksenia wrote to Korolev’s mother: “You know the whole story of our love well. Even before 1938 (the year of Korolev’s arrest) I had to endure a lot of grief, and, despite the remaining feeling of affection and some kind of love for Sergei, I firmly decided... to leave him so that he could continue his life under his favorite slogan “Give everyone to live as he wants...” 8 years after their marriage, they separated completely, and their common daughter, Natasha, was never able to forgive her father for his attitude towards her mother, who, as she believed, loved her father very much, having gone through all the trials with him.

She recalled: “My father’s arrest was such a terrible blow for my mother that at the age of 30 she turned completely gray. Mom told me later that some of her acquaintances turned away from her and did not greet her; Having met in the city, they crossed to the other side of the street. At work, some doctors and nurses refused to assist my mother when she performed surgical operations.” After Natasha, at the age of 12, found out the truth about her father (according to her mother), she hung up, not wanting to talk to him. And he, upset, sat at Baikonur and cried (according to the testimony of his comrades)….
However, some believed that Ksenia herself was to blame, since she did not want to leave Moscow and follow her husband to the training ground. He, lonely, poured out his soul in letters, but to another woman - Nina Ivanovna. She was an English translator, and they married when he was 40 and she was 27 years old.

“Well, I can’t help but write to you, my friend, and pour out my soul... because I have no one to talk to about this except you,” wrote Korolev, depressed by loneliness. But, apparently, his young wife did not understand his outpourings about problems at work, and he still suffered from personal loneliness.

Korolev died untimely on the operating table in 1966. It is difficult to even imagine what level the Soviet cosmonautics would have reached if not for his sudden death.

The personal life of the outstanding Soviet design engineer, the main organizer of rocket and space technology and rocket weapons, the founder of the Russian cosmonautics cannot be called calm and cloudless, and in many ways the reason lay in his character.

Sergei Korolev's first wife, Ksenia Vincentini, was his first youthful love. Ksenia always had many admirers, and in order to win her favor, Sergei was ready to do the most reckless things - he even did a handstand on the roof of the Odessa morgue.

Such exploits did not leave the young girl indifferent, and she began dating him. Before going to study at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, Sergei Pavlovich proposed to Ksenia, but she refused to marry him because she decided that she must first get an education and become an independent person.

After graduating from the Kharkov Medical Institute, Ksenia Vincentini was assigned to the Donbass, where Korolev came more than once from Moscow, where he was studying at the Moscow Higher Technical School at that time. However, getting consent to marriage turned out to be not so easy - Ksenia did not see the point of getting married and then living separately for several years. However, Sergei, not accustomed to retreating from difficulties, ensured that the girl was released early, and in the summer of thirty-one she became the wife of Sergei Korolev, and they left for Moscow together.

In the photo - Sergei Korolev with his first wife and daughter

But family life did not please his wife - Korolev, who had been trying to ensure that Ksenia Vincentini became his wife for seven whole years, quickly lost interest in her and other women began to appear in his biography.

The wife suspected her husband’s infidelity and more than once found evidence of this, but remained his wife for seventeen years, of which they were destined to live together for no more than eight - in 1938, Korolev was arrested on charges of sabotage, and he spent several years in the camps .

After seventeen years of marriage, Korolev’s wife wrote a letter to his mother, in which she said that she had decided to leave her husband in order to let him live the way he wanted. The daughter of Sergei Korolev and Ksenia Vincentini, Natalya, who learned about her father’s infidelities at the age of twelve, took it very painfully and was able to forgive only when she herself became an adult woman. She didn’t understand why her two most beloved people treated each other this way, and her father, who had sought her mother’s favor for so long, suddenly changed a lot.

In the photo - Natalya Sergeevna, daughter of Korolev, with her mother

When Sergei Pavlovich was in the camp, and he managed to forward letters to his wife, they were filled with love, tenderness and hope for their happy future, but after returning home, the family life of Korolev and Ksenia did not work out. Natalya Sergeevna did not maintain a warm filial relationship with Sergei Pavlovich, and when she got married she did not even invite him to the wedding. Korolev was very worried that he and his daughter were like strangers and almost never saw each other.

When her daughter Korolev herself became an adult, she explained the separation of her parents by saying that they were strong personalities and it was difficult for them to get along with each other. After many years, Natalya Sergeevna was able to find the strength within herself and take a step to get closer to her father. She called him first, and when he arrived, she told him how much she loved him.

The second wife of Sergei Korolev was the translator Nina Ivanovna. When they met, Sergei Pavlovich was forty, and she was twenty-seven years old. At first she simply came to him to translate articles from English and American magazines, and then she felt that Korolev began to show her signs of attention. Then he was still married to Ksenia Maximilianovna, but this did not stop him. A romance began between the young translator and Korolev, which ended in a wedding. The news that he was leaving the family was a terrible blow for everyone, but, having recovered from this blow, his first wife told her daughter only good things about her father.

In the photo - Korolev with his second wife

Nina Ivanovna completely devoted herself to Korolev, left work and always waited for him at home, but he did not get out of endless business trips and was constantly busy at work. They had no children, and Natalya became the only daughter of the great designer. Later, her relationship with her father was restored, and she began to visit him often with her husband and son Andrei. Her relationship with her father’s second wife, Nina Ivanovna, also improved.

Love and space
Even his first kiss with the girl of his dreams happened on his roof. He lived then in Odessa. Ksenia Vincentini, or Lyalya, as everyone called her, always had many fans. The Korolev earring is just one of them. But he tried to do everything so that she would become only his girlfriend: he walked around her upside down, swam under a barge in the sea, and even did a handstand for her on the edge of the roof of a two-story Odessa morgue. Apparently, all this made the necessary impression on Lyalya. And then, right on the roof, she finally allowed him to kiss her for the first time.
While leaving to study at the aviation department of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Seryozhka proposed to her. She replied that, although she loved him, she was not going to get married until she learned to earn money on her own.

It turned out that he studied in Kyiv, then at the Moscow Higher Technical School in Moscow, and she in Kharkov, to become a doctor. After graduation, Ksenia is assigned to work in Donbass. While there, Korolev again tries to get Lyalya’s consent to the marriage. She refuses again, citing a new reason: what’s the point of getting married if you still have to live apart for two or three years while you work as assigned. And Korolev decides to get his superiors to release Ksenia early. In the end, in August 1931, she became his wife, and soon he still took her to Moscow...
But here’s a mystery: as soon as Korolev achieves what he has dreamed of all these 7 years, he quickly loses interest in his wife and begins to get carried away with other women. They told the following story: “Once Lyalya was cleaning Sergei’s jacket. And suddenly... two tickets to the Bolshoi Theater fell out of my pocket. Korolev said nothing about them. So, Lyalya decided, she’ll go with some lady. And Lyalya had an admirer from a high-ranking military man. And it wasn’t difficult to persuade him to take her to the Bolshoi. Both couples collided during intermission. There was a beautiful brunette with Sergei. Seeing his wife, Korolev rushed away from his beauty like a cat from a table, and immediately began to make excuses, saying: “They accidentally offered us tickets... It was inconvenient to refuse... Where will we meet after the performance?” - “Why should we meet? - asked Ksenia. “They’re escorting me out.” And she looked at her military man. Here Korolev could not stand it: “No. We'll go together! Where he took his lady is unknown. But he took his wife from the theater himself..."
Such adventures of her husband brought Ksenia to the point that in the spring of 1948 she poured out all her feelings in a letter to her mother Korolev: “You know the whole story of our love well. Even before 1938 (the year of Korolev’s arrest. - Author) I had to endure a lot of grief, and, despite the remaining feeling of affection and some kind of love for S., I firmly decided... to leave him so that he could continue his life under his beloved slogan “Let everyone live as he wants...”
Sergei Korolev and Ksenia Vincentini dated and were “listed” as married for a quarter of a century, but lived together for about 8 years, and even then in fits and starts. Their daughter Natasha, who was under the influence of her mother, learned about her father’s “infidelities” at the age of 12. She tore into small pieces all the photographs of him that came to hand, and declared that she did not want to see him anymore. The rift between daughter and father remained for life. They met rarely, but most often they were like strangers. The Queen was not at her wedding either. In turn, according to the famous chronicler of the space age Yaroslav Golovanov, when Korolev called her from Baikonur to congratulate her on her birthday, she hung up. And he sat and cried...

Loneliness
The second wife could probably subscribe to many of the pain-filled words of the first.
To get an idea of ​​how he started relationships with the weaker sex and how he behaved further, let’s use the memories of his second wife, Nina. She told Yaroslav Golovanov about this with all the details. So: “In the spring of 1947 at NII-88 I was the only “English” woman, the rest of the translators were “Germans”. One day the boss says: “Korolev has accumulated a lot of English magazines. Go, he will show you what to translate..."
I'm coming. The secretary says: “He’s busy.” I hear him talking on the phone. The conversation ended, and the office door opened slightly: “Are you coming to me? Please... Sit down...” Introduced himself: “Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.”
“Nina Ivanovna,” I say. — Unemployed translator.
“I understand,” Korolev smiled and took out a stack of English and American magazines. — Translate this article, please.
I understood that I had made a bad translation because I didn’t know the meaning of purely technical terms... “Yes, it’s really bad,” said Korolev. They gave me an engineer with whom I could translate the article correctly. I'm going to see Korolev again. And so he began to call me more and more often. Somehow I put the translation in front of him, he reads it, and he… takes my hand. I move my hand away. He paused. Asks:
— What are you doing on Sunday?
- I don’t have any plans yet...
— Do you mind relaxing together?
- What do you mean?
- Well... let's go to a restaurant... let's dance...
“I don’t like restaurants, but let’s go,” I say, “just somewhere away from the city...”
His driver took us to Khimki. We walked along the embankment near the River Station. Then we had lunch at a restaurant. We drank a little. And suddenly he began to tell me so openly about his life, about Germany, about the family to which he decided not to return... I was even confused: we only met quite recently...
When we were returning to Podlipki, I asked where to take me. She gave the address. To our great surprise, it turned out that we live not only in the same house, but also in the same entrance: my mother’s apartment is on the first floor, and the Queen’s is on the second. We went up to him. What to dissemble now: I stayed with him that first evening. And, as it turned out, for the rest of my life... I was 27. He was 40.”

Sergey and Nina Korolev

What happened next?
His wife has changed, but Korolev is again on indefinite business trips, and he is again tormented by loneliness. More than once, as if apologizing, Sergei Pavlovich writes to his new wife about his difficulties and experiences. He writes that he has no one else to tell about this, since his closest friend and girlfriend is her! It is no coincidence that he always adds the words: “After all, I have no one to talk about this with except you.” Apparently, his new wife is also starting to get tired of his “outpourings” about eternal problems at work and in the soul. And with the new woman he loves so much, he feels lonely. In general, geniuses are most often unlucky in their personal lives. I remember the words of Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova to Pushkin: “And how tired I am of you with your poems!” And Korolev writes: “Well, I can’t help but write to you, my friend, and pour out my soul...” The eternal tragedy of geniuses!!!

Dossier
S. Korolev was born on January 12, 1907. Under his leadership, the Jet Propulsion Research Group (GIRD) launched the first Soviet rocket on August 17, 1933. Then there was the Jet Research Institute (RNII), then the arrest. He was accused of “sabotage as part of an anti-Soviet organization.” At first they gave me 10 years. Then, in 1940, the term was reduced by 2 years. He spent his time working in the “Tupolev charaga” - the design bureau behind barbed wire. For work that was of “important defense significance,” he was released early in August 1944, following a personal letter from Beria to Stalin. In September 1945, Korolev was sent to Germany to study the experience of Nazi engineers. Returning in January 1947, he quickly and successfully designed and tested his own missiles, which immediately increased the power of the USSR Armed Forces many times over.
In 1957, the R-7 rocket was successfully tested, with the help of which the world's first artificial Earth satellite was soon launched into orbit. On April 12, 1961, the same rocket ensured Gagarin's flight. On it, both the first female cosmonaut V. Tereshkova and A. Leonov, who made the first ever spacewalk in history, broke through into the Universe. Unfortunately, this success was the last in the life of the great designer; he died in 1966.

By the way
There is such a legend AMONG the cosmonauts: after the cremation of Korolev’s body, Gagarin and Komarov begged for part of his ashes in order to send it to the interplanetary station in a special container with the coat of arms of the Soviet Union to the Moon. How was it really? Probably no one knows anymore. Komarov died tragically. A year later, Gagarin passed away no less tragically.

This man survived so that, having gone through thorns, he would be the first to lead humanity to the stars. His name - Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. There was probably no other person on Earth before him who loved the sky so much. And women.

Love and space

Even his first kiss with the girl of his dreams happened on his roof. He lived then in Odessa. U Ksenia Vincentini, or at Lyali, as everyone called her, there were always many fans. Earring Korolev is just one of them. But he tried to do everything so that she would become only his girlfriend: he walked around her upside down, swam under a barge in the sea, and even did a handstand for her on the edge of the roof of a two-story Odessa morgue. Apparently, all this made the necessary impression on Lyalya. And then, right on the roof, she finally allowed him to kiss her for the first time.

While leaving to study at the aviation department of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Seryozhka proposed to her. She replied that, although she loved him, she did not intend to get married until she learned to earn money on her own.

It turned out that he studied in Kyiv, then at the Moscow Higher Technical School in Moscow, and she in Kharkov, to become a doctor. After graduation, Ksenia is assigned to work in Donbass. While there, Korolev again tries to get Lyalya’s consent to the marriage. She refuses again, citing a new reason: what’s the point of getting married if you still have to live apart for two or three years while you work as assigned. And Korolev decides to get his superiors to release Ksenia early. In the end, in August 1931, she became his wife, and soon he still took her to Moscow...

Sergei Korolev with his wife Ksenia Vincentini. 1932 Photo: RIA Novosti

But here’s a mystery: as soon as Korolev achieves what he has dreamed of all these 7 years, he quickly loses interest in his wife and begins to get carried away with other women. They told the following story: “One day Lyalya was cleaning Sergei’s jacket. And suddenly... two tickets to the Bolshoi Theater fell out of her pocket. Korolev didn’t say anything about them. So, Lyalya decided, she would go with some lady. And Lyalya had an admirer from high-ranking military officers. And it was not difficult to persuade him to take her to the Bolshoi. Both couples collided during intermission. With Sergei there was a beautiful brunette. Seeing his wife, Korolev rushed away from his beauty like a cat from a table, and immediately began to make excuses, saying: “They accidentally suggested tickets... It was inconvenient to refuse... Where will we meet after the performance?" - "Why should we meet? - asked Ksenia. “They will escort me out.” And she looked at her military man. Here Korolev could not stand it: “No. We'll go together!" Where he took his lady is unknown. But he took his wife away from the theater himself..."

Such adventures of her husband brought Ksenia to the point that in the spring of 1948 she poured out all her feelings in a letter to Korolev’s mother: “You know the whole story of our love well. There was a lot of grief even before 1938 (the year of Korolev’s arrest. - Author) to survive, and, despite the remaining feeling of affection and some kind of love for S., I firmly decided... to leave him so that he could continue his life under his favorite slogan “Let everyone live as he wants...”

Sergei Korolev and Ksenia Vincentini dated and were “listed” as married for a quarter of a century, but lived together for about 8 years, and only in fits and starts. Their daughter Natasha, who was under the influence of her mother, learned about her “father’s infidelities” at the age of 12. She tore into small pieces all the photographs of him that came to hand, and declared that she did not want to see him anymore. The rift between daughter and father remained for life. They met rarely, but most often they were like strangers. The Queen was not at her wedding either. In turn, according to the famous chronicler of the space age Yaroslava Golovanov When Korolev called her from Baikonur to congratulate her on her birthday, she hung up. And he sat and cried...

Loneliness

The second wife could probably subscribe to many of the pain-filled words of the first.

To get an idea of ​​how he started relationships with the weaker sex and how he behaved further, let’s use the memories of his second wife, Nina. She told Yaroslav Golovanov about this with all the details. So: “In the spring of 1947, at NII-88 I was the only “English” woman, the rest of the translators were “Germans.” One day the boss says: “Korolev has accumulated a lot of English magazines. Go, he will show you what to translate..."

I'm coming. The secretary says: "He's busy." I hear him talking on the phone. The conversation ended, and the office door opened slightly: “Are you coming to me? Please... Sit down...” He introduced himself: “Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.”

Nina Ivanovna,” I say. - Unemployed translator.

“That’s what I understood,” Korolev smiled and took out a stack of English and American magazines. - Translate this article, please.

I understood that I had made a bad translation because I didn’t know the meaning of purely technical terms... “Yes, it’s really bad,” said Korolev. They gave me an engineer with whom I could translate the article correctly. I'm going to see Korolev again. And so he began to call me more and more often. Somehow I put the translation in front of him, he reads it, and he... takes my hand. I move my hand away. He paused. Asks:

What are you doing on Sunday?

I don't have any plans yet...

Do you mind relaxing together?

What do you mean?

Well... let's go to the restaurant... let's dance...

I don’t like restaurants, but let’s go, I say, just somewhere away from the city...

His driver took us to Khimki. We walked along the embankment near the River Station. Then we had lunch at a restaurant. We drank a little. And suddenly he began to tell me so openly about his life, about Germany, about the family to which he decided not to return... I was even confused: we only met quite recently...

When we were returning to Podlipki, I asked where to take me. She gave the address. To our great surprise, it turned out that we live not only in the same house, but also in the same entrance: my mother’s apartment is on the first floor, and the Queen’s is on the second. We went up to him. What to dissemble now: I stayed with him that first evening. And, as it turned out, for the rest of my life... I was 27. He was 40.”

What happened next?

His wife has changed, but Korolev is again on indefinite business trips, and he is again tormented by loneliness. More than once, as if apologizing, Sergei Pavlovich writes to his new wife about his difficulties and experiences. He writes that he has no one else to tell about this, since his closest friend and girlfriend is her! It is no coincidence that he always adds the words: “After all, I have no one to talk about this with except you.” Apparently, his new wife is also starting to get tired of his “outpourings” about eternal problems at work and in the soul. And with the new woman he loves so much, he feels lonely. In general, geniuses are most often unlucky in their personal lives. I remember the words Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova to Pushkin: “And how tired I am of you with your poems!” And Korolev writes: “Well, I can’t help but write to you, my friend, and pour out my soul...” The eternal tragedy of geniuses!!!

Dossier

S. Korolev was born on January 12, 1907. Under his leadership, the Jet Propulsion Research Group (GIRD) launched the first Soviet rocket on August 17, 1933. Then there was the Jet Research Institute (RNII), then the arrest. He was accused of “sabotage as part of an anti-Soviet organization.” At first they gave me 10 years. Then, in 1940, the term was reduced by 2 years. He spent his time working in the “Tupolev charaga” - the design bureau behind barbed wire. For work that was of “important defense significance”, he was awarded a personal letter Beria to Stalin- released early in August 1944. In September 1945, Korolev was sent to Germany to study the experience of Nazi engineers. Returning in January 1947, he quickly and successfully designed and tested his own missiles, which immediately increased the power of the USSR Armed Forces many times over.

In 1957, the R-7 rocket was successfully tested, with the help of which the world's first artificial Earth satellite was soon launched into orbit. On April 12, 1961, the same rocket ensured Gagarin's flight. The first female astronaut also broke through into the Universe on it. V. Tereshkova, And A. Leonov, who performed the first ever spacewalk in March 1965. Unfortunately, this success was the last in the life of the great designer; he died in 1966.

By the way

There is a legend among astronauts: after the cremation of the body of Korolev Gagarin And Komarov they begged for part of his ashes in order to send it to the interplanetary station in a special container with the coat of arms of the Soviet Union to the Moon. How was it really? Probably no one knows anymore. Komarov died tragically. A year later, Gagarin passed away no less tragically.

(1907-1966) - Soviet scientist and designer in the field of rocketry and astronautics, chief designer of the first launch vehicles, artificial Earth satellites, manned spacecraft, founder of practical astronautics.

He was born in 1907 in Zhitomir (in the north of what is now Ukraine). Already at the age of three, little Seryozha and his mother moved first to Kyiv, and then to Nezhin. In Nizhyn he lived with his grandmother - his own parents had just divorced at that moment.

In 1915, young Sergei entered preparatory classes at the Kyiv gymnasium. A year later, Korolev’s mother got married, and the whole family moved to Odessa. In 1917, Sergei entered the Odessa gymnasium. Four months later, another change occurred: due to the outbreak of the revolution, Seryozha began studying at a unified labor school. Subsequently, Sergei’s parents took him to study in the gymnasium program. After all, both Seryozha’s mother and stepfather were teachers. Korolev’s stepfather, moreover, had an excellent engineering education.

In 1921, a seaplane detachment was formed in Odessa. Fascinated by thoughts about aeronautics, Korolev, two years later, began studying in a gliding circle. And a year later, in 1924, Sergei designed the K-5 glider, which was defended before the commission and approved for construction. At that time, young Korolev led an extremely active lifestyle. In addition to lectures in gliding circles of Odessa factories, which he himself gave from the age of 16, Sergei was a newspaper delivery man, a loader, a roofer, a carpenter, but he still did not live well. In the same year, Korolev entered the Kiev Polytechnic Institute.

In 1926, having already studied for two years at the institute, Sergei transferred to the Moscow Higher Technical School - the leading technical university of the Soviet Union at that time. Korolev’s parents also moved to Moscow.

In 1930 he graduated from the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School. In 1931, together with F.A. Zander, he participated in the organization of the Jet Propulsion Study Group, which he headed in 1932. Since 1933, S.P. Korolev has been deputy head of the RNII, since 1934 - head of the rocket aircraft department.

At the Jet Research Institute, Sergei Pavlovich carried out extensive organizational research and design work at this institute, directing his creative efforts to the creation of rocket aircraft. The main attention was paid to cruise missiles. Along with the development of cruise missiles in the pre-war years, S.P. Korolev worked on the scientific substantiation of the need for man to explore the stratosphere with the help of manned jet aircraft. In the book “Rocket Flight in the Stratosphere,” published in 1934, he, from a scientific point of view, seeks answers to questions already posed by life itself: what are human flights in the stratosphere for, what are the ways and methods of their implementation. This book was highly reviewed by K.E. Tsiolkovsky.

An experimental single-seat version of the rocket plane as a means of exploring the stratosphere was created by Korolev based on his SK-9 glider, which received the index RP-318-1. Under the control of test pilot V.P. Fedorov, this rocket plane successfully flew three times - on February 28, March 10 and 19, 1940. These were the first human flights in an aircraft with a liquid rocket engine in the USSR. Museum visitors can see a dynamic model of the RP-318-1 rocket plane on display.

In 1938, S.P. Korolev was unreasonably repressed and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. At first he served it in Kolyma, and during the Great Patriotic War he was sent to the Special Regime Design Bureau, where he dealt with the problem of equipping serial combat aircraft with liquid rocket boosters. In 1944, S.P. Korolev was released from prison and in 1945 he was sent to Germany as part of the Technical Commission to familiarize himself with German captured rocket technology.

In 1946, Korolev was sent to NII-88 and appointed chief designer of long-range ballistic missiles. Since 1956, Sergei Pavlovich has been the head and chief designer of OKB-1. Under his leadership, the first high-altitude rockets in our country were created, which gave Soviet science the opportunity to launch extensive geophysical research in the upper layers of the atmosphere. Under the leadership of Sergei Pavlovich, the first rocket and space systems were created and used, which provided our country with an important political priority, the world's first artificial Earth satellite, the world's first manned spacecraft were created, on which, on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin opened the way for humanity to space. The name Korolev is associated with the creation of the mighty Soviet rocket and space industry, as well as a new field of human activity - cosmonautics.

Since 1958, full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (corresponding member 1953).
Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1956, 1961). Lenin Prize (1957). Gold medal named after K.E. Tsiolkovsky of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1958).