Sergey Korolyov: Encyclopedia II - Sergey Korolyov - Ballistic missiles

Sergey Korolyov - Ballistic missiles

In 1945 Korolev was awarded the Badge of Honor, his first decoration, for his work on the development of rocket motors for military aircraft. The same year he was commissioned into the Red Army, with a rank of colonel. Along with other rocketry experts, he was flown to Germany to gather information on the German V-2 rocket. The soviets placed a priority in reproducing lost documentation on the V-2, and studying the various parts and captured manufacturing facilities. In 1946 it was decided by the Soviet government to ship some 5,000 German rocket workers back to Russia, effectively kidnapping them, although they were treated relatively decently.

Stalin had decided to make missile development a national priority, and the German "recruits" were placed into a new institute created for the purpose, the NII-88. Development of ballistic missiles was put under the military control of Dimitri Ustinov, with Korolev serving as chief designer of long-range missiles. Korolev demonstrated his organizational abilities in this new facility, keeping a dysfunctional and highly-compartmentalized organization operating. The Germans at the facility were held in what was effectively a prison workshop, surrounded by barbed wire and armed female guards.

With the documents reproduced, thanks in part to disassembled V-2 rockets, the team now began producing a working replica of the rocket. This was designated the R-1, and was first tested in October, 1947. A total of eleven were launched, with five landing on target. This was comparable to the German success rate, and demonstrated the unreliability of the rocket. The Russians continued to utilize the expertise of the Germans on their rocket designs until about 1952 when the first groups began to return home. (The last group returned in 1954.)

In 1947 the NII-88 group under Korolev began working on more advanced designs, with improvements in range and throw weight. The R-2 doubled the range of the V-2, and was the first design to utilize a separate warhead. This was followed by the R-3, which had a range of 3,000 kilometers, and thus could target bases in England. However Glushko couldn't get the engines to develop the required thrust, and the project was canceled in 1952.

That same year work began on the R-5 (code-named SS-3 Shyster by NATO) which had a more modest 1,200 km range. This completed a successful first flight by 1953. The first true ICBM, however, would be the R-7 (code-named SS-6 Sapwood). This was a two-stage rocket with a maximum payload of 5.4 tons, sufficient to carry the Soviet's bulky nuclear bomb a distance of 7,000 km. After several test failures, the R-7 successfully launched on August, 1957, sending a dummy payload to Kamchatka.

It was in 1952 that Korolev joined the Soviet Communist Party, a tactical necessity if he was to request money from the government for his future projects. It would not be until April 19, 1957, however that he would be fully "rehabilitated", and the government acknowledged that his sentence was unjust.

Sergey Korolyov - Personal life

The Soviet emigre Leonid Vladimirov relates the following description of Korolev by Glushko at about this time:

Korolev was rarely known to drink vodka or other alcoholic beverages, and chose to live a fairly basic lifestyle. He remained a handsome and solidly built man, and was fond of women and they of him.

About 1946 the marriage of Sergei and Xenia began to break up. Xenia was heavily occupied with her own career, and at about this time Sergei had an affair with a younger, pretty woman named Nina Ivanovna Kotenkova. Xenia, who still loved Sergei and was angry over the infidelity, was divorced in 1948. Sergei and Nina then were wed in 1949, but he was known to have had affairs even after his remarriage to Nina.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ballistic missiles", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki