Sergei Korolev

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was the brilliant Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer known to the world during the Cold War only by the shadowy title 'The Chief Designer' (Glavny Konstruktor). Survived brutal imprisonment in the Kolyma Gulag gold mines during Stalin's Great Purge, Korolev was rehabilitated to lead the Soviet Union's ballistic missile and space initiatives.

Working out of OKB-1 design bureau, Korolev engineered the R-7 Semyorka—the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. In October 1957, using an R-7 booster, he stunned the world by launching Sputnik 1, humanity's first artificial satellite, sparking the Space Race. Over the next decade, Korolev led an astonishing cascade of space firsts: the first animal in orbit (Laika, 1957), the first probe to impact the Moon (Luna 2, 1959), the first photograph of the far side of the Moon (Luna 3, 1959), the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin, 1961), the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, 1963), and the first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov, 1965). His identity was kept a top-secret state secret until his untimely death at fifty-nine.