Korolyov, Sergey Pavlovich

born Jan. 12, 1907, [Dec. 30, 1906, Old Style], Zhitomir, Russia

died Jan. 14, 1966, Moscow

Soviet designer of guided missiles, rockets, and spacecraft.

Korolyov was educated at the Odessa Building Trades School, the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, and the Moscow N.E. Bauman Higher Technical School, where he studied aeronautical engineering under the celebrated designers Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky and Andrey Nikolayevich Tupolev. Becoming interested in rocketry, he and F.A. Tsander formed the Moscow Group for the Study of Reactive Motion, and in 1933 the group launched the Soviet Union's first liquid-propellant rocket.

During World War II Korolyov was held under technical arrest but spent the years designing and testing liquid-fuel rocket boosters for military aircraft. After the war he modified the German V-2 missile, increasing its range to about 426 miles (685 km). He also supervised the test firing of captured V-2 missiles at the Kapustin Yar proving ground in 1947. In 1953 he began to develop the series of ballistic missiles that led to the Soviet Union's first intercontinental ballistic missile. Essentially apolitical, he did not join the Communist Party until after Stalin's death in 1953.

Korolyov was placed in charge of systems engineering for Soviet launch vehicles and spacecraft; he directed the design, testing, construction, and launching of the Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz manned spacecraft as well as of the unmanned spacecraft in the Cosmos, Molniya, and Zond series. He was the guiding genius behind the Soviet spaceflight program until his death, and he was buried in the Kremlin wall on Red Square. In accordance with the Soviet government's space policies, his identity and role in his nation's space program were not publicly revealed until after his death.

Essential vocabulary:

1. aeronautical - авиационный

2. celebrated– знаменитый, известный

3. rocketry- ракетостроение

4. to launch– запускать (ракету)

5. liquid-propellant (liquid-fuel)- жидкотопливный

6. to be held under arrest – быть под арестом

7. rocket booster- ракетоноситель

8. missile– ракета, реактивный снаряд

9. to supervise- заведовать

10. tofireofsmth. – стрелять, палить чем-либо

11. captured missile– заряженная снарядами ракета

12. tobeplacedinchargeofsmth. – быть ответственным за что-либо, заведовать

13. manned- пилотируемый

14. to bury- хоронить

15. identity– личность, индивидуальность

16. to reveal– показывать

I. Give your own definitions to the following words and word combinations:

1. to educate

2. a celebrated person

3. a spacecraft

4. to supervise

5. apolitical

6. unmanned

7. to test smth.

II. Find the English equivalents of the following words and phrases in the text:

• под руководством ведущих дизайнеров

• интересоваться ракетостроением

• военная авиация

• межконтинентальные баллистические ракеты

• пилотируемый космический корабль

• быть похороненным

• стать достоянием общественности

• сформировать группу

• проводить годы под арестом

• руководить строительством

• политика правительства

• ведущий специалист

III. Answer the following questions:

1. What other outstanding designers and constructors except Korolyov do you know? Tell about them.

2. Why did Korolyov and Tsander form the Moscow Group?

3. Did Korolyov stop working during the World War II?

4. How did Korolyov modify the German V-2 missile?

5. Why didn’t he join the Communist Party?

6. Why wasn’t his role in rocketry revealed during those years?

IV. Retell this story of life as if you were Sergey Pavlovich himself.

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

born Sept. 5 [Sept. 17, New Style], 1857, Izhevskoye, Russia

died Sept. 19, 1935, Kaluga, Russia, U.S.S.R.

Russian research scientist in aeronautics and astronautics who pioneered rocket and space research and the development and use of wind tunnels for aerodynamic studies. He was also among the first to work out the theoretical problems of rocket travel in space.

Tsiolkovsky was from a family of modest means. His father, Eduard Ignatyevich Tsiolkovsky, a provincial forestry official, was a Polish noble by birth; his mother, Mariya Ivanovna Yumasheva, was Russian and Tatar. The boy lost his hearing at age nine as a result of scarlet fever; four years later his mother died. These two events hadan important bearing on his early life in that, being obliged to study at home, he became withdrawn and lonely, yet self-reliant. Books became his friends. He developed an interest in mathematics and physics and, while still a teenager, began to speculate on space travel.

At 16 Tsiolkovsky went to Moscow, where he stayed for three years, studying chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics, attending lectures with the aid of an ear trumpet, and expanding his grasp of the problems of flight. But the elder Tsiolkovsky understandably wanted his deaf son, notwithstanding his growing ability to deal with abstruse questions in physics, to achieve financial independence. After discovering that the youth was going hungry and overworking himself in Moscow, his father called him home to Vyatka (now Kirov) in 1876.

The future scientist soon passed the teachers examination and was assigned to a school in Borovsk, about 60 miles (100 km) from Moscow, where he began his teaching career, married Varvara Yevgrafovna Sokolovaya, and renewed his deep interest in science. Isolated from scientific centres, the deaf teacher made discoveries on his own. Thus, in Borovsk, he worked out equations on the kinetic theory of gases. He sent the manuscript of this work to the Russian Physico-Chemical Society in St. Petersburg but was informed by the chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev that it already had been done a quarter century before. Undaunted and encouraged by Mendeleyev, he continued his research. Impressed by the intellectual independence of this young provincial schoolteacher, the Russian Physico-Chemical Society invited him to become a member.

In 1892 Tsiolkovsky was transferred to another teaching post in Kaluga, where he continued his research in astronautics and aeronautics. At that time he took up the problem that occupied almost all his life: the problem of constructing an all-metal dirigible with an adjustable envelope. In order to demonstrate the validity of his experiment, he built a wind tunnel, the first in Russia, incorporating into it features that would permit testing the aerodynamic merits of various aircraft designs. Since he did not receive any financial support from the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, he was obliged to dip into his family's household budget in order to build the tunnel; he investigated about 100 models of quite diverse designs.

Tsiolkovsky's experiments were subtle and extremely clever. He studied the effects of air friction and surface area on the speed of the air current over a streamlined body. The Academy of Sciences learned of his work and granted him modest financial aid of 470 rubles, with which he built a larger wind tunnel. Tsiolkovsky then compared the feasibility of dirigibles and airplanes, which led him to develop advanced aircraft designs.

While investigating aerodynamics, however, Tsiolkovsky began to devote more attention to space problems. In 1895 his book Gryozy o zemle i nebe (Dreams of Earth and Sky) was published, and in 1896 he published an article on communication with inhabitants of other planets. That same year he also began to write his largest and most serious work on astronautics, “Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices,” which dealt with theoretical problems of using rocket engines in space, including heat transfer, a navigating mechanism, heating resulting from air friction, and maintenance of fuel supply.

The first 15 years of the 20th century undoubtedly were the saddest time of Tsiolkovsky's life. In 1902 his son Ignaty committed suicide. In 1908 a flood of the Oka River inundated his home and destroyed many of his accumulated scientific materials. The Academy of Sciences did not recognize the value of his aerodynamic experiments, and, in 1914, at the Aeronautics Congress in St. Petersburg, his models of an all-metal dirigible met with complete indifference.

In the final 18 years of his life, Tsiolkovsky continued his research, with the support of the Soviet state, on a wide variety of scientific problems. His contributions on stratospheric exploration and interplanetary flight were particularly noteworthy and played a significant role in contemporary astronautics. In 1919 Tsiolkovsky was elected to the Socialist Academy (later the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.). On Nov. 9, 1921, the council of the People's Commissars granted him a pension for life in recognition of his services in education and aviation.

Mikhail S. Arlazorov