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Sergei Korolev

Sergei Korolev (1907-1966) as a young adult had always been fascinated by aviation. In his college years, his fascination grew towards rocketry and space travel.  He followed on to be one of the most important rocket engineers of Soviet aircraft technology and became known as the “Chief Designer” of the Soviet space program.  In the early stages of Soviet rocketry science Korolev initiated a program in Moscow called the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion, abbreviated as GIRD in Russian. As a renowned aeronautical engineer and the director of GIRD, he and his colleagues were enthusiasts of Russia’s race to space and their focus was aimed at using liquid propellant to push their rockets into the atmosphere. GIRD was later combined with an organization called the Gas Dynamics Laboratory, abbreviated as GDL, in 1933 which was renamed the Rocket Scientific Research Institution or RN II. The GDL was interested in the use of solid propellant fuel for their rockets while GIRD’s research was surrounded around the use of liquid fueled rockets. When the two institutes combined, they brought together two of the most exceptional and successful engineers in the history of Soviet rocketry. Sergei Korolev teamed up with propulsion engineer Valentin Glushko and together they excelled in the rocket industry, pushing the Soviet Union ahead of the United States in the space race. But remarkably through all of his achievements, Korolev’s identity actually remained a Soviet secret up until his death in 1966.

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Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) has been known around the world as the first man in space. His achievement was the most important stepping stone in the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Gagarin’s past does not exemplify the pasts of many other successful persons. As a child growing up outside of Moscow in the peak of World War II, Yuri had a difficult past during the Nazi invasions. But as he grew up and continued his schooling he decided to attend Saratov Industrial Technical School. There he trained in foundry-work and eventually began learning how to fly with lessons from the Saratov Aero Club. He became a pilot and after his graduation from Saratov in 1955, he was recruited to be in the Soviet Army Air Force. As he went through his training at the airfield, he met his future wife Valentina Goryacheva and they married in the fall of 1957. After being appointed and assigned many different positions leading up to third class senior lieutenant military pilot, Gagarin reached out to his commanding officer about participating in the U.S.S.R. attempt to put men into space. His determination and training made it possible and he became senior lieutenant. Two years later on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin boarded the Vostok 1 and has been known ever since as the first man to journey into outer space.

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Wernher von Braun

Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977) was a German born aeronautics engineer that made a huge contribution to the Soviet and American space programs. Like many other Soviet scientists and engineers that were apart of the space program, von Braun grew up with a deep interest in the science of space and the exploration of it. One of his early inspirations in high school was Hermann Oberth, a German physicist and rocket scientist that influenced von Braun to study mathematics and physics at an early age. After high school von Braun didn’t waste any time and in 1929 he immediately joined a German rocketry group called the German Society for Space Travel and was allowed to work alongside with his inspiration, Oberth. Together they studied liquid propellant on rocket engines. In 1932, Von Braun continued on with his education and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and went on to get his Doctorate’s in physics. One of Wernher’s important achievements was the generation of the V-2 rocket. These rockets were used in World War II against Great Britain. In an attempt to keep the V-2 out of the hands of the Russians, von Braun took the initiative to move his entire team along with their rockets towards the American military. He surrendered and his team of scientists was moved to the United States in 1945. The U.S. military used von Braun to their advantage and used his expertise to test the V-2 missiles in White Sands, New Mexico. During his years in the United States, Wernher von Braun moved up in the rankings and as him and his team were moved to Alabama, he became the director of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) at the Redstone Arsenal. He then moved up even further and pursued the rest of his career with NASA and developed what are called Saturn rockets, which eventually contributed to the ability of men to land on the moon in the Apollo flights.

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Helmut Gröttrup

Helmut Gröttrup (1916-1981) was born in Germany. While not much is said about his childhood or his family, he had a wife whose name was Irmgard and a daughter by the name of Ursula. His influence in the Soviet space program was immense as he worked with Wernher von Braun at the rocket facility for German military research at Peenemünde. In 1944 after the bombing of the Peenemünde facility, von Braun, Gröttrup and their groups of scientists fled to Mittelwerk. In the search for German scientists and engineers to progress their rocket program, the Soviets began to retrieve all the technological advancements made in Mittelwerk, capturing Gröttrup and his group of associates. Von Braun and thousands of others had already fled by the time the Soviets came to take over the facility. As Mittelwerk was rebuilt and began more investigation into rockets, Gröttrup was transferred to Russia where he continued research on the V-2 rockets.

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[[|[1]]] Britannica Academic, s. v. "Yury Alekseyevich Gagarin," accessed April 08, 2016, http://academic.eb.com/EBchecked/topic/223437/Yury-Alekseyevich-Gagarin.