The secret of the cropped photo of Sergei Korolev is revealed

The Museum of Cosmonautics presented previously unpublished artifacts related to the Chief Designer

“Volcano”, “Will”, “Evening”… Fans of astronautics can probably guess what this selection of words is dedicated to, written in red pencil on a separate sheet by Sergei Pavlovich Korolev himself. So the chief designer chose the name of the first manned spacecraft. We learned the details of this story on Tuesday at the Museum of Cosmonautics, where the rarest artifacts associated with Korolev were presented on his 115th birthday, celebrated this year.

In fact, on October 4, the whole world celebrates as the Day of the beginning of the space age – the launch by the Soviet Union of the first artificial satellite of the Earth. This year marks exactly 65 years since that momentous day. But the museum staff decided to please this day with fresh artifacts related to Sergei Pavlovich (his anniversary was celebrated in January). Documents and photographs were taken from the museum and archives of the Russian State Library and are now presented to visitors in digitized form on the portal of the National Electronic Library.

How the “Main Six” turned into the “Seven”

Some of Sergey Pavlovich’s notes, photographs, telegrams are exhibited in the special project for the first time. For example, one of the photographs was not chosen by experts by chance. Many people know her as a picture called: “The Top Six.” The famous photograph of 1957 shows the leading designers and engineers who worked together with Korolev and ensured the leadership of our state in space exploration: Mikhail Ryazansky, Nikolai Pilyugin, Sergei Korolev, Valentin Glushko, Vladimir Barmin, Viktor Kuznetsov. But few people knew that the well-known version, which was replicated many times in various publications, was incomplete – the publishing houses cut off Alexei Bogomolov, who was sitting on the far left, as the most inexperienced scientist compared to the masters.

As it turned out from the history of this exhibit told by the museum workers, during the shooting, Bogomolov himself did not dare to sit next to the great engineers and scientists, but Sergei Pavlovich, who respected and trusted the young specialist, literally forced him to sit down with everyone. The full version of this photograph – “The Seven Chiefs” (as Korolev himself called it) always hung in his office in a place of honor. In the future, Bogomolov became one of the leading space engineers, an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Gagarin could fly into space on the “Volcano”

A note by Sergei Korolev dated the late 1950s and early 1960s was also exhibited here, with options for names for the future rocket that launched the first manned spacecraft with Yuri Gagarin on board: “Vostok, Voskhod, Rise, Ascension, Exit , Rising, Height, Wave, Volcano, Will, Evening, Wind. As a result, the name “Vostok” became the main one, in front of which Korolev put a heart, like a prototype of modern stickers in messengers.

What connected Boris Strugatsky and Korolev

Sergei Pavlovich’s telegram was no less valuable. He congratulated his colleague Valentin Petrovich Glushko on his election as Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1953).

The second exhibit, dated 1959-1965, is just a blank telegram, on the reverse side of which Sergei Korolev hastily wrote down Boris Strugatsky’s poem “Children of the Fog” heard on the radio. The first two lines were skipped by him, the entry begins with the third. Korolev associated the poem with the feat of Yuri Gagarin and the detachment of the first cosmonauts, because they, like “calm people, lead their ships into obscure dawns.”

Another artifact associated with the chief designer, which has never been published, is a sign on the door of his office at NII-88: “Chief designer and deputy director of the institute S.P. Korolev.” It is known that NII-88 was created in 1946 on the basis of artillery plant No. 88, Sergei Pavlovich was appointed chief designer. The 3rd department of this research institute later became the core of the enterprise – OKB-1, which today is called the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia named after S.P. Korolev.