The Von Braunian

Though it may be an exaggeration to say Korolev single-handedly masterminded the Soviet space program (it was a Byzantine system, full of competing programs led by men with their hands on different political levers), his thumbprints were all over the great Soviet firsts: the first satellite, first man in space, first space walk, first woman in space. (And then, posthumously: the first space station, first docking, first catastrophe in space.) All this despite punishing obstacles: nepotism, technological constraints (a potent image is of Korolev’s engineers, early in the space race, working out rocket-trajectory calculations by hand), the gross inefficiency of two competing Soviet Moon programs, and such institutionalized paranoia that nobody knew the identity of Russia’s chief designer of space systems until after Korolev was in the ground.


“He had such a wide range of sufferings and joys it’s unbelievable,” says Poleschuk, who owes Korolev a personal debt. It was Korolev who, after Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight in 1961, promoted the idea that the cosmonaut ranks should include engineers and scientists, not just military test pilots. And then, at the apogee of the Soviet space program’s power, Korolev died of cancer and everything changed. At that moment a gap appeared between the Russians’ goals in space and their ability to achieve them. If Korolev had lived? “We would get the Moon,” Poleschuk says. “There should be no doubt about it.”



The overhead light suddenly winks out in the Moscow car showroom, and Poleschuk springs reflexively from his chair to deal with the problem, as if he were still onboard Mir. Some people at a nearby table have been eavesdropping on him; their expressions are hard to read. These folks are certainly not awestruck—as they would surely have been 20 years ago, when Soviet schoolkids knew the names of every cosmonaut, past and present. Rather, they seem vaguely curious, like teenagers watching a show on the Discovery Channel that’s marginally more interesting than their homework.


In Russia—as in the United States —astronauts have lost much of their heroic luster. “In my day, we in the aerospace field were not only enthusiasts, we were warmed by the state,” Poleschuk says (warmed with a healthy paycheck, he means). When young Russians go into space engineering today, it’s not because they dream of becoming cosmonauts, or even because they love space, Poleschuk says: It’s that they “have the understanding that this high-tech training could be useful in other areas.” He takes a sip of black tea. “The youth have lost the notion that they can satisfy their pride for the state through their work.”

It’s a tough time to be a von Braunian—or a Korolevian—in Russia.


Every Wednesday at Energia’s headquarters, department heads meet and, one by one, they offer up their problems. “The economists say there’s no money,” Poleschuk says, “and the people on the factory floor complain about the shortage of parts.” The post-Soviet economic collapse abruptly transformed the space program from state-funded to unfunded, sending independent Russia lurching reluctantly into the marketplace. Energia is now a semiprivate company, half stockholder-owned—a decision that, no matter how ideologically distasteful, preserved it through a tough decade. Even Energia’s historic archrival, Khrunichev—manufacturer of the workhorse Proton rocket and the last redoubt of full state sponsorship—has been forced to court international partners like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.