The chief designer of Soviet missiles, academician Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (1907-1966) became known to the country only after his untimely death on the operating table.
Korolev is dead
All who commented on the fatal operation for Sergei Korolev agree that there was a whole chain of gross medical errors. The famous surgeon Alexander Vishnevsky (son of no less famous doctor Alexander Vasilyevich Vishnevsky), who was invited for a consultation due to unforeseen complications during the operation, said four years later to Boris Chertok: "Korolyov … had to live!"
Academician Fyodor Uglov, in his book “Under the White Mantle” published in 1984, in encrypted form, without naming names, told about the fatal operation in such a way that everyone who heard anything about it immediately understood who it was and who was to blame for the tragedy. The journalist Yaroslav Golovanov, who published the book "Korolev: Myths and Facts" in 1994, states: "Korolev is not dead. Korolev died!"
Academician Boris Chertok in his memoirs “Rockets and People” summarized this case (and others like it): “The mutual responsibility of doctors, which is commonly called“corporate ethics”, makes any murder practically unprovable [in such circumstances]”.
Korolev was aiming at Mars
Promotional video:
It is clear that even now, after more than half a century, it is impossible to accuse specific people of conspiracy to attempt to murder the chief designer under the guise of a medical error and an unsuccessful operation. Except, of course, for a general and vague indication that the death of Sergei Korolev was beneficial to those who did not want the Soviet Union to retain its leadership in the space race. And first of all - to those who did not want Soviet cosmonauts to fly to the Moon or Mars before the Americans.
Therefore, it is possible to give only information about what paths of development of Soviet cosmonautics existed at the time they were implemented during Korolev's life and after his death, and who was behind one or another decision made in this regard.
In 2008, a book by the former leading designer of NPO Energia, Vladimir Bugrov, "Korolev's Martian project" was published. Its author claims that Korolev's main goal was to create a heavy interplanetary spacecraft (TMK) for a manned expedition to Mars. With the determination and will of the country's political leadership, this task could be accomplished until the end of the 1970s. At the beginning, OKB-1 did not have a separate lunar program, and the Soviet-American lunar race is a later myth.
The moon race was imposed
In department No. 9 of OKB-1, created in 1957 under the leadership of Mikhail Tikhonravov, two major projects were developed. The first is the Vostok spacecraft for a manned flight around the Earth. The second one is for the future, the already mentioned TMK. The famous N-1 launch vehicle was originally developed specifically for TMK.
On August 3, 1964, a secret decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On work on the study of the Moon and outer space" was issued. Two tasks were set as priorities in it. The first is a manned flight around the moon. This task with the help of the UR-500 ("Proton") rocket was supposed to be carried out by the design bureau headed by Vladimir Chelomey no later than the first half of 1967. The second is the landing of astronauts on the Moon with a return to Earth. This work was to be carried out by the Korolev design bureau with the help of the N-1 until the end of 1968. Resolution No. 655-258 was the last in space, adopted under Khrushchev. In October 1964, the country was headed by Leonid Brezhnev. But the tasks of OKB-1 remained the same.
Competition and intrigue
Unlike the United States, which, after lagging behind the USSR with the launch of the first satellite and the first cosmonaut, concentrated any work on space in one institution - NASA, Khrushchev spread competition among design teams for government orders in the USSR. This made it difficult to concentrate all the efforts of the Soviet space industry on the fulfillment of any one main task.
The opinion has been repeatedly expressed that after the death of Korolev in January 1966, his successor Vasily Mishin hindered the implementation of the lunar program. Bugrov does not confirm this. In his opinion, Mishin did everything for its speedy implementation, realizing that the coveted TMK project now depends on this.
In 1974, after a collective letter from some of Mishin's deputies to the Central Committee of the CPSU, the latter was removed from the post of Chief Designer, and OKB-1 merged with OKB-456, which was engaged in the development of engines, at NPO Energia. Academician Valentin Glushko, who headed OKB-456, was appointed its chief. Earlier, Glushko did not receive an order to create engines for the N-1 and became an implacable opponent of this royal project. His appointment and the concentration in his hands of all space-related work meant the final collapse of the N-1 and TMK projects and any hopes associated with them.
Copying Americans
It is characteristic that all the decisions of the top leadership of the USSR on the development of the space industry were repeated by the American ones. So, the decree of August 3, 1964 appeared in response to the promise of US President John F. Kennedy to deliver Americans to the moon before 1970. In 1969, when the Americans flew around the moon, and then landed on it, NASA made a priority Skylab program to create a long-term orbital station (DOS). In the same year, the Politburo assigned the Mishin Design Bureau the task of creating the Soviet DOS Salyut.
In 1972, the chief designer of the Saturn rocket, Wernher von Braun, resigned from NASA, who had been dreaming of flying to Mars all his life. In the same year, NASA formulated the task of creating a reusable spacecraft ("shuttle"). A similar project "Buran-Energia" became the main one in the new Soviet NPO Energia, organized two years later.
Could our astronauts walk on Mars?
What could happen in the Soviet space industry if Sergei Pavlovich Korolev lived for several more years? Work on the N-1 lagged behind the tasks of the lunar program due to the difficulties experienced in the design bureau of Nikolai Kuznetsov when creating engines for this rocket. Nevertheless, in 1974 this rocket was finally able to fly normally, according to Bugrov's memoirs. It took will to bring this project to an end.
Mishin did not have the same authority as his great predecessor. Korolev could hardly have been removed from office so easily. Perhaps he would have been able to defend the priority of his Martian program before the country's leadership, and entrust the work on DOS to one of the Chelomey Design Bureau (where it began, and how Mishin tried to do it). Probably, he could bring to the bitter end the work on the N-1 launch vehicle. Then a manned flight to Mars would be on the order of the day. Such a flight was able to effectively return the Soviet Union to its triumphal leadership in the superpower competition in space.
Yaroslav Butakov