Russia's Invisible Rocket Man

He launched Sputnik. He sent Yuri Gagarin into space. He helped turn the Soviet Union into the world's first space superpower.

And almost no one knew his name.

Sergei Korolev was the brilliant engineer behind the Soviet Union's greatest early triumphs in the Space Race. But before becoming the architect of its space program, Korolev had been arrested during Stalin's purges, tortured, sent to the Gulag, and nearly killed by the government he would later help make famous.

Even at the height of his success, Soviet secrecy kept his identity hidden. Newspapers simply called him the mysterious "Chief Designer." The United States knew what the Soviet space program was accomplishing—but not the man responsible for it.

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