Father of Space Travel and First Song in Space
I always like to acquaint you with some interesting people from my part of the world through time and distance. This time, it’s the 114th birthday of one who has been called “the father of space travel,” Sergey Korolev/Serhiy Korolyov.
Like myself he was a mixed blood and his mother was of Cossacks origin. He was born in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr. That is where the Museum of Cosmonautics, which is named after him, was established in 1970 and to which our president invited Elon Musk to visit.
Like many of his generation, Serhiy Korolyov had a very rough live, which included years of hardship in penal system of the Gulag Archipelago. He was only released because World War II started and his talents were desperately needed to as many others to save the USSR. Even though the stars were the inspiration of this follower of another genius Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Sergey Korolyov was talented in war as well as space.
Under his leadership, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into orbit. Thanks to his developments, animals visited space, and on April 12, 1961, a manned space flight with Yuri Gagarin was carried out for the first time in the world.
Korolyov was brought to Germany along with many other experts to recover the technology of the German V-2 rocket. Based on this knowledge and their research under the leadership of Korolyov, they created the first true intercontinental ballistic missile. Because of Korolyov’s success and because the Soviet Union had created the ICBM before the United States of America, he was nationally recognized by the Soviet Union, although his name was kept secret.
Sometimes I wonder what a person who created the most powerful weapon in the world felt about it. The irony is that the very existence of these weapons of global destruction keeps them from being used. We have instead a series of small, local wars among those nations without a nuclear umbrella so while these weapons have scaled down the scope of war, they have not prevented war.
One would ask is that really how it should be in the 21st Century? How many peacekeepers must we have to handle the consequences of disastrous activity of warhawks? Have we actually created a multi-polar world supported by nuclear weapons, so powers coexisting with each other are not seduced by trying to reach world dominance? I'm glad to hear that NATO chief calls for renewed agreement between U.S., Russia on nuclear arms control. I just hope under America’s new administration reason will prevail.
And yes talking about Korolyov I think that little episode reflects what his real passion was. It wasn't war. It was space exploration and stars. The first ever song that was performed in space was a Ukrainian song “I look up at the sky” (“Дивлюсь я на небо”) sang on 12 August 1962 by Pavlo Popovych, cosmonaut from Ukraine at a special request of Serhiy Korolyov.
I look up at the stars and ponder my lot
Why I'm not a falcon, why fly I can not
Why, oh my Lord, you wouldn't give wings
I would leave earth and release all my springs
Far beyond the clouds, away from this world
To seek for my destiny somewhere beyond
And ask for caress of sun and the stars
In bright light of them to heal all my scars
As I don't seem being loved by my fate
Just servant of others here to beg
I'm stranger to fate and stranger to people
Does anyone even love not own children?
I make love with evil, I don't know the joy
And bitter and in vain is my time, poor boy
In my sorrow I found out that there is only one place
The distant sky is my only solace
And when I feel bitter and world just gets worse
I look at the sky and feel there's my resort
And in my mind I'll forget that I'm orphan
And the thought flies far and high
If I just had eagle wings
I would leave the earth and fly
Like eagle I would soar in the skies
And in clouds for good I would find my side
I think in this text I translated from the original of this forlorn song encoded the soul of this genius of the time.
