KOROLYOV, Moscow region. April 11 (Interfax-AVN) - Soviet space rocket engineer and spacecraft designer Sergei Korolyov wanted to fly in space, his daughter, Natalya Korolyova, said on Monday.
"He wanted to fly in space and he loved testing his new models - gliders and airplanes - himself. Once, after Gagarin's flight, he told me: 'It's me who should have flown, but I am already too old for that, and you wouldn't let me either'", Korolyova said at a jubilee meeting of the Scientific and Technical Board of the Energia Space Rocket Corporation marking the 50th anniversary of the world's first manned space flight.
Until the first satellite was launched, Korolyov's family had no idea where he worked, Natalya said.
She said she was eaten by curiosity and recalled how in 1956 he said that orbital space stations would appear soon and that people would fly in space.
"I didn't believe him and said that perhaps all this would happen some day but not in our lifetime, and he said 'no, you and I will witness this, it will happen quite soon," Korolyova recalled.
She said that when Moscow was honoring Yury Gagarin after his return to Earth, her friends in the crowd wondered: "Who is that Chief Designer who launched Gagarin into space".
"I wanted so much to tell them that this was my father, but I couldn't. He strictly forbade me to say anything about his work," Natalya said.
She said that her father could have received two Nobel prizes - in 1957 (for the first artificial satellite launch) and in 1961 (for Gagarin's flight) - had not his work been classified.
When the Nobel Committee asked the Soviet government to nominate its chief space designer for the prize, [Nikita] Khrushchev refused, saying that the "entire nation" was behind the space achievements.
Korolyov often said: "We are ore miners, working deep under the ground. No one sees us or knows anything about us".