“In cooperation with Valentin Glushko, Sergei Korolev managed to launch the first Sputnik on October 4, 1957. The effect of the event was so huge, that the Nobel Committee was ready to award unplanned prizes in 1957. The Kremlin was asked who the sputnik’s creators were. Both Korolev and Glushko would have been Nobel Prize winners. Two Ukrainians – two Nobel Prize holders it would and should have been! But Nikita Khrushchev pompously answered that the whole Soviet nation was the creator of the breakthrough. Not many people know that the actual design of the Sputnik was very simple and took only one month to build. It consisted of a polished metal sphere, a transmitter, some thermal measuring instruments, plus batteries and Sergei Korolev assembled it alone with his hands barely meeting the deadline. It was this shining object assembled by the great Ukrainian Korolev that would inspire a young coalminer’s son in the United States to become a rocket engineer in the famous American movie “October Sky“. (The excerpt is taken from the “Ukraine & the United States” e-book). Ukrainian Who Opened Space to Humankind >
