In 1966, the Soviet chief designer who had beaten America to every space milestone died on an operating table in Moscow, and only then was his name printed in a newspaper — Sergei Korolev, whose identity had been a state secret so tight that even Yuri Gagarin only knew him as ‘the Chief Designer’.
On 14 January 1966, a 59-year-old man died on an operating table in Moscow during what was supposed…
