"The Soviets deliberately created their own geographic confusion, trying to conceal the location of their manned space center. By 1957, CIA spy planes had spotted the pad near the Central Asian railway station of Tyura-Tam, which CIA analysts proceeded to misspell forever after as "Tyuratam." In 1961, the Soviets, in a vain attempt at ex post facto geographic disinformation, named their launch site "Baikonur," which was itself a clumsy transliteration of Baikonyr, a small mining village hundreds of miles from the space base. When Kazakhstan became autonomous in 1991 and took nominal sovereignty over the spaceport, its leaders began referring to it as "Baikonyr." Perhaps someday the Russians can drop the now- admitted fraud once and for all and name the space base for the man who founded it, Sergei Korolev; then all the world's maps could carry a single -- and honorable -- designation."

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PrisonersAcademics from RussiaInventorsAerospace engineersPhysicists from the Soviet Union
Original Language: English
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Sources

James Oberg, "OMNI magazine, Pg.38" (May 1993)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev

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PrisonersAcademics from RussiaInventorsAerospace engineersPhysicists from the Soviet Union

Sergei Korolev

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (Russian: Сергей Павлович Королёв, Ukrainian: Сергі́й Па́влович Корольо́в) (12 January 1907 – 14 January 1966) was a lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. He is regarded by many as the father of practical astronautics. He was involved in the development of the R-7 Rocket, Sputnik 1, launching Laika, Sputnik 3, Belka and Strelka, and the first human being, Yuri Gagar

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