While the world knows Yuri Gagarin as the first man in space, the true architect of that victory was Sergei Korolev, a brilliant engineer who spent twelve years in Stalin’s Gulag. This episode explores how the Soviet state turned its most dangerous political prisoner into the father of modern rocketry. We trace Korolev’s arrest during the Great Purge, his imprisonment in the sharashka—a prison laboratory where scientists worked under guard—and his eventual transfer to build ballistic missiles for the Kremlin. By examining the brutal conditions of Kolyma and the high-stakes politics of Moscow, we uncover how fear and ambition collided to launch Sputnik. Listen as Lucas and Luna dissect the moral complexities of using forced labor for scientific progress, the shadowy figure of Lavrentiy Beria, and the moment Korolev finally broke through the iron curtain to change human history forever.
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