Korolev Station is the seat of government for united humanity of Other-Terrestrial.

The station is a large collection of habitat cylinders (rotated for gravity), and maintains a permanent population of seventy-five million people, with a transitory population of nearly double that.

Maintaining such populations in health and safety is a challenge, though Korolev is not self-sufficient, relying on numerous other stations dedicated entirely to food production – though Korolev does have its own gardens that grow food.

As this is socialism, no part of the station is owned privately, and even exalted members of government live relatively humble lives; their housing is not much different from anyone else’s, nor do they get much in the way of extra side-benefits.

Gagarin Station is another important station, and was founded as one of the first large human space stations, at the La Grange 1 point between Earth and the Moon – that is, the point of gravitational balance between them. This positions it closer to the Moon than Earth. Though L1 is not perfectly stable it is still easier in practice to keep a stable position in this location than in others.

Through centuries of use, Gagarin Station has been refitted, repaired, and even replaced several times – much like the Ship of Theseus.

Both stations are named for some of the most important figures of early spaceflight – Sergei Korolev and Yuri Gagarin.

Sergei Korolev, the father of practical astronautics, was born in 1907. Korolev was fascinated with the idea of flying since childhood, he designed his first aircraft at the age of 17. By the time he graduated from the aviation technology school he had designed, built and flown a number of successful light planes.

However, his real fascination – “rocket planes” – struck him when he acquainted himself with the works of Tsiolkovsky and met Tsander who was leading a chemical rocketry research group. Following the successes of that group the government established a Jet Propulsion Research Institute that would go on to become famous for their “Little Katya” rocket artillery design among other things.

Unfortunately, one of the superiors of Korolev in that institute led an anti-state sabotage cell that operated by leading research effort down dead-end paths effectively stalling weapon development and adoption. Korolev was sentenced to 10 years of prison labor as part of that cell’s operations. However, a year later he was recalled to work at the special design bureau formed from repressed aviation engineers, where Korolev continued his work under Tupolev.

Korolev was released from imprisonment on Stalin’s order in 1944 and proceeded to work on the captured German rocket research materials that became available in 1945, eventually designing a series of successful multistage ICBMs while also working at his own newly created Design Bureau #1 on the rocket that would eventually launch the first artificial Earth satellite – Sputik – as well as the N-1 rocket that was supposed to take Soviet cosmonauts to the Moon.

After leading a spectacular career, Korolev unfortunately succumbed to cancer and died at age 59. The upset this caused in the Soviet Space Program likely contributed to America landing a man on the moon prior to the Soviet Union.

Among Korolev’s many firsts in space, though, was putting the first man in outer space, Yuri Gagarin.

Gagarin was born in the village of Klushino in 1934 on a collective farm. His father was a carpenter, and his mother a dairy farmer. Yuri himself worked as a foundryman for a time in his teens. During the fascist invasion, his village was taken over by the Nazis. Losing his home to a Nazi officer, forced to live in a hovel, the Nazis even burned down the local school.

While his brothers were taken away as slave labor, Yuri fought back by sabotaging German equipment, and after the Nazis were routed helped Soviet engineers locate the land mines they had left behind.

Gagarin was a modest man, who disliked bawdy jokes and had a very strong imagination. He was possessed of great perseverance, and could solve even complex mathematical problems with ease – science and physics had been his favorite topics in his youth.

His flight in Vostok 1 took place on the 12th of April, 1961, setting off with a call of Poyekhali! – Off we go!

The orbit lasted 108 minutes, and when Gagarin landed, he had ushered in a new age of mankind.

No matter what the future holds, where mankind goes, we will always know that the first man to see the Earth from space was not a selfish billionaire going on a joyride, not an oligarch from any nation. He was the son of workers, and a worker himself.

They can never take that from us.