The protagonist noticed that even his neighbor on the desk, the quiet Adolf Komarov,(who called himself Alik,
so that no one compared him to Hitler, as there was a war) solved this problem.
Notable setbacks included the deaths of Korolev, Vladimir Komarov(in the Soyuz 1 crash),
and Yuri Gagarin(on a routine fighter jet mission) between 1966 and 1968, and development failure of the huge N-1 rocket intended to power a manned lunar landing, which exploded shortly after lift-off on four unmanned tests.