This article is a small sample from DISCOVER's special issue, The History of Space Travel. The issue will be on sale through the end of the year, only at newsstands.
My contact drove us to Oleg Ivanovskiy’s home in a large block of relatively new six-story Moscow apartment buildings. We entered the building through a heavily built door into a tiled foyer with dim light. On the fourth floor, where we got out of the elevator, several doors lined the landing; they looked as if they could have withstood a siege, and at second glance, some looked as if they already had.
Ivanovskiy’s daughter opened his door and graciously waved us in, smiling. Inside the apartment, the transition from grim city mass construction to handcrafted comfort was complete. I felt I might have been transported to a well-appointed dacha deep in some northern pine forest. There was no noise from outside, and the room we sat down in was bright and spacious, dominated by a massive round dining table.
