Far away from the eyes of the world, in the middle of the vast and unpopulated Kazakh steppe, on 12 April 1961, the atmosphere in the large Tyuratam research complex was so tense that it could have been cut. The time was a few minutes past nine in the morning. In the middle of the compound was a huge rocket launching pad, proudly glistening with a 260-tonne, 38-metre-tall rocket with a range of over 12,000 kilometres. Underneath, it boomed eerily. Soon, it began to shake violently and the hanging metal struts that held it upright gave way. For a few moments it seemed to float in mid-air, and then it shot sharply into the sky. On top of this famous rocket, named R-7, was Vostok 1, a barely perceptible tiny round metal capsule. In it, strapped in tightly, sat 27-year-old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
The first human journey into space had just begun, opening one of the most important chapters of scientific progress in the 20th century. The dimensions of this feat were not only scientific and technological, however, as space had been the main arena of competition between the world’s two superpowers and bitter ideological rivals, the USA and the Soviet Union, since the 1950s. The latter has strengthened its status as the current leader in the space race with Gagarin’s successful flight.
The US has been close behind since 4 October 1957, when the Space Age began with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in space. Sputnik’s persistent orbit around the Earth for several weeks and its constant nerve-wracking ‘beep-beep-beep’ sound epitomised American fears of world domination by the Soviet Union. At the height of the Cold War, rapid advances in space technology also meant advances in military technology, as the two were often multifunctional and mutually compatible. For example, the R-7 rocket could have carried a nuclear tip instead of Gagarin’s capsule.
Sputnik II, an upgrade of the first, already hosted a prestigious passenger, Laika the dog, who, although sent into space by the Soviets to die, was proof that a living being could travel beyond the known. Better and better, bigger and bigger, more and more powerful launchers and more and more sophisticated and life-friendly capsules followed. In the summer of 1960, two puppies, Belka and Strelka, successfully returned to Earth.
The countdown to the first human flight could begin. An elite generation of pioneering cosmonauts stepped up their intensive preparations. These were kept secret, just as the top 20 cosmonauts of all time were unknown to the public. The Soviet space programme was shrouded in secrecy and only news of successes leaked into the domestic and international media. The dark side of the Soviet quest for space glory, tainted by numerous failures and disasters, was one of the country’s best-kept secrets until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The symbol of the triumph of socialism in space, represented by Gagarin’s achievement, was successfully used by the Soviet Union for propaganda purposes and to glorify socialism over capitalism. And to spite the Americans, for which the then entertaining Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was a recognised international ‘expert’. The indulgent and often uncouth boasting and vulgar display of power was his hallmark.
The young and ambitious US President, John F. Kennedy, who had swept into the White House less than a hundred days earlier with his overbearing and competitive rhetoric, had to admit defeat with his head bowed. The rich, powerful and progressive Americans could not grasp that they were being defeated by a country that had been utterly devastated less than fifteen years earlier during the Second World War. When JFK congratulated the Soviets on their achievement, the self-confident and brilliant orator stammered and searched frantically for words, but he could not even pronounce Gagarin’s name.
But millions of people around the world knew how to say it from one minute to the next. After Yuri’s 106-minute flight and tumultuous landing, the news spread like wildfire around the world. This was thanks to the cunning Soviet apparatus, which had prepared everything in time for the media bomb. Its main asset was, of course, the young new hero, the ever-smiling, infectiously good-natured, handsome, charismatic, kind and warm-hearted Yuri, or Jura, as he was called by those close to him.
From an anonymous cosmonaut, subjected for months with a handful of his peers to relentless, almost inhuman hardships, tests and training, this golden boy became in a matter of hours the most famous man in the world, a Soviet icon and a highly valuable asset for Soviet diplomacy. But at the same time, because of the nature of the Soviet regime, he had no choice but to become a puppet of the system. He and his wife and family paid a high personal price for his ascent to the Soviet Olympus of fame, and his life ended tragically and far too soon.
Yet no one could take away from him the experience of being the first man in space. This was clearly his life’s mission, and he accomplished every step of the way to this priceless achievement with distinction. Despite the unimaginable number of unknowns that the entire mission presented, he undertook it with dedication and enthusiasm.
On that fateful day in April, he settled into the small capsule at the top of the huge rocket with a broad smile, whistling the Russian national song, not knowing how many minutes of his life still lay ahead of him. The possibilities for an inglorious, tragic and cruel end were endless – among other things, he could have been blown up in the first seconds, the brutal accelerations could have affected his internal organs and caused brain damage, the radiation exposure could have triggered a whole host of tumours and cancers, he could have been blinded, or the craft could have been struck by a meteorite.
Finally, the possibility of technical failures was so great that its reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere was also compromised. If it had failed, Yuri would have died a slow death as Vostok orbited the Earth. But the hardest thing of all was to predict what mental state the cosmonaut would be in when things went wrong. Would he lose his mind?
Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin
But Yuri was made of tough stuff. From a very young age, he faced difficult situations with courage. A sweet and lovable boy with blue eyes, he generously shared his broad smile, by which he was later known to the whole world.
The most important influence on his resilient character was a traumatic childhood experience when the Nazis occupied his native village of Klushino in the Smolensk region, where the modest Gagarin family of six lived in a collective farm with his father Aleksei, a skilled carpenter, and his mother Anna, a farmer. Their house was confiscated and for several years the family lived in an underground dwelling, which was skilfully built by Alexei.
The village’s talented Russian youth often challenged the Germans and sabotaged their vehicles. One day, a particularly sadistic Nazi took a poke at Yuri’s five-year-old brother Boris and casually hung him by the scarf from a tree by his neck. Jurij, then seven years old, tried to save his brother, but the knot was too tight and only his mother Anna managed to free the unmoving boy. This event ruined Boris’s life. He was never carefree and healthy again, and later got drunk and ironically ended his tragic life by hanging himself.
But Jurij managed to find inspiration for the future even during the war. When a Soviet fighter plane crashed near his home, he was overwhelmed. He began to dream of flying.
He first trained as a foundry worker at a trade school, then from 1951 continued his education at the technical school in Saratov, where he focused on tractors. He immediately stood out among his peers for his diligence and took up all sports alongside his studies. Despite being by far the smallest – he was only 157 centimetres tall – he became captain of the basketball team. Perhaps that was why he was so dedicated to sport, to compensate for his small size. He also played the trumpet, performed in the drama club, became a photography enthusiast and read all the books in the school library.
When he saw the sign ‘Aero Club’ on the nearby airfield, he was irresistible. He passed the entrance exams and learned to fly at weekends and aviation theory in the evenings. Four years later, young George graduated with excellent grades, but he had no interest in tractors. He followed his dream and enrolled in the military pilot school in Orenburg.
By 1957, he was already a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force. He made his first solo flight in a MiG-15 jet in March of that year, half a year before the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik put its stamp on the space race and caused national trauma, long-lasting anxiety for the American people and embarrassment for its political class. The American media have been in a competition to see who can whip up more hysteria with rumours and hyped-up stories.
For George, at that time, such geopolitical calculations were the ninth village. He enjoyed flying and spending his evenings with friends. At a dance, he met the beautiful but extremely shy dark-haired medical technician Valentina, and they quickly hit it off, and two years later Valentina, or Valya, had already given birth to her first child, Elena. The very reserved girl could not have imagined in her wildest dreams that she would soon have to face fame on a global scale.
The little family was then stationed at the end of the world, three hundred kilometres north of the Arctic Circle near the Norwegian border, where darkness reigned. There, Yuri did his first job as a jet pilot on reconnaissance flights in very difficult weather conditions.
When a mysterious commission appeared at Luostari Air Base in October 1959 to test and question young pilots, Gagarin had only 265 hours of flying time under his belt.
Soviet space programme
Similar commissions visited all the main air bases across the Soviet Union at the same time. They did not disclose the purpose of the visit, but simply met the pilots and then interviewed some of them in more detail. The groups of young men steadily thinned out until only a handful remained at each base.
Out of 3500 candidates, there were now only about 200. These were then put into the hands of doctors and psychologists. Among other things, they tested their concentration by playing a soft, whispering voice during complicated maths tests, which kept whispering back the wrong solutions. They also had to pass a ‘political’ test – the examiners went through the candidates’ family histories and assessed them on their loyalty to the Soviet regime.
This then eliminated a further nine candidates out of ten, leaving twenty lucky chosen ones who were summoned to the secret Chkalovsky base near Moscow. Exactly what they had been chosen for, they did not know, but Yuri and Valya were very happy to pack up their meagre possessions and say goodbye to the eternal winter. Yuri thought he would become a test pilot for a new type of aircraft.
There was very little infrastructure in Chkalovsky at that time, but the construction of many unusual buildings was in full swing. It soon became clear that this was no ordinary air base, but that something more important was under way there, hidden from public view, closely linked to the Kremlin’s centres of power.
In what later became known as the Star City, the Soviet space programme was being set up, with the aim of sending the first man into space. Twenty young men were selected as the first cosmonauts (space travellers), who were given the honour of taking part in an adventure with the chance of winning the main prize – a flight into space.
Their training at the new Cosmonaut Training Centre began immediately on arrival in Chkalovsky in March 1960. The future cosmonauts and their families were settled in modest apartment blocks close to the base, and the real purpose of their selection was one of the country’s most closely guarded secrets. For months, even their wives did not know what their husbands were doing when they left home in the morning. They had virtually no privileges and some wives worked as cleaners to survive.
Unlike the Soviets, the Americans immediately gave their first generation of astronauts (star travellers) star status and their smiling faces regularly graced the front pages of the most widely read newspapers. They lived a life of luxury, flying to training in private jets, and in their spare time they rode in sponsor corvettes. Astronauts had been training for at least a year before the first cosmonauts were even selected.
As usual, the blue-eyed Yuri quickly charmed everyone – peers, instructors, superiors and, above all, the senior managers in the development of the space programme. Making friends was one of his natural talents, and he and Valentina became the closest with their neighbours Gherman and Tamara Titov. The Gagarinas stood by the Titovs with particular dedication and compassion at the loss of their baby of a few months, who died of heart problems. But who would have thought that Gherman would soon be not only Yuri’s best friend, but also his greatest rival.
In character and background, they could hardly have been more different. Of course, both were ambitious, persistent and capable, but while the extroverted, smiling and obedient Yuri came from a typical Soviet peasant background, Tito was the son of a school teacher and in his spare time preferred to read, recite Pushkin and enjoy solitude. With his handsome features, wavy hair and athletically sculpted physique, this above-average intelligent amateur violinist looked like a film actor. Moreover, he was often without a hair on his tongue, which disturbed many an apparatchik.
All twenty cosmonauts were driven by a desire to prove themselves, a competitive spirit and a willingness to sacrifice. A few months after the start of the programme, their wives were finally officially told by the authorities what they were preparing for, and they were urged to subordinate their lives to the success of their husbands, to create conditions for rest and peace, and not to burden them with children and household chores. The fate of the nation was to be in the hands of these greedy Soviet wives, they were told.
The programme was in full swing. In September 1960, its mastermind, a genius rocket engineer and designer whose anonymity was guaranteed by the KGB itself and who was known to most only as the Chief Designer, the King, the Boss of Bosses, or the S.P., formally submitted a proposal for the first human flight into space to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. It was supposed to happen at the end of the year, but he was plagued by technical problems, cleverly concealed from the world.
But who was the mysterious S.P., the man who held all the strings of the Soviet space programme?
The boss of bosses
Sergei Pavlovich Korolyov is still regarded in the Soviet Union as one of the greatest rocket experts of all time. A visionary, a manager and a strategist, without whom the Soviets would not have been able to compete with and even defeat the Americans, he conceived the entire pioneering programme. But Korolyov was invisible to all but the Party leadership and his own professional and research teams for the duration of his life. Even the CIA, which was working furiously to uncover the identity of the driving force of the enemy camp, was unsuccessful.
Korolyov had already been involved in consolidating several missile programmes into a single one before the Second World War. At that time, the focus was of course on developing technology for military purposes, but Korolyov’s attention had always been on space.
Like thousands of other experts, he fell out of favour with the paranoid Stalin in 1938 and became an innocent victim of his purges during the Great Terror. In the Gulag, his jaw was broken during forced labour, a fracture that never fully healed, but at the same time the experience hardened and prepared him for the future. To survive, he had to be tough, cursed, unforgiving, but also pragmatic.
During the war, Stalin soon realised that he needed experts like Korolyov, so he was quickly rehabilitated and involved in the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Most decisive was the insight he gained into the composition of the infamous Nazi V-2 missiles. Their creator was the famous Wernher von Braun, another genius, but with a dark Nazi past.
The Americans, who were so fond of making themselves out to be the protectors of human rights and saviours of the free world, did not seem to mind, however, because they secretly transported von Braun to the US and set him up as the head of their space programme.
Korolyov was soon building rockets or launchers more ambitious than von Braun’s V-2s, called R-7s or, affectionately, Semjorks, the little sevens. In 1950, they had twice the range of the American ones and were the first intercontinental ballistic missiles ever, and later their constantly upgraded versions served to launch all the Sputniks, Vostoks, Soyuz and other spacecraft.
The very first ones measured more than 30 metres in height and had four nearly 20-metre thrusters, the so-called pushrods, around the main engine. A fifth engine was in the centre. They were powered by a highly flammable fuel of liquid oxygen and kerosene. But Korolyov’s most brilliant move was to make these rockets dual-purpose by standardising most of their components – they could launch both a nuclear tip and a space capsule.
The Kremlin’s main concern at first was that Korolyov was dabbling too much in space technology, but the wily Khrushchev quickly grasped the programme’s potential when he came to power. On the one hand, he could partially replace the still fledgling Soviet army with military-purpose rockets, and with space rockets he could poke fun at the Americans and proudly enter the space race. Korolyov thus became one of Khrushchev’s main trump cards and the engineer even got a direct telephone line to him.
Khrushchev was obsessed with symbols and wanted to mark every important anniversary with some revolutionary event. Thus, for the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, the ill-fated Laika flew into space, even though the technology to return her had not yet been developed.
The Americans also woke up and at the end of January launched their first satellite, Explorer 1, which weighed only 14 kilograms and was 15 centimetres in diameter. Because it was so tiny, Khrushchev derisively called it a grapefruit. But behind the closed doors of the Kremlin, he was furious and increasingly pressed Korolyov.
The Soviets continued to fly the dogs as if on a treadmill. Between May and December 1960, only one Vostok flight out of five was successful, and the puppies Belka and Strelka returned to Earth, along with a whole zoo of mice, rats, rabbits, flies. The craft orbited the Earth 18 times, a sensational success.
For the first time, a living creature successfully returned to Earth, and Khrushchev did not miss the opportunity not to make a fool of the USA again. He later gave one of the Strelka puppies to Kennedy’s wife Jackie. Fluffy was granted US citizenship after a thorough examination, during which implanted chips were searched for.
But all this was just a facade. The fact that something went wrong with every Soviet flight remained hidden. On top of that, in October, a horrific accident occurred at the launch site, the worst in the history of the missile. A rocket exploded before a test flight, killing more than 70 people, including the head of the Strategic Missile Service, Marshal Nedelin. Nikolai Kamanin, the head of cosmonaut training, who kept a secret diary which could have cost him his life, described in detail all the problems and failures of the various test flights and preparations.
Aware that the lucky chosen one would have little chance of survival, Kamanin kept a watchful eye over his twenty protégés. Like Korolyova, he was often tormented by his conscience. But the young men prepared for their eventual death in space with enthusiasm, dedication and smiles.
Inhuman efforts
By the end of 1960, the so-called “Main Six” had been selected from the twenty chosen. Based on the results of months of training, they were the most distinguished and their height also played an important role. The Vostok capsule was tiny and, because it had to remain as light as possible, it had to be spartan.
Both Gagarin and Titov easily made it into the top six and soon became the main favourites. Korolyov was impressed by the likeable and always good-natured but hard-working Gagarin from the moment he met him. When the cosmonauts were first invited to see Vostok up close, Yuri respectfully took off his shoes before entering the capsule. Even Titov later said that this gesture played a decisive role in his later selection.
The physical and psychological tests became more strenuous and almost inhuman in the last months before the flight. Probably the worst mental test, but one that all the cosmonauts repeatedly passed with flying colours, was the stay in the isolation room. The purpose of this torture, which usually lasted at least ten days, was to simulate a lonely life in space. If the spacecraft had failed to return to the Earth’s atmosphere, it would have orbited for days until gravity slowly pulled it towards the ground. Something similar happened with Laika. So the cosmonauts had to be prepared for this eventuality, first and foremost mentally.
In the isolation room, they were completely isolated, with no contact with the outside world and no gadgets to pass the time. While Gagarin happily sang Russian folk songs to himself, joked loudly and ‘talked’ to the technical equipment, Titov spent hours reciting Pushkin.
Their physical fitness must have been at its peak. They took part in gymnastics, running, diving, trampoline jumping, team games such as hockey and volleyball, and tirelessly did push-ups and push-ups. They had to endure temperatures of up to 70 degrees Celsius or lie stoically in the ice. They also did a lot of parachuting, as it was clear that it would be impossible to land inside the cumbersome capsule. The cosmonaut was about to be ejected, along with the seat, shortly before landing.
Gagarin was not the best at any sport, but he excelled at all of them. He also coped well with exercises in special centrifuges, where high gravitational forces, or so-called g-loads, were applied. This type of loading is typical of spaceflight and is caused by accelerations that make the body many times heavier than it really is. The extra weight can cause a host of serious health problems and even death.
As the rocket hurtles at unimaginable speeds, blood from the upper body flows downwards, forcing the heart to work faster and faster to pump it back to the brain, heart rate rises, muscles tighten, breathing becomes difficult and, in extreme cases, the heart can give out. Often a person loses consciousness, sometimes bones crack and internal organs move.
The American astronauts have not fared much better either. There were seven lucky first-flight selections from Project Mercury, and the whole world knew them. The favourite was Alan Shepard. They were subjected to similar tests and both had to master difficult academic subjects – astrophysics, biomedicine, mathematics and so on. The Americans did not have to practise sports so intensively, but they practised flying much more than the cosmonauts. This played a marginal role in the Soviet Union, where their spaceships were almost completely automated.
In early 1961, the Soviet-American race was at its peak. Both sides hoped to send a man into space sometime in March, but the Americans had not yet made a single successful flight with a living creature. Unlike the Soviets, they have experimented mainly with monkeys, which are supposed to be smarter.
At the end of January, Ham the chimpanzee managed to return to Earth alive after a 16-minute flight, but his experience was disastrous and it was a miracle that he survived. While the Americans seemingly celebrated the feat, von Braun insisted on new test flights before he would dare to send a man into the sky. Moreover, Ham’s flight was suborbital, as American rockets were not yet capable of putting the craft into orbit.
The Soviet breakthrough was thus becoming more inevitable by the week.
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The decision fell
In March, two more flights were made, when a flock of animals was again installed in Vostok, along with a life-size dummy. Ivan Ivanovich looked so eerily human-like that when people saw him motionless on the ground after landing, they were convinced he was a castaway. Although the test flights were not flawless, the Party and the programme management set an irrevocable timeframe for human flight.
Korolyov was excited and worried at the same time. He was most worried that the mechanism of automatic separation of the capsule and the braking engine on reentry into the atmosphere would not work, which would cause the Vostok to fall uncontrollably and too fast, and certainly kill the passenger. Even after separating from the launch vehicle, Vostok was still composed of two parts, the sphere in which the cosmonaut was seated and the braking engine, which played an important role in the descent.
Once the latter had performed its function, it had to separate from the capsule. The cosmonaut was then ejected from the capsule, together with the seat, which fell off shortly afterwards and the parachute opened. This was, of course, the ideal scenario. But Korolyov knew better than anyone – there was always something wrong with the separation of the capsule and the braking engine.
The cosmonauts were completely ignorant of all this, but they were aware that the hour of decision was approaching. Who would fly first? When they voted among themselves, the overwhelming majority chose Gagarin, and the results of his last tests were also excellent. Most telling was the assessment that he had an uncanny ability to remain calm and collected in all circumstances, and that he also had a high intellectual development and ideological aptitude. Yuri was committed to communist ideals and to his country, and capable of protecting state secrets. All this soon came in very handy.
In January, in the penultimate selection process, a special commission shortlisted Gagarin, Titov and Grigory Nelyubov. In mid-March, they were called for the first time for final preparations at Tyuratam in the middle of the Kazakh steppe, at that time the largest spaceport in the world, today known as Baikonur. The entire complex was a hundred times larger than the then US-central one in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Just a short time before, Valentina had given birth to a second baby girl, Galina, and Yuri left the family while his wife was still recovering from childbirth. This time she knew where she was going and when she kissed him goodbye, her legs shook. He too was less carefree than usual, and with this observation, Kamanin, the head of preparations, accompanied one of his secret diary entries. At that time, he had been preoccupied with the thought of which of the three he was going to send into the unknown. Gagarin was still at the top of the leaderboard, but Titov was breathing down his neck.
Before the final decision was made, however, tragic news reached them, casting a shadow over the whole preparation. The youngest of the 20, Valentin Bondarenko, had a terrible accident at the end of March while rehearsing in the isolation room in Star City. He carelessly dropped cotton pads soaked in alcohol on a small stove, and the oxygen-saturated, airtight room caught fire like hell.
Bondarenko was instantly engulfed in the fire and, as they could not open the room immediately because of the pressure differential, those present could only watch as he burned alive. He died in severe pain a few hours later, but he was conscious enough to keep repeating how sorry he was and that the accident was his fault. This event was also covered up and the story only came to public attention in 1986.
Despite the general shock, the preparations went smoothly and on 8 April the special state commission met again and, on Kamanin’s proposal, unanimously chose Yuri Gagarin as the first cosmonaut. In the event that he was unable to fly on D-Day for any reason, Gherman Titov would take over.
Kamanin, of course, also consulted Korolyov, whose pet was Gagarin, the golden boy with no character flaws and a perpetual smile. Titov, although considered more capable and clever, was less likeable and his individualism and flirtation with bourgeois ideals were also disturbing.
In any case, new flights were already being planned at that time and Titov would be next in line for the next, much more difficult one. The first, Gagarin’s flight, was to last only about a hundred minutes, and the second a full 24 hours. But Titov did not take this as a compliment and regretted all his life that he was not the first. At the same time, he was proud of Yuri and their close attachment was not jeopardised.
“Poyekhali!” (Let’s go!)
In the days before the flight, Yuri was as calm as ever. He spent the last evening quietly playing pool and listening to music. He shared a room with Titov, who had to play the role of his friend’s shadow, which was even more painful for the disappointed runner-up. Both pretended to be sleeping soundly, as they suspected that sensors were installed under their mattresses to measure their movements. If, for example, Yuri turned out to be too restless, he could still lose his hard-won privilege.
In the morning, there were final checks, and then they were both dressed in 20-kilogram spacesuits. The only thing missing was a snow-white helmet. But someone astutely remarked that Yuri could be mistaken for a spy by onlookers on landing, so red paint was quickly brought in, and a technician with a nice handwriting brush wrote CCCP (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) in big letters on the helmet. In the following days, the whole world saw these letters, which had hardly dried before the flight.
But something else happened that foreshadowed Yuri’s future life. The staff at the base started asking for his autograph, and he wondered if this was really necessary. On the morning of 12 April, Yuri Gagarin had no idea what fame was.
The cameras of the journalist who was allowed to follow the last days before the flight closely captured many moving moments on film that morning. Just before Yuri climbed the launch pad, it was clear that his peers, instructors and technicians were not going to let him out of their hands. Kisses, tight hugs, pats and awkward touches on the spacesuit accompanied the last steps of the young adventurer. Everyone who had any part in this historic moment was as excited as they had ever been in their lives. Korolyov could hardly breathe and the veins in his neck stood out.
At the top of the platform, Gagarin looked down once more and waved to those gathered. Tito’s hope of a hole in his suit had finally faded.
Before he carefully squeezed himself into the capsule, the man in charge of closing the overhead hatch whispered three numbers to him – 1, 2, 5. Gagarin smiled and said, “Thank you, I already know. Korolyov told me.”
The story behind these numbers had been dragging on for some time. The combination, correctly punched on a special dial, allowed the activation of minimal manual control of the vessel. Initially, the astronaut was only supposed to be a passenger on board, but a few months before the flight, controversy arose among those in charge about the correctness of this approach. In the end, however, it was agreed that Yuri would be allowed to operate the spacecraft manually in case something went wrong with the automated procedures. This was particularly crucial for the launching, as he would be able to manoeuvre the vessel into the right angle himself.
But the numbers that unlocked the dial were hidden in a special envelope, and Yuri could only find it if the control centre judged him to be sufficiently observant. But many well-meaning people had apparently entrusted them to him before. They did not bother that Yuri had only practised operating the capsule twice for a few hours each. In the interestingly titled manual, Instructions of the Central Committee to the Cosmonaut on the Use and Control of the Vostok Space Vehicle, only two paragraphs were devoted to manual manoeuvring.
Housed in a modestly equipped capsule two metres in diameter, he was left alone with his thoughts. As usual, he was quietly humming Russian folk songs. When something went wrong with the closing of the hatch and the process had to be repeated, he remained perfectly calm. His heart rate was 64 beats per minute.
At seven minutes past nine, a loud alarm sounded across the base just before the launch. The engineer with the calmest hand turned the key that triggered the chain reaction to start the flight. Gagarin felt a vibration in his seat, his heart rate rose to 157 beats per minute, and then he exclaimed excitedly “Poyekhali!” (Let’s go!)
A flood of data from the 700 sensors mounted on the rocket began to flow into the control room, where a concentrated but tense Korolyov controlled every second of the operation. Yuri first checked in after 100 seconds and from then on regularly reported that he felt great and that everything was going perfectly. He did not complain about the g-load, which he was feeling more and more and which was making it difficult for him to speak.
When the burnt-out first stage motor, i.e. all four huge thrusters, separated, the rocket suddenly became much lighter and was rapidly gaining speed. Gagarin felt so heavy that he could hardly breathe. Then the second-stage engine separated and suddenly he saw a stunning view of the Earth. He was then over Siberia and had just crossed the recently established boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, declared by the International Aeronautical Federation at an altitude of one hundred kilometres.
Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and beneath him his home planet was revealed in all its beauty. The romantic cosmonaut was enchanted and kept repeating into the radio: “How beautiful it is, what beauty! What colours! I feel great!”
When the third-stage engine separated, the craft was left to its own devices. As expected, it soon lost radio contact with the airfield, although attempts were made on the ground to help with radio transmitters placed throughout the country and on ships at sea. The signal had by then been intercepted by the Americans, who had much better intelligence equipment and suspected that something was afoot.
When Korolyov called Khrushchev to report on the progress of the flight, the telephones began to ring nervously even in Washington, where it was still night. But the reaction of Kennedy’s fed-up press spokesman to the news that a Soviet man was in space was, “Leave us alone, we’re asleep here!”. Media outlets across the U.S. later cleverly exploited this response for sensational headlines: “Soviets in Space While America Sleeps!”
But the flight was anything but uneventful. Because the second-stage engine shut down a split second too late, Gagarin was propelled to an altitude of more than 300 kilometres, some 70 kilometres higher than planned. Above all, this meant that he would land somewhere else, perhaps outside the Soviet Union, perhaps in the middle of the ocean, but certainly somewhere where no rescue teams were planned. Gagarin did not know this, of course, and he kept radioing the wrong coordinates, although of course he could not be heard in Tyuratam because of the poor signal.
While Korolyov was biting his nails, intensive preparations for the centenary celebrations were already under way in Moscow. The Soviet Union’s best-known radio announcer, who among other things had reported to his compatriots on the German invasion in 1941 and then its surrender, now addressed them as follows: “Speak up Moscow! Speak Moscow! (Speak Moscow! Speak Moscow!) We are transmitting a declaration of the first flight of man into space!”
That was Major Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin. The Soviet leadership had hastily promoted him to two ranks.
Crowds gathered in the streets of Moscow, and Tamara Titova rushed to Valentina’s, where journalists flocked in droves. All the wives of the cosmonauts gathered in Gagarin’s living room and wept. Partly out of relief that their husbands were not in the air, partly out of concern for Valentina and Yuri. When Gagarin’s mother heard the news, she said, “But he’s crazy, he has two little girls!” She put on her overcoat and took the train to Moscow to stand by her daughter-in-law and granddaughters.
Back on Earth
Yuri started his descent half an hour before landing. The critical moment was approaching when the capsule and the braking engine would separate. Again, there was a malfunction and the fuel leaked through a flap. When it ran out too quickly, the capsule turned upside down and began to spin uncontrollably, bouncing in all directions. The separation of the two modules also failed.
Amazingly, Yuri kept a cool head and calm nerves through it all. The g-load almost made him lose consciousness and his heart pounded, but he even continued to record the various parameters and observations as instructed. Months of psychological preparation and centrifuge training were rewarded. Then fortune smiled on him and the heat caused the cables connecting the capsule to the braking motor to burn out and, eventually, the two elements just separated. Twelve minutes too late, but still.
This episode remained a state secret until 1991, and Yuri reported it behind closed doors the day after the flight. In public, he stuck faithfully to the official version that his flight had been uneventful until his death. He wrote this in his autobiography, The Path to the Stars, which was, of course, approved by the Party.
The seat launch from the capsule had worked, but the auxiliary parachute had opened by mistake in addition to the main parachute, and there was a danger that they would become entangled, jeopardising a safe landing. Yuri did not worry about this, as he could already see the familiar landscape below him and was singing happily to himself. By a series of accidents and mistakes, he had landed near Saratov, the town where he had attended technical school.
After 106 minutes, he landed in the middle of a freshly ploughed field, 250 kilometres away from his intended landing site. An old woman and her granddaughter were the first to see the strange orange-suited apparition and they began to run away in fear. But Yuri immediately charmed them with his genuine smile, reassured them and asked how he could get to the phone the fastest. “By horse,” was the reply.
From then on, everything moved at the speed of light. Gagarin and the capsule, which had landed two kilometres away, had already been tracked down and the KGB quickly removed all traces of the landing, although a veritable pilgrimage site soon emerged anyway. Yuri had already become a superstar and Soviet state property. He had completely lost control of his personal life. One of the first to congratulate him by telephone was Nikita Khrushchev, and Yuri, as the epitome of Soviet scientific progress, became his personal international envoy.
Nothing could have prepared him for the monumental reception he received two days later in Moscow’s Red Square. Standing uncomfortably on the stage next to the Soviet leader was his wife Valentina, whom he had not yet been able to speak to after landing because she did not have a telephone. There were also parents and siblings, whose home was literally ransacked by journalists searching for Yuri’s childhood pictures and memorabilia.
Hundreds of thousands of people were in the streets, and planes were dropping leaflets with his picture on them. As he walked down the red carpet, his shoelace untied, he was more nervous than when he flirted with death in outer space. It was the first event broadcast by Soviet television to the countries of Western Europe and a severe blow to the American political system.
President Kennedy was forced to swallow his pride in public. At a press conference, he was sombre and even unkempt: “Well, it’s an admirable … e … scientific achievement, and I think it’s … e … we … e … as members of the human race … e … have respect for … e … to the Russian who took part in this remarkable feat. I have already sent my congratulations to Mr Khrushchev and … e … I … e … have also congratulated the man who took part.”
The competitive Kennedy, who had not previously taken much interest in space, was determined that this time his reply to the Soviet Union would not be lukewarm. He paced furiously up and down the Oval Office, saying sharply: “Somebody please tell me how to catch up with them. Let’s find someone, anyone. I don’t care if it’s that janitor over there, as long as he knows how.”
This was the basis for the moon landing project and the Apollo programme, into which some $350 billion (today’s value) flowed in the following years. In the short term, however, the Americans were still some way behind the Soviets, and even Alan Shepard, who went into space three weeks after Gagarin, was in the air for only 16 minutes and did not even reach orbit. But in the long run, the moon landing on 20 July 1969 eclipsed Gagarin’s achievement and gave the US space supremacy.
The two main protagonists of the story of the first space flight, Yuri Gagarin and Sergei Korolyov, both met a sad and untimely end. Korolyov, who was not among the distinguished guests during the grand celebrations on 14 April, continued to achieve successes for several years, such as Tito’s successful 17-orbit flyby, the first spacewalk, the first woman in space, the first multi-person crews, and so on. But his health was failing fast and his heart gave out during a tumour operation in 1966. That was the end of the golden age of the Soviet space programme.
Yuri Gagarin found it difficult to cope with the side-effects of stardom. As Khrushchev’s most important ambassador, his relentless programme of visits and public appearances kept him constantly away from home, distancing him from his wife and family. He drank excessively and once even caused a minor scandal when he jumped over a balcony from a hotel room, where he was allegedly caught with his mistress, and smashed his head in. People adored him and he had over a million letters addressed to him, so he got his own postcode – Yuri Gagarin, Moscow 705.
What saddened him most was that he was no longer allowed to fly in space. The Soviet Union simply could not afford to lose. But in 1967, he finally managed to convince his superiors to accept him back as a cosmonaut in the Soyuz programme, even though he had not been promised that he would be one of the chosen ones, precisely because of his status. He threw himself eagerly back into his studies and preparations, to which he wanted to add flying exercises in more modern aircraft than he had been used to at the start of his career.
On 27 March 1968, the 34-year-old Yuri went on a training mission with one of the Soviet Air Force’s most experienced instructors in a MiG-15 fighter. Why they lost control of the aircraft and crashed is still not satisfactorily explained. But Yuri’s short but exciting life proves that every day of our lives is worth living to the full.
