Poyekhali! Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space
That’s what Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin yelled when his rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in what is now Kazakhstan. It means “Let’s go!”
Despite American attempts to catch up to the Soviet Union after its success putting the first satellite in orbit in 1957, the Soviets managed to beat the Americans once again.
Gagarin became the first human in space and the first to orbit the Earth on April 12, 1961 — 65 years ago next Sunday.
Putting The First Man In Space
Yuri Gagarin was born in 1934, the son of a collective farmer in the Smolensk region of the Soviet Union. After his graduation with honors from an engineering college in 1957, he became a fighter pilot with the Soviet Air Force.
Two years later, he was selected for cosmonaut training. Soviet leadership liked the fact that he represented the Soviet ideal of the common man who rises on his own merit. The fact that he was handsome and had a charming personality helped as well. He was selected to be the first Soviet cosmonaut in space. Gargarin was 27 years old.
Vostok 1 lifted off at 9:06 a.m. Moscow time on April 12, 1961. There was no NASA-style “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Liftoff” countdown on the public address system or on a television broadcast of the launch. For that matter, there was no public address system or TV broadcast. Gagarin’s launch was kept top-secret. “The Americans only counted down to add drama for their television,” said one Soviet space official.
Even Gargarin’s family wasn’t informed of what he was up to that day. His parents found out when the Soviet news agency announced the successful launch. He was allowed to tell his wife, Valya, but he told her it would be on April 14 because he didn’t want her to worry.
Gagarin traveled once around the Earth in 108 minutes. At his highest point, his orbit took him 203 miles above the surface. He repeatedly assured ground controllers he felt fine.
Although Vostok 1 contained manual controls, Gagarin’s mission was designed to be controlled totally from the ground. The Soviets did this with their first missions for two reasons: There was concern a cosmonaut might become disoriented in flight and unable to control his spacecraft. Secondly, some Soviet officials feared a cosmonaut might choose to land and defect in the West.
Sure enough, there was a big technical glitch near the end of Gagarin’s mission: The plan was for the equipment module to jettison before the ball-shaped descent capsule reentered the atmosphere. The capsule was coated in a heat-resistant material, thicker behind the cosmonaut in hopes of cushioning his deceleration.
But the equipment module failed to separate properly, causing Gagarin’s capsule to spin rapidly. After 10 minutes of this during his descent, the final connections finally burned through, stopping the spinning.
Then, at four-and-a-half miles above ground, the hatch on the side of Gagarin’s capsule was blown off and his ejection seat fired, pulling him free of his ship. Because the Soviets chose to end their missions on land — as opposed to with a splashdown like NASA did — it was feared a parachute might not slow the capsule enough to protect the cosmonaut from harm.
In addition, the Soviets didn’t talk much about the bailing-out end of Gagarin’s mission: They feared the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale might use this as an excuse to discount the Soviet space missions. It would be several missions before the Soviet space agency had cosmonauts stay in their spacecraft until after they came to a rest on the ground.
Gagarin landed about 14 miles southwest of the city of Engles, Russia. As a recovery team moved in to collect him, he found himself surrounded by farm workers.
“When they saw me in my spacesuit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear,” Gagarin said. “I told them ‘Don’t be afraid. I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space. And I must find a telephone to call Moscow!’ ”
The news of Gagarin’s accomplishment spread quickly. Gargarin’s landing took place in the early hours of Washington, D.C., time. NASA press officer John “Shorty” Powers was sleeping on a cot in his office when the phone rang with the first media inquiry. “Hey! What is this?,” he yelled into the handset. “We’re all asleep down here!”
The headlines the next morning said: “Soviets Put Man in Space. Spokesman says U.S. Asleep.”
The mission made an international hero out of Gagarin. He was sent on a celebratory world tour but Soviet officials then considered him too valuable to risk on another space mission. He fell into a heavy depression and was killed while on a training mission for the Soviet Air Force on March 27, 1968.
Inside Vostok 1
The Soviets' Dominance of Space
President John F. Kennedy congratulated the Soviets on their success but then admitted in a press conference that “We are behind.” He added “The news will get worse before it gets better. And it will be some time before we catch up.”
It would be four years before NASA would catch up to Soviet dominance in Earth orbit. But it was the one-two punch of Sputnik and Gagarin that led Kennedy to set a goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s.
