Yuri Gagarin’s Historic Flight Broke the ‘Chains of Gravity’
By Bob Granath
The dream of breaking the “chains of gravity” and traveling through space was realized six decades ago on April 12, 1961. At age 27, Soviet Air Force Major Yuri Gagarin launched into a one-orbit mission around the Earth becoming the first person to venture into the cosmos. While it was another volley in the Cold War with the United States, it marked a historic achievement hailed around the world.
The Space Race between the two superpowers began with the International Geophysical Year, a peaceful scientific collaboration of 67 nations taking place from July 1, 1957, to Dec. 31, 1958. Both the United States and Soviet Union announced their participation would include launching scientific satellites to orbit the Earth.
The Soviets struck first, launching Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957. The U.S. followed with Explorer 1 on Jan 31, 1958. At the same time, both countries were engaged in crash programs to develop the technology to send the first human into space.
America’s first satellite was launched by a Redstone rocket developed by a team led by Dr. Wernher von Braun who once said, “The rocket will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity, which still chain him to this planet.”
In America, Project Mercury was NASA’s widely publicized effort to break free of gravity and put a man in space. The Soviet Union secretly pursued an effort called, “Vostok” (Russian for East) under the leadership of Chief Designer Sergei Korolev.
The Vostok spacecraft consisted of two sections. An 8-foot-diameter spherical descent module designed to carry the cosmonaut. A conical 7.4-foot-long, 8-foot-wide instrument module contained propellant, attitude control, power and the engine system. The total spacecraft weighed 10,400 pounds.
The launch vehicle for the spacecraft was the RD-107 carrier rocket derived from the SS-6 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. It is part of a family of rockets that launched Sputnik, Vostok, and remains in use today launching Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station.
The 125-foot tall launch vehicle had a core stage of four engines together with four strap-on boosters, each with four engines totaling 20 engines firing at launch. This created a liftoff thrust of 950,000 pounds increasing to 1,150,000 pounds during ascent.
From a list of 154 qualified pilots provided by Soviet Air Force units, military physicians chose 29 cosmonaut candidates. The Central Committee of the Soviet government approved 20 on March 7, 1960.
A Difficult Decision
Those leading cosmonaut training narrowed down the candidates for the first flight to two, Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov. Since it was believed Titov was the stronger of the two, he was best suited to the second flight, planned for 17 Earth orbits spanning an entire day in space. The cosmonauts were informed on April 9, 1961, just three days ahead of the scheduled launch.
Even then, the decision remained shrouded in secrecy. Fellow first group cosmonaut Alexei Leonov revealed in his 2004 book, “Two Sides of the Moon,” he did not know which one was chosen until after Gagarin had been launched.
Gagarin was born March 9, 1934 in the village of Klushino where his father was carpenter on a collective farm. Gagarin graduated from a trade school near Moscow in 1951. He continued his studies at an industrial college and at age 17 took a course in flying. After becoming a pilot in 1955, he entered the Soviet Air Force and graduated with honors from the Air Force Academy two years later. He soon became a fighter pilot earning his wings in a MiG-15 jet.
On the morning of April 11, 1961, the RD-107 rocket with the Vostok spacecraft attached was transported by rail cars to Launch Pad 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The complex has since been known as “Gagarin start.”
Gagarin and Titov were told that launch was scheduled to occur the following day, at 11:07 a.m. local time. That time was selected so solar illumination would be best for the orientation of the Vostok spacecraft’s sensors as the retro rockets were fired to begin reentry.
Historic Date
At 7:30 a.m. on the morning of April 12, 1961, Gagarin and his backup, Titov, were awakened,served breakfast, assisted into their spacesuits and transported by bus to the launch pad.Gagarin entered the Vostok spacecraft and his image appeared on television screens in the launch control from an onboard camera.
The countdown proceeded and the powerful rocket came to life at the scheduled time.
“Liftoff! We wish you a good flight,” Korolev said.
“Let’s go!,” Gagarin replied.
After two minutes, the four strap-on boosters of the rocket dropped away from the core vehicle. A minute later, the payload shroud covering Vostok was released, uncovering windows and Gagarin got his first glimpse outside.
“I can see the Earth,” Gagarin said. “The visibility is good . . . I almost see everything.”
When the core stage shut down and fell away, the final rocket stage ignited. Ten minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s final stage shut down and separated. Vostok and Gagarin were circling the Earth in a 204-mile by 105-mile high orbit.
While he had the capability to override a few onboard systems with his rudimentary instruments, the spacecraft operated autonomously and by ground control.
“Everything is working very well,” Gagarin reported as he passed over central Russia. “All systems are working. Let’s keep going!”
Vostok orbited over Siberia, traveling over the Kamchatka peninsula on the Russian east coast and out over the North Pacific Ocean. The flight path then took the spacecraft into night northwest of the Hawaiian Islands.
“I’m continuing the flight, and I’m over (South) America,” Gagarin said as Vostok passed over the South Pacific and Chile.
At 44 minutes into the flight, Gagarin reported the sun-seeking attitude control system switched on. orienting Vostok for retrofire.
About 1 hour into the flight, news of the Vostok mission was broadcast on Radio Moscowas Gagarin crossed the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America. In the announcement, Gagarin’s mission was referred to as “Vostok.” It was not called “Vostok 1” until after Titov flew Vostok 2 Aug. 6-7, 1961.
At one hour, 11 minutes into the mission, the spacecraft’s automatic systems fired the liquid propellant retrorocket for about 42 seconds over the west coast of Africa. This was about 4,900 miles from the landing point.
Ten seconds after retrofire, automatic systems commanded Vostok’s descent module to separate from the instrument section. However, the two modules remained attached by a group of wires. As the two sections began reentry, they went through wild gyrations. During Vostok’s pass over Egypt, the wires broke and the two modules separated. The descent module soon stabilized into its proper reentry attitude.
“Everything is OK,” Gagarin said. He correctly believed the gyrations would not endanger the mission.
With Vostok 4.3 miles from the ground, 1 hour, 48 minutes into the flight, the spacecraft hatch was released. Two seconds later Gagarin ejected 8,200 feet above the ground. The main parachute deployed from the Vostok shortly thereafter. Gagarin descended under his parachute for about ten minutes. Both the cosmonaut and spacecraft landed 16 miles southwest of the city of Engels, Russia.
A Strange Sight
In his 2007 article “I Come From Outer Space,” Belgian space historian and journalist Théo Pirard reported Gagarin’s recollection of a farmer and her daughter who saw the strange scene of a figure in a bright orange suit with a large white helmet descending by parachute and landing nearby.
“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. I descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!’”
Most historical records of Gagarin’s flight list the mission time as 108 minutes, or 1 hour and 48 minutes. That is the time from liftoff to the cosmonaut ejecting from the spacecraft. If the 10 minutes descending on his personal parachute are included, the accurate flight time is 1 hour and 58 minutes.
The ‘Official’ Report
In 1961, the Lausanne, Switzerland-based Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, or International Aeronautic Federation, required that a pilot land in his spacecraft to be considered an official spaceflight for their records. Consequently, Soviet Union stated that cosmonauts landed with their Vostok spacecraft. Ten years after the milestone event, the Soviet government admitted that Gagarin and other Vostok cosmonauts ejected and landed separately from their descent modules
First Space Hero
Reaction in the Soviet Union was immediate. After his recovery, Gagarin was flown directly to Moscow where Premier Nikita Khrushchev awarded him the nation’s highest honor, the Hero of the Soviet Union medal.
A parade then took place on scale comparable to celebrations following World War II. The Soviet leadership and propaganda hailed the achievement as a triumph of Communist science and technology.
April 12 later was declared Cosmonautics Day in the USSR, and is celebrated today in Russia as one of the nation’s official Commemorative Dates. In 2011, the United Nations established the date as the International Day of Human Space Flight.
In the months and years to come, the first human flight into space was hailed by nations around the world. Gagarin became a global celebrity as demonstrated by the fact that he is one of the most honored persons on commemorative postage stamps.
American Reaction
After the 2 a.m. Eastern Time Radio Moscow announcement that the Soviet Union had launched the first man in space, a journalist telephoned U.S. Air Force Col. John Powers, director of Public Affairs at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia where the Mercury astronauts were based. The reporter was seeking an official agency comment.
Waking in the middle of the night, Powers said he would call a NASA official for a quote and added, “We’re all asleep down here.” The unfortunate comment was quoted as a status of America’s Mercury Program.
In a news conference soon after Gagarin’s flight, President John F. Kennedy pointed out that it would be “some time” before the U.S. could match the Soviet technology.
“The news will be worse before it’s better.” Kennedy said. Nevertheless, he sent congratulations to the Soviet Union for their “outstanding technical achievement.”
The space race kicked into high gear less than a month later. NASA launched Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Three weeks after that, Kennedy responded to the Soviet challenge by proposing to Congress that the United States “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.”
Too Important to Risk
Soviet government officials informally decided that Gagarin was too important as a national treasure and hero to risk on another spaceflight. He remained actively involved in training other cosmonauts and developing designs for spacecraft. From 1962, he also served as a deputy to the nation’s Supreme Soviet and made numerous tours abroad speaking about what he saw on his historic flight.
“Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is,” he said. “People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it.”
Return to Flight Status?
As the Soviet space program prepared to debut a new spacecraft called Soyuz (Russian for Union), Gagarin was assigned as back-up pilot for Vladimir Komarov on Soyuz 1. Launched April 23, 1967, the mission was plagued with problems from the beginning. The following day the Soyuz parachute failed to open during reentry killing Komarov on impact with the Earth. After that, the government formally prohibited Gagarin from participating in future spaceflights.
On March 27, 1968, Gagarin and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin took off aboard a MiG-15UTI fighter jet for a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base. The site provides air support for Star City, Russia, the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center, other elements of the Soviet space program and now Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency.
The aircraft crashed in unexpectedly bad weather near the town of Kirzhach, Russia, killing both pilots. Gagarin’s ashes were placed in the wall of the Kremlin on Red Square in Moscow. He was 34.
While only 5-feet, 2-inches tall, Yuri Gagarin remains a giant in Russia and around the world. The number of statues, monuments and honors are countless. History will always recall the date he was strapped atop a powerful rocket and catapulted into the previously unknown vastness of space, paving the way for future exploration beyond Earth.
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New Insights Reveal Gagarin’s Christian Faith
By Bob Granath
As the first person to travel in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin received world acclaim. Traveling around the globe, he frequently spoke about the beauty of the world below his spacecraft. He used words that would be echoed by many astronauts who followed, regardless of their national origin.
“Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is,” he said. “People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it.”
But, one of Gagarin’s most repeated statements now is widely challenged.
In his 1993 book “To Rise from Earth,” Wayne Lee, a Space Mission design engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, points out, “Some websites quote Gagarin as saying, ‘I looked and looked and looked, but I didn’t see God.’ But the authenticity of such statements have been disputed.”
Russian Air Force Gen. Valentin Petrov, a close friend of Gagarin and professor at the Soviet Air Force Academy, stated in 2006 that the cosmonaut never said such words. The quote originated from a speech by Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the Central Committee of the Soviet Union about the state’s anti-religion campaign. Khrushchev stated, “Gagarin flew in space, but didn’t see any god there.”
“Gagarin was faithful throughout all his life,” Petrov said. “He always confessed God whenever he was provoked, no matter where he was.”
The cosmonaut was “a true Christian, a firm believer who never gave up his faith,” said Russian journalist Anton Pervushin, author of the 2011 book, “108 Minutes That Changed the World.”
“Gagarin’s Christian faith was never a secret to his close friends,” he said. “He was a baptized member of the Russian Orthodox Church and would happily talk about his faith with them. But, Gagarin had to be careful in his role as a colonel in the Soviet Air Force. The government was officially an atheist regime and the repression of Christianity in every form was (Communist) party policy.”
Pervushin added, “Gagarin should be remembered for completely different words. I always remember what he said:”
“A cosmonaut cannot be suspended in space and not have God in his mind and his heart,” Gagarin said.
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One Reply to “Yuri Gagarin’s Historic Flight Broke the ‘Chains of Gravity’”
Gagarin’s importance in the Russian space program continues. Crews using the Soyuz spacecraft participate in a number of prelaunch traditions prior to climbing on to the spacecraft to follow in the footsteps of Gagarin’s historic flight. Beyond that, Gagarin is often held up as an example of character and heroism to younger children in Russia.