Yuri Gagarin

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Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, (Russian: Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин, Jurij Aleksejevič Gagarin IPA: [ˈjurʲɨj əlʲɪkˈsʲejɪvʲɨtʂ gəˈgarʲɨn]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968), Hero of the Soviet Union, was a Soviet cosmonaut. On 12 April 1961, he became the first person in space and the first to orbit the Earth. He received many medals from different countries for his pioneering tour in space.

[edit] Early life

Yuri Gagarin was born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk (now in Smolensk Oblast, Russia), on 9 March 1934. The adjacent town of Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin in 1968 in his honour. His parents, father Alexei Ivanovich Gagarin and mother Anna Timofeevna Gagarina, worked on a collective farm.^[1] While manual laborers are described in official reports as "peasants", this may be an oversimplification if applied to his parents — his mother was reportedly an edacious reader, and his father a skilled carpenter. Yuri was the third of four children, and his elder sister helped raise him while his parents worked. Like millions of people in the Soviet Union, the Gagarin family suffered great hardship in World War II. His two elder siblings were "taken away" to Germany as slave laborers in 1943, and did not return until after the war. While a youth, Yuri became interested in space and planets, and began to dream about his space tour which became true one day.^[2] Yuri was described by his teachers in the Moscow satellite town of Lyubertsy as intelligent and hard-working, if occasionally mischievous. His mathematics and science teacher had flown in the Soviet Air Forces during the war, which presumably made some substantial impression on young Gagarin.

After starting an apprenticeship in a metalworks as a foundryman, Gagarin was selected for further training at a technical high school in Saratov. While there, he joined the "AeroClub", and learned to fly a light aircraft, a hobby that would take up an increasing proportion of his time. Through dint of effort, rather than brilliance, he reportedly mastered both; in 1955, after completing his technical schooling, he entered military flight training at the Orenburg Pilot's School. While there he met Valentina Goryacheva, whom he married in 1957, after gaining his pilot's wings in a MiG-15. Post-graduation, he was assigned to Luostari airbase in Murmansk Oblast, close to the Norwegian border, where terrible weather made flying risky. As a full-grown man, Gagarin was 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) tall, which was an advantage in the small Vostok cockpit.^[1]

[edit] Career in the Soviet space program

[edit] Selection and training

In 1960, after an extensive search and selection process Yuri Gagarin was selected with 19 other cosmonauts for the Soviet space program. Along with the other prospective cosmonauts, he was subjected to a rigorous series of experiments designed to test his physical and psychological endurance; he also underwent intensive training for the upcoming flight. Out of the twenty selected, the eventual choices for the first launch were Gagarin and Gherman Titov because of their excellent performance in training, as well as their physical characteristics — space was at a premium in the small Vostok cockpit and both men were rather short. Gagarin's last-minute assignment, approved at the highest levels of the CPSU, to take the historic flight, may have been due to Gagarin's modest upbringing and genial, outgoing personality, as opposed to the middle-class and somewhat aloof demeanor of Titov. Soviet officials weighed other factors as well in selecting Yuri: his appearance, his capacity to handle media attention, his Russian heritage and even the name "Gagarin," which was also a family name associated with Tsarist aristocracy.

[edit] Space flight

On 12 April 1961, Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1). His call sign in this flight was Kedr (Cedar) (Russian: Кедр).^[3] During his flight, Gagarin famously whistled the tune "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows" (Russian: "Родина слышит, Родина знает").^[4][5] The first two lines of the song are: "The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows/Where her son flies in the sky".^[6] This patriotic song was written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1951 (opus 86), with words by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky.

There are speculations in the media that from orbit Gagarin made the comment, "I don't see any God up here." There are, however, no such words in the full verbatim record of Gagarin's conversations with the Earth during the spaceflight.^[7] In a 2006 interview a close friend of Gagarin, Colonel Valentin Petrov, stated that Gagarin never said such words, and that the phrase originated from Nikita Khrushchev's speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, where the antireligious propaganda was discussed. In a certain context Khrushchev said, "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any God there". As Gagarin was a great people's favorite at the time, Khrushchev's words were soon attributed to Gagarin for them to be more effective.^[8]

While in orbit Gagarin was promoted "in the field" from the rank of Senior Lieutenant to Major — and this was the rank at which TASS announced him in its triumphant statement during the flight.^{[citation needed]}

Gagarin being safely returned, Nikita Khrushchev rushed to his side and Gagarin issued a statement praising the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as the "organizer of all our victories". Khrushchev saw Gagarin's achievement as a vindication of his policy of strengthening the Soviet Union's missile forces at the expense of conventional arms. This policy antagonized the Soviet military establishment and contributed to Khrushchev's eventual downfall.

After the flight, Gagarin became an instant, worldwide celebrity, touring widely with appearances in Italy, Great Britain^[9], Germany, Canada, and Japan to promote the Soviet achievement.

In 1962, he began serving as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet. He later returned to "Star City", the cosmonaut facility, where he worked on designs for a reusable spacecraft. Gagarin worked on these designs in Star City for 7 years.

[edit] Death and legacy

Gagarin then became deputy training director of Star City. At the same time, he began to requalify as a fighter pilot. On 27 March 1968, he and his instructor died in a MiG-15UTI on a routine training flight near Kirzhach. It is not certain what caused the crash, but a 1986 inquest suggests that the turbulence from a Su-11 'Fishpot-C' interceptor using its afterburners may have caused Gagarin's plane to go out of control. Weather conditions were also poor, which may have contributed to the inability of Gagarin and the instructor to correct before they crashed.

In his book, Two Sides of the Moon,^[10] Alexei Leonov recounts that he was flying a helicopter in the same area that day when he heard "two loud booms in the distance." Corroborating the above hypothesis, his conclusion is that a Sukhoi jet (which he identifies as a Su-15 'Flagon'), flying below its minimum allowed altitude, "without realizing it because of the terrible weather conditions, passed within 10 or 20 meters of Yuri and Seregin's plane while breaking the sound barrier." The resulting turbulence would have sent the MiG into an uncontrolled spin. Leonov believes the first boom he heard was that of the jet breaking the sound barrier, and the second was Gagarin's plane crashing.

A new theory, advanced by the original crash investigator in 2005, hypothesises that a cabin vent was accidentally left open by the crew or the previous pilot, thus leading to oxygen deprivation and leaving the crew incapable of controlling the aircraft.^[11]

There were two commemorative coins issued in the Soviet Union to commemorate 20th and 30th anniversaries of his flight: 1 ruble coin (1981, copper-nickel) and 3 ruble coin (1991, silver). In 2001, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Gagarin's flight, a series of four coins bearing his likeness was issued in Russia: 2 ruble coin (copper-nickel), 3 ruble coin (silver), 10 ruble coin (brass-copper, nickel), 100 ruble coin (silver).^[12]

Gagarin is buried next to Seregin in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.

On 12 April 2007, the Kremlin vetoed a new investigation into the death of Gagarin. Some experts who had been involved in the original investigation had formulated a new theory, based on modern technology and investigative methods. Government officials said that they saw no reason to begin a new investigation.^[13] All found parts of the MiG-15UTI which crashed are stored in the weld barrels. They may help in the future to unveil the mystery of the crash.

[edit] Images

[edit] See also

• Soviet space program
• Space Race
• Yuri's Night is an international celebration held on April 12 every year to commemorate the first human in space and the first space shuttle launch.
• Soviet space program conspiracy accusations - Vladimir Ilyushin and others are sometimes claimed to have reached orbit first

[edit] References

• Michael D Cole Vostok 1: First Human in Space, Enslow Publishers, Inc. Aldershot, UK, Springfield, New Jersey, 1995. ISBN 0-89490-541-4.
• Doran, Jamie, and Bizony, Piers: Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1998 (paperback version, 1999). ISBN 0-7475-4267-8.

[edit] External links

• Yuri Gagarin - The First to Fly
• Obituary, NY Times, March 28, 1968 Yuri Gagarin Killed As Test Plane Falls
• Yuri Gagarin:His Life in Pictures
• (Russian) Юрий Гагарин. Дорога в космос — his book in Russian (HTML)
• (Russian) Photo, Audio and Video with Yuri Gagarin, online version of CD created to his 70th anniv. on the homepage of Russian state archive for scientific-technical documentation (RGANTD).
• (Russian) Article in online Encyclopedia of cosmonautics A lot of information about the first human's flight to space.
• (Russian) Gagarin's flight 3D visualization — contains the real record of his conversation with the Earth during the spaceflight
• Gagarin — detailed biography at Encyclopedia Astronautica
• List (with photos) of Gagarin statues
• 11 minutes long interview of Yuri Gagarin by The Finnish Broadcasting Company in 1961

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