Remembering the first man in space
April 12, 2008
On April 12 1961, Yuri Gagarin took off from Baikonur cosmodrome towards where no human had been before: the outer space. On board the spacecraft Vostok 1, he became the first person to see with his own eyes that the Earth is indeed round and mostly covered with water. During a short but intense 108 minutes flight, Gagarin orbited once around the Earth at 18,000 miles an hour. Eventually, he ejected from the capsule and landed by parachute on an agricultural area of Saratov region.
Although we will go deeper into Gagarin and first manned space flight stories in future posts, I would like to share with you some selected commemorative videos.
Yuri Gagarin during the training phase
First of all, some great footage -regretfully without sound- which I found at the web page that the Russian “National archives of scientific and technological documentation” devoted to Yuri Gagarin on the 70th anniversary of his birth. We can see how the cosmonaut gets dressed in his spacesuit, goes by bus to the launch site together with Gherman Titov (backup cosmonaut), greets with several officers and Sergey Korolyov (head engineer of the Soviet space program), gets on board the Vostok 1 and takes off:
The next video begins with a Soviet newscast that gives way to the transmission between Sergey Korolyov and Gagarin prior to the the launch. Once they’ve checked the radio is working fine, Korolyov tells him to ignite the engines, afterwards to apply full power and wishes him a good flight. While the rocket takes off, it’s possible to hear the famous shout uttered by Gagarin: Поехали! (Let’s go!)
This video is an outer take of the launch, in which the deafening roar of the engines almost doesn’t let hear the talk between Gagarin and the control center . The spectacular blazes and noise make the cosmonaut’s shout sound specially hair-rising:
Finally, an endearing video that begins with Gagarin describing what he can see through the window: the Earth, its forests, rivers, clouds… followed by a roundup of the welcome given to Gagarin in the USSR and all over the world, while we listen a song devoted to him:
By the way, as you may have noticed, on the occasion of Gagarin’s flight anniversary, he has replaced Sir Winston Churchill at the header of the blog. Moreover, thanks to updating to WordPress 2.5, Soviet Russia’s RSS Feed won’t be cut off anymore.
Stay tuned to Soviet Russia… my next post will be also devoted to space. But it won’t be about famous events, but a secret soviet military project… to be continued 
Filed under Cold War, Historical figures, Space | Share This
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Did you know that russians have experimented with nuclear power planes and actually flew them in the air for several hours, the pilots suffered serious radiation burns, Americans refused the same project because of the pilot safety concern.
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