The one and only: The first man in space takes off for his single mission
It was the cheerful cry from a man who was about to go where no man had ever gone before.
As Yuri Gagarin’s rocket began to lift off, ground control wished him a good flight – and told him everything was going OK.
His response was the very informal “Poyekhali!” – Russian for “Off we go!” – a response which caught the Russian public’s imagination and became a catchphrase for the space age.
As Gagarin’s rocket blasted into space, its boosters fell away leaving just the tiny Vostok 1 capsule, with him inside, to perform a single orbit of the Earth lasting 108 minutes, before it plunged back down to crash-land in Kazakhstan.
“The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended,” Gagarin wrote in his post-flight report.
Gagarin ejected at about 23,000ft as planned and landed using a parachute. The space age had well and truly begun.
As, of course, had the era of space rivalry.
So concerned were the Soviets that Gagarin’s flight would not be accepted as valid by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), the world governing body for setting standards and keeping records in the field, which at the time required that the pilot land with the craft, that they covered-up his descent by parachute.
Instead they insisted he had returned to Earth in Vostok 1.
When, a few months later, it became clear that Gagarin had parachuted down, his spaceflight records were nonetheless certified and reaffirmed by the FAI, which revised its rules, and acknowledged that the crucial steps of the safe launch, orbit, and return of the pilot had been accomplished. Gagarin – the son of a carpenter and a dairy farmer – is internationally recognised as the first human in space and first to orbit the Earth.
The flight was a triumph for the Soviet space programme and Gagarin became a national hero of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, as well as a worldwide celebrity. Newspapers around the globe published his biography and details of his flight. He was escorted in a long motorcade of highranking officials through the streets of Moscow to the Kremlin where, in a lavish ceremony, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev awarded him the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
In the years that followed he visited 30 foreign countries – including Britain – and was noted for his public persona
and charismatic smile. So popular was he that President John F Kennedy barred him from visiting the United States.
The Vostok flight was to be Gagarin’s one and only trip to space. Though he trained for the Soyuz 1 mission, he was only on the back-up crew. That mission crashed, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, and fearful that a national hero might be killed, Soviet officials then banned Gagarin from any further spaceflights.
Tragically, that did not prevent his early death.
After completing training he was instead allowed to fly regular military aircraft.
Gagarin died five weeks later in 1968 when the MIG-15 jet he was piloting crashed. He was 34 years old.