Anna Akimovna Takhtarov and her granddaughter Rita were alone on the freshly plowed field in the village of Smelovka, then part of the Soviet Union. Nothing special was there for them on that day, it was 12th April 1960 and they were engaged in their collective farm in the serene air of inland beauty, but only a cow grazing nearby adding to its inlay of peasantry. It was about quarter to 11 in the morning, the Sun rather reluctantly blazing its intaglios on the field. Suddenly they heard a loud noise from a distance to make them alert though not rendering any idea of what had happened. Anna was again to return to her work when Rita pulled her hand in bewilderment, pointing to the sky. A man like creature with his head and body covered in white apparel was seen coming down, in flying colours of wind-blow parachute. Rita was thinking of her first encounter with an ET but Anna was urging to leave that place, when the downfalling creature removed its head-cover and greeted in Russian: "Hey, Don't run away! I am one among us !" As they were stuck and startled by it, a tractor was seen crossing the field followed by a group of running soldiers. The man from the tractor introduced himself as Major Akhmed Gasiyer and said: Dobraye ootro (Good Morning). This is Yuri Gagarin, our comrade and the first man in space. You are the first to witness him landing from his mission. The nation will be proud of you!" That moment of glory was not only for them, but for the whole world because he was first visitor from Earth to the "other world" which he saw with a beating heart! And entering a new word to the dictionary of the world – a “cosmonaut!” This year in 2011, the world of Space Exploration is celebrating the 50th anniversary of this still yet unparalleled achievement of mankind.
Gagarin's leap above the Earth was a great blow to the American nationalism which was already an icon of "money-feeder" for an average American citizen following the Soviet success on Sputnik-the first man-made object launched to space. It also helped USSR to create the imagery of the most advanced and progressive nation in the world. Politically it gave the communist nation more crimson while white house was literally bleached to white. It was the time of strengthening ideological pressure from the Cold War, demanding a divide among the world countries to join on either side. For the Soviet side, it was also advantageous as a propaganda serving to "spiritually" unite all strata of their own Republics under the iconic leadership of Soviet national programme outliving its racial and religious diversity. Nikita Khrushchev and his successors tried to make Gagarin a "Soviet icon" of a "comrade cosmonaut" cleverly tieing it to the social culture they were struggling to impose. At the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party when the anti-religious propaganda was discussed, Khrushchev rather inadvertently mentioned "Gagarin flew into space, but he didn't see any god there!" The imperious influence of that was so great that some western media even implied those words to Gagarin though the verbatim record of his conversations during space flight couldn't support the claim. However, since everything relating to Gagarin's flight remained under the top-most military secret bunkers, not until recent any sort of disproving was impossible.
FARM BOY FROM MOSCOW
Gagarin was born on 9th March 1934 in a village called Klushino, 100 miles west of Moscow in the Smolensk region of Russia. His Father Alexei Ivanovich was a farmer working in a collective farm. Anna Timofeyana, his mother was a milkmaid. Gagarin was the third of four children, Velentin and Boris, the brothers and Zoya, the sister During the Second World War, German army occupied his village, throwing his family out of their home and abducted his brother and sister for slavery in Nazi camps. Gagarin helped his parents to dig a dugout and they lived there until the war was over. But these struggles captured much of his time and he was very poorly educated. Only after the war he could become a regular school-going boy and with the help of two volunteer teachers he managed to give it a 'dolphin-dive'. He dreamt of becoming a fighter-pilot even from his childhood when he saw a Russian Fighter Plane crash-landing in a farm-field near his home. It was with bullet-ridden wings, just returning from the battlefiled. The pilots who emerged from the plane made an elegant appearance, quite impressive enough in their uniform laden with medals and other adornments. Moreover one among his teachers at school was an ex-airforce pilot who became a great inspiration for young Gagarin. The teacher also helped him to seek the right qualifications leading to the Pilot-training academy, opting the four-year study at the technical High School in Saratov. While there, he was offered a chance to join the "Flying Club" at school, his dream becoming true. He learned to fly a light aircraft, taking his first solo flight in 1955. He seemed to have an innate ability in handling an aeroplane and a special skill to make smooth landings. He also learned parachuting there but his instructor Dmitry Pavlovich Martyanov remembers him clinging to the door of the plane, out of fear, during his first jump. "Dont dither Yuri! The girls are watching" – he had to say to make Gagarin finally jump with his eyes closed!
Dmitry Martyanov was very found of Gagarin and he advised Yuri to join the Military Aviation School at Orenburg. There his training was to Fly MiG-15 planes. In 1957 Gagarin graduated with top honours from there and that day was also auspicious in being his wedding day, marrying Valentina Ivanovna Goryacheva whom he met while in Orenburg. Gagarin's exceptional aviation skills made him the fighter pilot at the Aratic Circle where he was assigned as an experimental aviator amidst the challenging weather conditions. His first posting was in Luostari Airbase in Murmansk Oblast close to the Norwegian border. It was in light of the magnificent Aurora Borealis, he made his first flight. By then, the Soviet Space Programme was once again in media highlights, this time for photographing the yet unseen far-side of the Moon. This time, the blow upon the US was much more harder, the Soviet-made Luna-3 doing it, making America's efforts a dead-ended exercise strangled by its oversized and overpriced administrative bolsters. Khrushchev had already stated that USSR's next achievement would be a manned mission to space. Gagarin couldn't wait any longer. He returned to Moscow and submitted a request to be considered for 'cosmonaut' training. The authorities were shocked to read it because rather than a delightful dream of Krushchev, nothing in real sense was envisaged or executed. However, the day that followed Gagarin's application, two representatives of the top-secret military unit known by the codename '26266' visited Gagarin's residence for discussing the matter. Later, the 26266-unit became the 'Cosmonauts Training Center' established by order of the Air Force Commander-in-Chief in March 1960 with Colonel Yevgenly Anatolyevich Karpov as its chief. There was also an assistant to him who was designated as the "Director" of the center, Lieutenant Geneal Nikolay Petrovich Kamanin.
THE MAKING OF A COSMONAUT
The cosmonaut selection was officially based on two top secret decrees issued by the USSR Council of Ministers. The process of selection had begun much before the functioning of the Cosmonauts Training Center. The cosmonaut candidates were brought in groups to the Central Military Scientific Research Aviation Hospital near to Moscow to undergo a battery of extensive physical psychological and medical examinations. Initially there was 3,461 candidates which was reduced to just 347 after the first screening. The physical parameters were a height of 5 feet 6-7 inches (172-174 cm) and body weight of 70-75 kilograms but curiously enough Gagarin did get through with a height of 5 feet 2 inches! Gagarin's professional suitability and volunteering nature might have helped him beyond other particularities, the biographers comment. Criteria of moral and ethical characteristics, psychological particularities also were there, again whittling the number of cosmonaut candidates to 206 and then to a final list of 20. The oldest among these was 35 and the youngest, 25 (German Titov). Gagarin was 26 with two others of the same age. They were flown to the Cosmonaut Training Center in the future "Star City" which was in the middle of a vast emptiness in the Eurasian steppe called Tiura-Tam. It was named after a small railway station "which was hard to reach by any means of transport including camel and donkey, with no water and lot of sand." As an engineer describing, "it was a place of scorching heat and bone-chilling cold with swarms of rats, lizards and scorpions as numerous as KGB informants.” In those days there were a dozen launch pads scattered around the 'cosmodrome' but it was not 'Baikonur' as many have erroneously referred to it, the latter now in Kazakhstan.
In the real sense, the cosmonauts were treated as lab-rats subjecting each of them into the widest possible number of distractions probing the boundaries of human endurance. The concocted training regime consisted of physiologists, psychologists, physicians of various specializations and engineers. As one cosmonaut remembers "they seemed to be testing the hypothesis that human body and mind could adapt to any situation." One test was to solve difficult mathematical equations while sitting in a room where loud-speakers produced noice at the extreme pitch. Another was the 'Vibration stand which could "not only knock your soul out of you, but also the stones from your kidney." The most dreaded device was the 'Rotor' which was a centrifuge that simulated the effects of extreme gravitational pull. It had the shape of a spherical cage spun wildly along the three axes at unimaginable speed (this element of training was avoided after Gagarin's flight, apparently because it was considered a torture!). A testing time for human psyche was the "publichnost odinochestva", a facility that allowed a person in isolation to be viewed in every possible way whereas the 'captive' couldn't see the watchers. The isolation chamber prevented every sound from outside except for some directions from the watchers which appeared in the form of blinking of coloured bulbs or codes. The cosmonaut in the chamber was not allowed to communicate through sound, but through some buttons upon a console which were assigned for specific purposes. Gagarin was in isolation chamber from July 26 to August 5. Then he entered the 'Heat Chamber' where the inmates were subjected to extremes of temperature which was reflected back again and again from the walls coated with metal plates. Humidity also was increased and this ordeal lasted from 30 minutes to 3 hours or until the cosmonaut says he can’t endure it anymore, though such a reluctance was not favoured by the trainers. The last part of the training was parachute-jumping which was performed from the height of nearly 4 kilometers, during day and night.
THE FINAL TWO
Eventually, after the whole set of training schedules, it became a tale of two cosmonauts – Gagarin and German Titov. They were the final sort from the cream of six selected by the Director Nikolay Kamanin by the end of January 1961. Among the six, five including Gagarin were ethnic Russians with one being an Ukrainian. Kamanin was well aware of the fact that the first cosmonaut would achieve instant fame and so he went for an honest "Russian Face," the search he ended in Gagarin. He had "a smile that never left his face, deep blue eyes and kindness that seemed pouring from his eyes" – as Aleksei Leonov wrote later. German Titov was equally competent to Gagarin, coming from the Stalingrad Military Aviation School, but it is said his name was that turned against his chance. Gagarin's name was indisputably Russian whereas 'German Titov suggested a German lineage. Actually it was a derivative of "Saint Germanus" though it appeared 'German' in pronunciation. According to the legend, when Khrushchev was shown the names of the two final candidates, he asked: "What kind of Russian is this with a German name, where did you dig him up?" The remaining obstacle for Gagarin to become the first cosmonaut was an argument by the Soviet Rocket Pioneer Sergei Korolov. He wanted the first cosmonaut to be an Engineering graduate, so that he could more 'technically adapt' himself to the space travel. However, in the late phase of discussions regarding manned space flight, the vehicle was decided to be fully automated, rendering the cosmonaut to be a passive traveller. Then the parameters of psychological preparedness and experience in flight were considered which favoured Gagarin at its best. Titov was younger by an year than Gagarin (he was 25 then) and it counted to the period of experience. Above all, it was not an honour, but a sacrifice where there was only a 50% chance of survival. There were records of many botched space-flights throughout 1960 and a launch-pad explosion that killed 126 people. Kamanin's posthumously published diaries revealed that he had been reserving Titov for later flights, less complicated than Gagarin's.
THE HEROIC FLIGHT
It is not a surprise that Gagarin knew about the dangers of his mission. In a letter written from the Cosmodrome to his wife, Valya, he asked her to remarry if the launching experiment turned fatal. He had also asked her to raise their little daughters "not as princesses but as real people." On April 7, Gagarin and Titov had to sit in the space craft readied for flight in full suit as proposed by engineers. Around the same time, the space craft was weighed, revealing that the vehicle has reached its top limit of mass allowed. With Gagarin, it weighed 4,725 kilograms. So, proposals were putforwarded to launch Titov who was slightly lighter than Gagarin, but Korolov didn't like any change in schedule and it went on unchanged. On the evening of April 10, a "flight Assignment" was decided for Gagarin. According to the Moscow Time, it had a time frame of one hour 37 minutes, starting from 9:07 to 10:44 in the morning hours of April 12. Titov was the back-up for Gagarin in the launching schedules and they were given a final technical briefing on the 11th. At 5.30 in the morning of April 12, both of them were awakened, given their "space food" along with their routine medical checkups. Gagarin remained cool with a pulse-rate of 64 beats in a minute. By about 6.30, the dressing up of Titov and Gagarin began. The Spacesuit had heat-insulation layers causing body temperatures to rise up, so Gagarin was dressed after Titor, to reduce his time inside the suit. Then Gagarin spent a few minutes in the "test-seat," when technicians checked ventilation and other systems of the spacesuit. The rocket with the payload vehicle was by then ready at "Site 2" which was a SL-3 variant of the SS-6 Sapwood Rocket with a height of 38.36 meters It had three stages, the first stage with four breakaway boosters with a total weight of 286.03 tonnes. The module for Gagarin's travel, named the Vostok 1, was mounted on to the top of the “instrument module” containing the engine system providing 102,000 kg of thrust. Means, basically it was "on the top of a tin-can placed on the top of a bomb" that Gagarin was destined to sit.
After spending a few more minutes with Titov and colleagues Gagarin left for "Site 2" where he was took by an elevator to the top of the Rocket. The launch vessel was a small one-manned spherical module with a diameter of 2.3 meters. Before boarding to it, Gagarin saw Sergei Korolov looking haggard after a sleepless night. Gagarin was the favourite of Korolev. Gagarin's trainer Ivanovsky also was there who helped Gagarin up the ladder and into the module. By then he whispered to his ear- ‘1:2:5’ – code that should be used in case the vehicle needs manual control, under emergency situations. It was already given to Gagarin in a sealed envelope asking to be opened only in case of danger, but Ivanovsky was not sure whether Gagarin would be doing it in any such kind of situation. When Gagarin sat up in his seat, he was strapped to it and the hatch was closed. However, the hatch didn't close hermetically indicating to which there was light in the control room. It was an "one time-one way" hatch also, so Ivanovsky with, the help of a fitter, removed all the 32 screws sealing the hatch and put them back in a frantic pace, which became a reward-claim for the fitter V.I. Morozov, later on. Despite this intervention, the rocket blasted off nearly as per schedule at 09:06:59.7, Moscow Time. There was a problem with the Second stage of the Rocket causing it to burn longer than scheduled, raising the space craft to a 327 km apogee orbit, instead of the planned 230 km. Gagarin was however not aware of this and communicated his greetings to the ground station also spending a few seconds with his flight journal. But, due to weightlessness, the journal floated on his back without the pencil (which used to be attached to it with a string) forcing him to use the voice recorder. However, it was on automatic mode, already working without any useful data recorded, so Gagarin had to rewind it and try recording again, apparently erasing some previous data.
HOME! SWEET HOME!
HERO OF THE WORLD
Gagarin's travel to space lasted only for 108 minutes, but that was enough for him to become the national hero of Soviet Union and of the World. In the official soviet documents however, there is no mention of Gagarin jumping through parachute and the details about Gagarin's landing were not known to the world for a long time, till the "iron-curtain" failed. When local newspapers tried to make stories of Anna Akimovna and her grand daughter seeing gagarin's descent, the KGB officials went to their office and blocked it. This was because as per the prevailing international rules on aviation then, the pilot "should have to remain in the craft, from launch to landing." This rule, if applied to Gagarin's flight, would have disqualified him in being "the first traveller in space." Nevertheless, Gagarin's historic launch to space and return was the news-headline all over the world. He was awarded the official title of "Hero of the Soviet Union" and got double promotion to the rank of a major. After his flight, Gagarin spent almost an year in travelling all over the world with his wife Valya, as a living icon of the Soviet achievement. He visited Chechoslavakia, Finland, England, Iceland, Brazil, Canada, Hungary, France, Cuba, Afghanistan, India and Srilanka. After returning from the world-tour he became actively involved in training his comrades for flight and he was deservedly made the Deputy Chief of Cosmonaut Training. In 1967, he began training for the first Soyuz flight, becoming the back-up pilot for Vladdimir Komarov who died in a fatal crash. By then, Soviet officials tried to keep him away from any further flights but Gagarin wanted to reach for the skies once again. That dream but remained unfulfilled as Gagrain was killed in MiG-jet crash on 27 March 1968, at the age of 34. It was a very sad event for Soviet Union and for the whole world, though the actual reason behind the accident was never revealed or found out. The grief from his death was even enough to cross the battle field of the Cold War. It is well documented by the plaque left on Moon by Apollo 15 mission in memory of Gagarin. Let’s also salute this Russian Icarus at the 50th anniversary of his great achievement, opening a new vista to the world of space that was never known before.
(The full article can be read from Science Reporter, July 2011. Link: http://www.niscair.res.in/sciencecommunication/Popularization%20of%20Science/SciRep/scirep2k11/sr_jul11.asp)
