MOSCOW, March 9, Andrey Igorev. This man was destined to go down in history as the first conqueror of near-Earth orbit. Exactly 90 years ago, on March 9, 1934, in the village of Klushino, Gzhatsky district, Western region of the RSFSR, Yuri Gagarin, officer, cosmonaut, world celebrity, was born. Biographers have long studied his life under a microscope, and still there are pages in it that few people know about. Interesting facts about Gagarin and his historical flight into space — in the material .
A series of incidents
Only recently it became known that during the pre-launch preparations and the flight of Yuri Gagarin there were nine emergency situations and emergencies. The first problem was discovered on the ground, a few hours before the launch. By that time, the astronaut had already been seated in the cabin and the hatch was battened down. However, sensors showed that the capsule was not sealed. Taking off with such an introduction is certain death. The lid was quickly opened and sealed again. This time she stood up tightly.
The second emergency occurred shortly after takeoff — communication with Kedr (Gagarin’s radio call sign) was completely lost. Only a muffled wheeze came from the speakers in Mission Control. It was later determined that the culprit was interference caused by the enormous speed of the rocket breaking through the atmosphere. But then everyone on earth was really scared.
“I don’t know what I looked like at that moment, but Sergei Korolev, who was standing next to me, was very worried,” Nikolai Kamanin, assistant to the Air Force Commander-in-Chief for space, wrote in his diary. “When he took the microphone, his hands were shaking, his voice was breaking, his face warped and changed beyond recognition. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when we were informed that communication with the astronaut had been restored and that the spacecraft had entered orbit.»
The problems did not end there — Vostok-1 ended up in the wrong place. As a result of the breakdown of one of the instruments, the ship entered an undesigned orbit with an apogee 40 kilometers higher than planned. If the braking propulsion system (TPU) had not worked, Gagarin would have spent 15 to 20 days in space and would hardly have survived — the supplies of food, water and oxygen in the capsule were only enough for ten days. However, the TDU did not fully cope with its task. Due to the loss of fuel, the spacecraft's orbital speed was reduced by 132 meters per second — instead of the calculated 136. This meant that the astronaut would not land in the given area.
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The next emergency occurred with the descent module, which separated from the instrument compartment only ten minutes after the estimated time — at an altitude of about 110 kilometers, when the thermal sensors of the backup separation system were triggered. And then the astronaut reported to the ground: “I’m burning.” Flames were blazing in the windows, and he thought there was a fire on board. However, the situation was normal; the ship was saved by thermal insulation during descent. But Yuri Gagarin clearly did not expect such “special effects”.
However, the tests are not over yet. After ejecting from the capsule at an altitude of seven thousand meters, the astronaut had to open two parachute canopies — the main and reserve. However, the spare tire hung like a rag and did not inflate immediately. A little later, Gagarin flew into the cloud, the dome filled with air and further descent continued as usual. However, immediately after landing, the officer could not open the valve for a long time, allowing atmospheric air into the sealed suit. It took him six minutes. This is the last emergency of Vostok-1.
And the penultimate one, quite possibly, saved Gagarin’s life. During the descent, he could not control the parachutes because he was flying facing the wind. It carried him straight to the Volga. The situation was saved by the packing of a portable emergency supply (NAS), attached with a long strap to the spacesuit. For some unknown reason, it came off, and the astronaut instantly lost 30 kilograms. This slowed down the descent, and Gagarin was carried away from the river.
Failed interview
Flying in orbit over the earth's continents on April 12, 1961, Gagarin could hardly imagine that in the next three years he would visit five of them. The Vostok-1 expedition ended and the largest, as they would now put it, “PR campaign” of the Soviet Union began. The country's leadership wanted to extract maximum political dividends from another victory in the space race and prepared the international “tour” of the first cosmonaut especially carefully.
Already on April 26, 1961, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee issued a resolution “On measures to further commemorate and popularize the first flight of a Soviet man into space.” Yuri Gagarin's foreign trips were jointly planned by the Ministry of Defense, the KGB and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the spring and summer of 1961 alone, the cosmonaut visited Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Finland, Great Britain, Poland, Cuba, Brazil, Canada and Hungary, and in just three years he traveled to more than 20 countries. The culmination of the program, as evidenced by the recently declassified archives of the CPSU Central Committee, was to be a visit to the USA.
But official Washington, for obvious reasons, was in no hurry to invite the Soviet officer to visit. First, the Cold War was in full swing. Secondly, the Americans actively promoted their own astronaut No. 1, Alan Shepard. His flight on the Mercury-Redstone-3 spacecraft on May 5, 1961 frankly did not reach the level of technical complexity of the Vostok-1 mission. The rocket was unable to reach orbit, and the flight, lasting only 15 minutes and 28 seconds, took place at suborbital altitudes. Nevertheless, the American press extolled Shepard in every way and downplayed the significance of Gagarin’s feat. Not the best information background for the visit of a Soviet cosmonaut.
The Kremlin decided to take a detour and began to act through public organizations and individuals. James Hagerty, vice president of the American television company ABC with an audience of 20 million, responded to the call. And he enthusiastically set about preparing an interview with the Soviet cosmonaut. However, the unsuccessful meeting between Khrushchev and Kennedy in Vienna on June 4, 1961, at the height of the Berlin crisis, disrupted these plans. Gagarin's story about his flight into space was never shown on American television.
Yuri Gagarin visited the USA only once — in October 1963, in transit from Mexico to the GDR. Then he spoke at a 40-minute press conference together with the first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.
Box with buttons
Nevertheless, the Soviet Union perfectly “recoiled” against the United States’ closest ally, Great Britain, where Gagarin was celebrated as their national hero by the townspeople, the workers, and Queen Elizabeth II herself. The visit was widely covered by the world media and only cemented the status of the USSR as a pioneer in space. At the same time, London did not want such an effect at all.
The directive of the country's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, representing the Conservative Party, was as follows: not to hold official receptions in honor of the Soviet guest and not to attract increased attention to him. Only the Deputy Minister of Aviation was sent to meet Gagarin and his entourage, who arrived at Heathrow on July 11, 1961. However, the British people decided differently.
Already at the exit from the airport, a crowd was waiting for the delegation, chanting the name of the first space conqueror. According to the plan, the Soviet mission went to Manchester, where the headquarters of the foundry union was located. The local mayor's office raised a red flag in honor of Gagarin. The USSR anthem was performed by a military band, and tens of thousands of British people gathered at the rally to listen to the cosmonaut's speech.
“The English people took the initiative of the meeting into their own hands,” recalled Nikolai Kamanin. “The streets along which Gagarin passed were covered with the scales of umbrellas: in the drizzling rain, people waited for hours for the appearance of the Soviet cosmonaut. The British greeted Yuri Gagarin with such warmth and cordiality, with such temperament , which refuted all our usual ideas about English restraint and calmness.»
Fun fact: it was after his visit to England that Gagarin, according to the writer and critic Lev Danilkin, began the habit of always carrying a box with spare buttons for sewing them to their uniform after each meeting with fans. Grateful earthlings tried not only to touch, hug or kiss the idol, but also to tear off something as a souvenir. Most often they came across buttons.