Since the dawn of civilization, humankind has always looked up at the heavens and wondered what lay beyond our planet. While most people gazed in wonder, only a select few have ever visited space.
The tale of the first man to do so, Yuri Gagarin, is a story of triumph, Fame, a sad demise, and some very peculiar events to understand what happened.
On October 4, 1957, humans would send an object into space for the first time in history. The Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 became the first artificial object to be put in orbit. Sputnik was a short mission sending out a radio signal only 22 days before burning up in the atmosphere in early 1958.
It would make a pass around the earth once every 96 minutes. The world was stunned by the event of the launch of Sputnik. It was a much more significant event than most people today realize. It prompted the foundation of NASA and DARPA by the Americans.
From “Je sais tout” magazine, May 20, 1969. Credit Dan Beaumont.
Yuri Gagarin, The First Man In Space
It also marked the beginning of the space race. But Sputnik will also result in the Americans forming ARPANET. The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. It was the start of our current Internet.
The world was absolutely shocked when the Russians sent Sputnik into space, but the USSR wasn’t finished. On April 12, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, 27-year-old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space. Vostok 1 orbited the planet for just 89 minutes.
At a maximum altitude of 320 kilometers, it was basically a cannonball. It was large enough for one person and guided entirely by an automatic control system.
Yuri Gagarin wasn’t very talkative during the ordeal. Some of his only words were, “Flight is proceeding normally. I am well.” He spoke these words while traveling at 29,000 kilometers an hour or eight kilometers per second.
Upon his return, Yuri Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity in Russia and ascended to legendary status. Monuments were raised, and street names were changed throughout the Soviet Union in his honor.
Credit: NASA.
Apollo Astronaut John Glenn
At this time, the United States was just being beaten to the punch—they were being punched square in the face. And to add insult to injury, in August of 1962, the Americans were beaten again. It was another cosmonaut in the spacecraft Vostok 2, this time orbiting 17 revolutions around the earth and spending more than 25 hours in space.
It wasn’t until February of 1962 when Apollo astronaut John Glenn made three orbits around the earth in Friendship Seven.
Understanding that he needed to boost his country’s confidence, President Kennedy declared that the US would reach the moon by the end of the decade.
But for now, the Russians were in charge, though later, our protagonist, Yuri Gagarin, would find himself in a lot of trouble.
MIG 15 And Gagarin
On March twenty-seventh, nineteen sixty-eight. Seven years after his trip to space. Yuri Gagarin got up early in the morning.
His purpose was to retrain as a fighter pilot after his time as a cosmonaut. The plan was for Kagura to run a few test missions in his Russian MIG 15. But, of course, things wouldn’t go according to plan.
The weather was poor at the airport, with the wind and rain making their presence known.
And when Gagarin forgot his ID that morning, he told those around him that this was a bad omen. Despite the weather and the bad juju, Gagarin took off without incident.
After he’d completed his exercises, he radioed back to base, saying that he would return shortly. This would be the last time anyone would hear from him.
A couple of hours later, a flight rescue team took off on a search mission. And as they were searching, they could see the planes burning wreckage from the air.
The hope was that the former cosmonaut might have ejected before the impact. But unfortunately, these hopes were dashed when Yuri Gagarin’s body was found.
The next day, an extensive investigation by the USSR proved to be inconclusive. The prevalent theory was that Gagarin swerved to avoid a bird or a weather balloon object and lost control of the aircraft.
Conspiracy Theories Around His Death
Naturally, being the Soviet Union, very little information was released to the public. And conspiracy theories started to grow. Some say Yuri Gagarin was drunk and decided to take a joy flight.
It’s not totally unfeasible, as Yuri had a history with the bottle. The young Russian cosmonaut had taken his meteoric rise to international fame reasonably hard. And as a former village boy, he wasn’t prepared to be an icon of inspiration.
Gagarin would receive thousands of letters from citizens across the USSR. Telling disturbing stories and asking for help. It was then that he began to see the dark underbelly of the Soviet Union.
And as time went on, this took a toll on the young cosmonaut. He began to slip into alcoholism and other risky behavior.
A Secret Agent From The CIA
Other theories suggest that he was a secret agent from the CIA and was poisoned.
There was another rumor that stated that Gagarin actually survived the plane crash and had gone into hiding. Still, others said that he was trying to avoid a UFO when he crashed.
So, what really happened? Will we ever know? Well, you’re in luck because the cause of the crash was finally determined in 2013.
As it turns out, another much larger plane, the Sukhoi Su-15, came into Gagarin’s airspace. The Sukhoi Su-15 was causing him to take evasive action and crash. In the end, it was an ordinary accident ending in tragedy.
The Soviet authorities and air traffic control were so embarrassed about their incompetence that they didn’t release the real cause of the accident. The altimeter at the control tower wasn’t functioning properly.
There was no way of avoiding that collision. The pilot made a hazardous maneuver in the clouds only 15 meters away from Gagarin’s plane, turning it over and then sending it into a tailspin at a speed of around 750 kilometers an hour. Yuri Gagarin said the jet fighter spiraled into the ground.
This is not yet another version of Gagarin’s death but a true reason why we lost him when he was only 34 years old.
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev
But why were the Russians so much better than the Americans at space travel during the 1960s? Well, it’s largely due to the brilliance of just one man who has been forgotten by history.
The Soviet conquest of space was viewed as evidence of communism’s supremacy over capitalism. However, only insiders who worked on Sputnik knew that this success was due to one man. Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.
The chief designer of these programs, Korolev, was unknown in the West and even to the Russian public until after his death.
Korolev helped launch the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933. Five years later, during one of Joseph Stalin’s paranoid purges, Korolev and his colleagues were put on trial. They were convicted of treason and sabotage. So, Korolev was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp.
As World War II intensified, the Soviet leaders realized that German rocket technology was a real threat. Knowing of Korolev‘s Talent, the government put him to work from prison.
Korolev And V-2 Rocket
In 1945, when the war was over, Korolev was sent to Germany to learn about Nazi rocketry. His mission was to study the V-2 rocket. It was basically an early form of a homing missile that heavily damaged the British during the war.
The Americans were also interested in this technology. They captured the designer of the V2 rocket and eventually made him head of the US space program.
The Soviets went further and managed to get their hands on the Rocket’s blueprints and a few German V-2 technicians. By 1954, Korolev had built a rocket that could carry a 5-ton nuclear warhead.
In 1957, the Russians launched the first ballistic missile. But Korolev had his eyes set on bigger things. Which brings us back to the launch of Sputnik 1.
It was the first Soviet victory in the space race. But amazingly, Korolev was still in prison when he worked on the project. He would finally be released a short time later.
The first USSR cosmonauts. Credit: Flickr.
“Firsts Into Space”
And with Korolev at the helm, the Soviet space program would be unmatched. In the early 1960s, the Soviet list of “firsts into space” include;
The first animal in orbit, the first large scientific satellite, the first man, the first woman, the first three men, the first spacewalk, the first spacecraft to impact the moon, the first spacecraft to orbit the moon, the first spacecraft to impact Venus, and the first spacecraft to soft-land on the moon.
The Americans were simply no match while Korolev was in charge.
Despite all his success, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was only known by the mysterious title of chief designer. Korolev would die in 1966 from health complications during his mistreatment in the labor camp.
Upon his death, his identity was finally revealed to the world. And he was awarded a burial in a Kremlin wall as a hero of the soviet union. As good as this was, I’m sure he would have appreciated this honor a little more when he was still alive.
Yuri Gagarin and Korolev both advanced humanities and ventured into space. I’m sure very few people have heard of both of their names. And that’s what this article is for—to bring to light history that’s been forgotten.
But the trend of returning to space is about to heat up again in the 2020s, as private companies such as Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos take to the heavens once again.
