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Yuri Gagarin's triumphant flight in April 1961 opened the era of human space flight entering history books as one of the pivotal events of the 20th century. A single-orbit, 108-minute mission realized millennia-old hopes and dreams of countless generations to conquer time and space, to overcome the force of gravity and to see the planet Earth from afar. The Vostok was blasted into space by the unique convergence of technical genius, personal sacrifice and a brutal political force unleashed by the class struggle. As often in history, this trailblazing achievement served to inspire dreams of a bigger world and a better tomorrow, as well as... to prop up a merciless and ill-conceived political system. Flight record The first manned mission of the Vostok was preceded by several years of development work and unmanned test launches. According to the official history of RKK Energia -- the successor to the OKB-1 design bureau, which developed the Vostok -- by April 1961, the R-7 rocket, which served as a base of the Vostok launcher, flew 46 times; the Block E, which served as the third stage, was launched 16 times. Total six of these stages never had a chance to fire due to the failure of the booster stage and two Block Es themselves failed as well. Out of seven prototypes of the Vostok spacecraft flown (Versions 1K and 3KA) two spacecraft did not reach orbit due to the failure of the launch vehicle and two vehicles did not complete all their tasks. (52) Pre-launch events On March 17, 1961, the group of future cosmonauts visited the NIIP test range in Tyuratam for familiarization with the actual flight hardware. On March 25, 1961, Gagarin, along with other future cosmonauts, viewed the final launch of the unmanned prototype of the Vostok spacecraft from NIIP-5. (228) Six "finalists" for the first flight among cosmonauts returned to the launch site on April 5, 1961. They and numerous other officials flew to the test site on three Ilyushin-14 aircraft. Gagarin and his primary backup Herman Titov flew different planes. At the launch site they were met by Korolev, who told them that the rollout of the rocket to the launch pad was planned for April 8 and the launch could take place between April 10 and 12. (229) On April 6, Konstantin Rudnev, the chairman of the State Commission, overseeing the launch, arrived to NIIP-5. A crucial technical meeting, which started at 11:30, discussed the status of the life-support system, test results for the spacesuit and an ejection seat, as well as the flight assignment for the pilot. Number of engineers proposed to let fully suited cosmonauts to sit inside a flight-ready spacecraft, which had been implemented on April 7. On the evening of the same day, cosmonauts watched a film, documenting two latest flights of unmanned Vostoks. Apparently, around the same time, the spacecraft was weighed, revealing that the vehicle approached its top limit in mass. Although unmanned prototypes varied in mass from 4,540 to 4,700 kilograms, the Vostok with Gagarin onboard would reach 4,725 kilograms. According to Golovanov, (229) proposals were put forward to launch Titov, who was slightly lighter than Gagarin. However, Korolev advised to stick with the plan, promising instead to remove some test hardware from the spacecraft as necessary. Naming the pilot On April 8, the State Commission had another meeting, which considered a number of technical issues.. and it had to decide who would pilot the craft. Kamanin, the head of the cosmonaut training fielded the name of Gagarin as the pilot and Titov as a backup. It was approved as expected. On the morning of April 10, a group of high-ranking Soviet officials, which comprised the State Commission, met with six cosmonauts. The meeting took place in the large gazebo at the "Zero" area of the NIIP-5 test range, within a compound of the Soviet Air Force, located on the shore of Syr Darya River. Among present were Rudnev, the chairman of the State Commission, Moskalenko, the head of the Soviet strategic missile forces, Korolev and Kamanin. Korolev opened the meeting with an optimistic outline of the past and the future of the program: "It has been less than four years since the launch of the first satellite and we are ready for the first flight of a human into space. Six cosmonauts are present here and each of them is ready to make the first flight. It was decided that Gagarin would fly first, others will follow; as early as this year 10 Vostok spacecraft would be ready. Next year, we will have two- or three-seat Sever spacecraft. I think cosmonauts who are present here wouldn't mind to accompany many of us into space orbits.. We are confident, the (first) flight was prepared thoroughly and carefully and it will proceed successfully. All the success to you, Yuri Alekseevich." On the evening of the same day, the official meeting of State Commission took place. It approved the "flight assignment" for Gagarin: Planned mission timeline (Moscow Time) as of April 10 (51):
1961 April 11 The final preparation for the launch of the Vostok-1 started with the rollout of the launch vehicle 8K72 No. E10316 with the 3KA No. 3 spacecraft to the launch pad No. 1 in Baikonur. The rocket with its payload fairing blanketed in protective layers, left the assembly building at Site 2 at 5:00 Moscow Time. Around 13:00 Moscow Time, Gagarin, accompanied by Korolev and Keldysh and other high-ranking officials, visited the launch pad to meet with the processing personnel. On the request from Korolev, engineers Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Raushenbakh gave final technical briefing to Gagarin and Titov. At the end of the day medical specialists attached medical sensors to cosmonauts' bodies and wished them "good night" at 22:00. 1961 April 12: The flight At 5:00 in the morning communications tests between various ground control stations took place. Gagarin and Titov were awaken at 5:30. They had "space food" for breakfast, which was followed by routine medical checkups, which both passed with flying colors. At 6:00, the car of the medical service arrived to the launch pad, delivering food, which was then loaded into the spacecraft. (229) To reduce Gagarin's time inside hot layers of the spacesuit, he was dressed after Titov. From this point on, a major source of information on the historic mission of the Vostok would be Gagarin's own report, which he delivered to the State Commission some 24 hours after his landing. The document would not be fully published for decades. (230) Upon suiting up, Gagarin spent a few minutes in the test seat, as technicians checked ventilation and other systems. Then, accompanied by his colleagues, Gagarin left Site 2 for the launch pad. There, an elevator took Gagarin to the top of the launch vehicle and to the hatch of his spacecraft. During the closure of the hatch, one of its sensors would not turn on. The hatch had to be re-opened, the sensor adjusted and the hatch closed again. In orbit The launch vehicle blasted off nearly as scheduled at 09:06:59.7 Moscow Time and the orbital insertion looked nominal to Gagarin. However unknown to the pilot, the core (second) stage of the rocket burned longer than scheduled, leaving the spacecraft in a 327-kilometer apogee orbit, instead of planned 230 kilometers. It meant, that in case of a complete failure of the braking engine, a natural reentry of the spacecraft caused by the friction in the upper atmosphere would take place at least five days after a 10-day supply of vital life-support consumables onboard Vostok would run out. The nominal orbit would enable the pilot to survive until the spacecraft decayed. (231) Upon reaching the orbit, Gagarin confirmed the nominal activation of the landing sequence mechanism; he also attempted to communicate with the ground with mixed success, and made few records into his flight journal. However, when he used the journal to experiment with weightlessness, it floated back to him without a pencil, which used to be attached to it by a string. As a result, Gagarin had to give up the writing exercise. He then turned to voice recorder, but it soon run out of tape due to overly sensitive voice activation system reacting to the noise in the cabin. He partially rewind the tape and restarted the recording, but in process, apparently erased previous data. (230, 231) Bumpy ride home Gagarin tasted the food out of tubes and watched the Earth flying below. Everything looked perfect until a scheduled 40-second burn of the braking engine, which was suppose to send the spacecraft back into the Earth atmosphere. In his post-flight report, Gagarin wrote:
Gagarin, was expecting the separation of his reentry capsule from the instrument module to take place 10-12 seconds after the deorbiting burn, however it did not take place. In the meantime, the spacecraft continued tumbling wildly, as it approached denser layers of the atmosphere. Despite the situation, Gagarin wrote that he believed everything was on track for safe landing:
According to Gagarin, the separation did finally take place at 10:35, not 10:25, as he expected. Braking glitch For decades, the very fact, not to mention a cause of the whole incident with the separation of the capsule and its instrument module, remained unknown to the general public. Even after Gagarin's report was published, at least one participant of the events denied any problems during the reentry and tried to explain the situation by Gagarin's confusion about the real time of the separation. However thanks to the efforts of Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine, and, particularly, its tireless researcher Igor Lisov, (232) much more credible picture of the event has been finally painted. As it turned out, a single valve within the braking engine failed to close completely at the beginning of the engine burn, letting some fuel escape the combustion chamber. As a result of this fuel loss, the engine shot down around a second earlier than scheduled, slowing the vehicle at a less-then-programmed rate, thus preventing the formation of the nominal command to cut off the engine. Without a proper cutoff command, propellant lines of the engine remained open, after it run out of fuel and stalled. As a result, the pressurization gas and remaining oxidizer continued escaping through the main nozzle and steering thrusters, causing the spacecraft to spin wildly. Although the engine was later cut off by a timer, the lack of delivered thrust also caused the flight control system to scrub the primary sequence for the separation between the reentry vehicle and the instrument module. Fortunately, a backup system did perform the separation some 10 minutes later, as temperature sensors detected the rising heat of reentry. (233) As spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere, the pilot saw bright crimson glow appearing behind his windows. It was accompanied by a cracking noise of thermal protection layers burning in the heat of atmospheric reentry. Gagarin estimated that at its peak G-forces exceeded 10:
As G-forces subsided and the capsule continued descending safely, Gagarin prepared to eject from his craft. At the altitude of seven kilometers, the main hatch of the spacecraft was jettisoned and seconds later, the pilot ejected. The main parachute deployed successfully, however the backup chute came out later as well, but deployed with some delay. As a result, Gagarin approached the Earth surface under two parachutes. According to Gagarin, he gently hit soft surface of freshly plowed dirt in the open field not far from the town of Engels. Later, his landing coordinates were determined to be: 49.61 North latitude, 53.21 East longitude, not far from the village of Smelovka, Ternovskiy District of Saratov Region. (228) The implications Launched into space from the abyss of secrecy, Gagarin returned to Earth 108 minutes later an international celebrity. The shockwave of the Vostok mission spread far outside of the Soviet space program and long outlived its hero. Following the Sputnik, Gagarin dealt another major blow to the American nationalism. At the same time, the Vostok solidified the American determination to invest heavily into the fledgling manned space program and made it politically easier for the US government to commit to a risky and ambitious goal of landing a man on the Moon in ten years. Along with Sputnik, Gagarin helped to create oversized, overpriced and technologically dead-ended Apollo program, before its own success revealed, it had no future beyond scoring points with the Soviets. At the same time, Gagarin's leap above the Earth helped to create a deceiving appearance of the Soviet Union as the most advanced and forward-looking nation on Earth. With Vostok, the capricious history handed in the Kremlin a kind of arrogance it just stripped off the White House. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev and his much more conservative successors made Gagarin one of the most prominent icons of the Soviet system, while continuing down the path of self-destructing economic policies, unchecked arms race, and the oppression of any dissidence. Ironically, the Soviet military industrial complex, which made Gagarin's success possible, also contributed to the ultimate demise of the very system, this achievement was suppose to promote. APPENDIX Main records officially claimed by the USSR at the end of the Vostok-1 flight:
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PICTURE GALLERY
A monument to Yuri Gagarin faces the rising Moon over the Baikonur Cosmodrome's Site 2, where the first cosmonaut of the planet spent his last night before the historic flight in April 1961. Copyright © 2001 Anatoly Zak
On April 8, 1961, in Tyuratam, Yuri Gagarin officially reports to the State Commission about his readiness for the flight (228) Another source dates the photo by April 10. (229)
Standing on the edge of the Air Force compound in Baikonur, the famous "Gagarin's gazebo" provided a backdrop for an informal meeting of the Soviet top officials with Gagarin on April 10, 1961. Four decades later, it overlooked shallow waters of the Syr Darya River. Copyright © 2001 Anatoly Zak
The State Commission approves flight assignment to Gagarin on April 10, 1961. Click to enlarge. (228)
"Chief Designer's or Korolev's house" at Baikonur Cosmodrome's Site 2, where Yuri Gagarin spent his last night before the historic flight in April 1961. Copyright © 2001 Anatoly Zak
Launch of the Vostok spacecraft. Click to enlarge. Anatoly Zak's archive
Flight journal (right) and the ID of the International Aviation Federation, FAI, which Gagarin carried with him into orbit. Copyright © 2001 Anatoly Zak
The launch complex, from which Vostok blasted off on April 12, 1961, became known as Gagarin's pad. Click to enlarge. Copyright © 2001 Anatoly Zak
A Soviet period exhibit featuring Pravda newspaper, a mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, published on April 13, 1961. In the orwellian fashion, sensors of the Brezhnev era, cut out a part of the publication, in the apparent attempt to erase any memory of Nikita Khrushchev, as a revenge for his efforts to expose crimes of Stalinism. Click to enlarge. Copyright © 2001 Anatoly Zak
Yuri Gagarin became a subject of numerous monuments throughout the Soviet Union. Click to enlarge. |
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