Never before or since has the race for space exploration between the United States and the Soviet Union been so close as in the case of the first manned space flight. The race was won by Yuri Gagarin when he circled the Earth on April 12, 1961 during a 108-minute flight. American Alan Shepard followed just 23 days later.

But everything could have been completely different. A day before the launch of the Soviet ship Vostok 1, it was not clear whether Gagarin or his friend and closest colleague in training German Titov would fly. In the end, the decision fell on Gagarin – he was more photogenic, and Titov’s first name did not sound twice Russian. However, during the last weighing, the technicians discovered that Gagarin was 13 kg “overweight” even with the overalls and the seat, which led to the frantic dismantling of everything unnecessary from the ship’s cabin.

This is how Yuri Gagarin ejected from his ship Source: ČTK/ Profimedia.cz

Ground control center of the Vostok 1 mission Source: ČTK/ Profimedia.cz

Yuri Gagarin on the way to the launch pad Source: ČTK/ Profimedia.cz

Yuri Gagarin shortly before the start Source: ČTK/ Profimedia.cz

Yuri Gagarin is preparing to take off Source: ČTK/ Profimedia.cz

Vostok-K rocket launch with Vostok 1 ship Source: ČTK/ Profimedia.cz

Vostok 1 in orbit Source: ČTK/ Profimedia.cz

Replica of Gagarin’s MiG-15 UTI machine Source: ČTK/ Profimedia.cz

Also read: The Soviets kept Gagarin’s launch a secret until the last minute. Prague knew nothing, NASA put him to sleep

As teams of people swarmed around Vostok 1, Gagarin and Titov spent the day before launch playing pool and telling each other stories from their childhood (they were strictly forbidden to talk about the mission). They were driven to bed at 9:30 p.m., but none of them fell asleep due to nervousness. Gagarin was woken up at 05:30 with a bouquet of tulips. He didn’t shave – according to Soviet pilots it was bad luck – and ate the same tube food for breakfast that he was supposed to have in orbit.

They can’t close the door

Wearing a lightweight suit, Gagarin and Tito’s bus headed for the 31-meter-high Vostok-K launch vehicle, on top of which his ship was perched. “The closer we were to the launch pad, the more the rocket grew, as if it were changing size,” Gagarin later recalled in his autobiography Journey to the Stars. One of the workers hastily wrote CCCP on Gagarin’s helmet so that the Russians would not mistake him for a foreign pilot after landing. Then Gagarin settled into his seat and the technicians began to hermetically seal the hatch, only to find out that it was leaking. There was a frenzy of disassembling the panels and searching for the problem. It was 07:07 and two hours left until the start.

While Gagarin was telling jokes or singing to himself with the people in the control center over the radio, the problem was fixed. Two minutes before the launch scheduled for 09:07 Moscow time (07:07 CET), Gagarin felt the 281-ton rocket swing and vibrate, he only had to say “here we go” and then everything disappeared in the roar of the engines. You can listen to the recording of Gagarin’s communication with the head of the Soviet space program and rocket designer Sergei Korolev here:

Start lodi

For the next 60 seconds, it was impossible to communicate with the ship, Gagarin was under severe overload, his heart rate jumped to 150 beats per minute, and the tension in the control center could be cut. When he finally spoke, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. “I see the Earth. I see clouds. What a beauty!” reported Gagarin enthusiastically. As the rocket ascended, the astronaut talked about his high spirits and how the flight was going smoothly. Unfortunately, prematurely.

The engines of the launch vehicle burned a little longer, so Vostok 1 reached a height of 327 km instead of the planned 230 km. There, the ship separated from the last stage of the launch vehicle and set out for the first ever orbit around the Earth in human history. While flying over the US, the Americans picked up a Vostok signal, and while the CIA was thinking about how to tell President John F. Kennedy, NASA told Shepard straight out that he would no longer be the first man in space.

In the meantime, Gagarin enjoyed the state of weightlessness, tasted the food for cosmonauts, and before his ballpoint pen floated away and disappeared for good, he made notes in his notebook. Although Gagarin was an experienced pilot, there were concerns before the launch on the ground about how a person would react in the conditions of weightlessness and free space, so he could not control the instruments or the ship. In case of emergency, however, there was a code that allowed control to be taken over, and someone revealed it to Gagarin before the launch “just in case”.

Dramatic landing

The time allotted in space quickly passed and Gagarin was preparing to return after 78 minutes. He had no idea it might not be easy. The ship was to be directed into the denser layers of the atmosphere by means of an engine. If it did not work, it was expected that after ten days Vostok 1 would fall on its own and start descending. Therefore, there were 10 days’ supply of oxygen, water and food on board. But with the excessive altitude that the ship reached after launch, there was a risk that in the event of an engine failure, the ship would orbit for 20 days and the cosmonaut would be long dead by the time of landing.

At 08:25, however, the brake motor ignited and worked for 40 seconds. This was followed by the separation of the cabin from the instrument section, which was the responsibility of the explosive connections. The four rounds blasted the metal bands holding the ship together and it looked like everything was going according to plan. A few seconds later, however, Gagarin felt a sharp jerk and at the same time the ship went into a violent rotation. The thick data and power cable had not separated, and the instrument section was now flapping and bouncing wildly behind Gagarin’s cabin.

Gagarin could do nothing. Flames whipped around its windows as the ship rubbed against the atmosphere. With the instrument section behind, the cabin could not be rotated forward by the protective shield and was in danger of burning. After endless ten minutes, the cable fortunately burned out and the cabin was free. At an altitude of about 7 km, the hatch opened at 10:49 and the ejection device ejected Gagarin in the seat. As he descended on the parachute, he saw the silver thread of the Volga below him.

Gagarin landed near Saratov about 300 kilometers from the planned location, an extraordinary achievement given the circumstances. As he opened his helmet for a breath of air, he noticed an old woman, her granddaughter, and a mottled calf staring at him with their mouths open. “Did you come from outer space?” asked the woman. “Actually, yes,” Gagarin replied. His ship parachuted three kilometers from here.

Yuri Gagarin has become a world celebrity, but he has already gone into space he never looked – his life was too valuable for the Soviets to risk on another launch. Nevertheless, on March 27, 1968, he died tragically in the cockpit of a MiG-15UTI fighter plane, coincidentally manufactured in Czechoslovakia.

Source: BBC, Smithsonian Magazine

You might have missed it: Yuri Gagarin launched on April 12, 1961