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N0KFQ > TODAY 12.04.16 16:12l 89 Lines 4385 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 90444_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Apr 12
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Sent: 160412/1403Z 90444@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
1961
First man in space
On April 12, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet
cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being
to travel into space. During the flight, the 27-year-old test
pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to
orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89
minutes. Vostok 1 orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 187
miles and was guided entirely by an automatic control system. The
only statement attributed to Gagarin during his one hour and 48
minutes in space was, "Flight is proceeding normally; I am well."
After his historic feat was announced, the attractive and
unassuming Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity. He was
awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title of Hero of the
Soviet Union. Monuments were raised to him across the Soviet
Union and streets renamed in his honor.
The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man
into space was a great blow to the United States, which had
scheduled its first space flight for May 1961. Moreover, Gagarin
had orbited Earth, a feat that eluded the U.S. space program
until February 1962, when astronaut John Glenn made three orbits
in Friendship 7. By that time, the Soviet Union had already made
another leap ahead in the "space race" with the August 1961
flight of cosmonaut Gherman Titov in Vostok 2. Titov made 17
orbits and spent more than 25 hours in space.
To Soviet propagandists, the Soviet conquest of space was
evidence of the supremacy of communism over capitalism. However,
to those who worked on the Vostok program and earlier on Sputnik
(which launched the first satellite into space in 1957), the
successes were attributable chiefly to the brilliance of one man:
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. Because of his controversial past,
Chief Designer Korolev was unknown in the West and to all but
insiders in the USSR until his death in 1966.
Born in the Ukraine in 1906, Korolev was part of a scientific
team that launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933.
In 1938, his military sponsor fell prey to Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin's purges, and Korolev and his colleagues were also put on
trial. Convicted of treason and sabotage, Korolev was sentenced
to 10 years in a labor camp. The Soviet authorities came to fear
German rocket advances, however, and after only a year Korolev
was put in charge of a prison design bureau and ordered to
continue his rocketry work.
In 1945, Korolev was sent to Germany to learn about the V-2
rocket, which had been used to devastating effect by the Nazis
against the British. The Americans had captured the rocket's
designer, Wernher von Braun, who later became head of the U.S.
space program, but the Soviets acquired a fair amount of V-2
resources, including rockets, launch facilities, blueprints, and
a few German V-2 technicians. By employing this technology and
his own considerable engineering talents, by 1954 Korolev had
built a rocket that could carry a five-ton nuclear warhead and in
1957 launched the first intercontinental ballistic missile.
That year, Korolev's plan to launch a satellite into space was
approved, and on October 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 was fired into
Earth's orbit. It was the first Soviet victory of the space race,
and Korolev, still technically a prisoner, was officially
rehabilitated. The Soviet space program under Korolev would go on
to numerous space firsts in the late 1950s and early '60s: first
animal in orbit, first large scientific satellite, first man,
first woman, first three men, first space walk, first spacecraft
to impact the moon, first to orbit the moon, first to impact
Venus, and first craft to soft-land on the moon. Throughout this
time, Korolev remained anonymous, known only as the "Chief
Designer." His dream of sending cosmonauts to the moon eventually
ended in failure, primarily because the Soviet lunar program
received just one-tenth the funding allocated to America's
successful Apollo lunar landing program.
Korolev died in 1966. Upon his death, his identity was finally
revealed to the world, and he was awarded a burial in the Kremlin
wall as a hero of the Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin was killed in a
routine jet-aircraft test flight in 1968. His ashes were also
placed in the Kremlin wall.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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