Main->Readings->5th Grade Readings->Human Spaceflight->Part 3
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A young Russian man by the name of Yuri Gagarin, a pilot in the Soviet air force, was a skilled jet flyer. But on April 12, 1961, he went on a mission that didn't need his piloting skills. In fact, his instrument panel was locked to keep him from taking control of the ship, though there was a key in a sealed envelope in case of emergency. He was inside a command module shaped like a hollow metal ball, on top of an instrument module, which together was called Vostok, meaning "East." Vostok was inside the tip of a giant rocket with 20 rocket engines, poised for take-off on the launch-pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome.
The Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or U.S.S.R.) was not sure the mission would be a success. Three days earlier, a Soviet rocket had exploded on the launch-pad, in full sight of the men who were training to go into space. However, the United States had already started its own manned space-flight program, which was called Mercury, and the Soviet Union was afraid it would not be the first nation to send a human being into space. So they prepared three newspaper announcements, one in case of success and two in case of failure, and they began the countdown to send Gagarin up.
Yuri Gagarin
Picture courtesy of NASA
Starchild: A Learning Center for Young Astronomers
No date given, accessed July 19, 2000
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/gagarin.html
Scientists had discovered a way to solve the problem of power. The way to get into space was to use a multi-stage rocket. Basically, this meant that you took extra fuel tanks and engines with you, and threw them away when they were used up so you didn't have to drag them along. A rocket took off using its core stage and booster rockets, and when the fuel in the first stage was used up it dropped off and fell back to Earth. Without the weight of the core stage to hold it back, the final stage fired up its own rockets and kept going. When the capsule was going fast enough to enter orbit, the final stage dropped off and fell back as well. The used rockets were dropped in such a way that they landed in the ocean or in empty areas of the Earth where few people lived.
Now the countdown finished. Flame blossomed out around the bottom of the rocket, and after what seemed like an endless moment, the rocket slowly began to lift into the air. With the steady thrust of the engines, the rocket began to accelerate, to go faster and faster. Because of the acceleration, Gagarin felt as if a heavy weight was on top of him, or as if he had multiplied his own weight many times. This is the same force that pushes you back into your seat when your car pulls onto a highway, but in the case of Yuri Gagarin this force was much, much stronger.
In spite of the pressure, Gagarin felt calm. His pulse, measured by the instruments that were sending signals back to base, was only 75, about normal for someone relaxing on Earth. He looked out through the portholes of his command module and said over the radio to the mission controllers, "I see land covered with haze. I feel well." Now we knew that humans could stand the stress of take-off.
Soon, after the final stage had separated, Gagarin could see the curving edge of the Earth, and was the first human being to see with his naked eyes that the Earth was round. From orbit, he could see the Earth's atmosphere as a band of misty blue around the whole planet, and above it the solid black of outer space with stars shining more brightly than they ever did when seen from solid ground.
Vostok was in orbit. It was a satellite falling around the Earth, traveling at many thousands of miles per hour. Yuri Gagarin was the first human being in space. Now was the time to find out if humans could survive the unknown.
Because Vostok was in free fall, Gagarin and everything in the capsule with him seemed to have no weight. He felt as if he could float above the chair where he was strapped. It seemed easier and more comfortable to be weightless, but there were problems. For instance, if he wanted to write in a notebook, he had to hold onto it so it wouldn't float away. However, it was easy to get used to, and proved that human beings could stand weightlessness.
Vostok made only one complete orbit of the Earth before its planned landing, going so fast that it took only two hours to circle the globe. When he got the signal, Gagarin turned on his instruments, flipped a switch to make sure his ship was lined up, and fired the single rocket engine to slow Vostok down and make it fall out of orbit. The instrument module fell away, and Gagarin began to fall back to Earth, a single human being inside a heavy metal ball that was falling at four miles a minute. Shielding on the outside of the ball kept it from burning up with friction.
The Soviet space scientists were not sure whether the cosmonaut could land while inside his capsule, so when the capsule was still four miles up, a hatch opened in the side of the ball and Gagarin ejected, along with his padded chair. His parachute opened, and he floated back to Earth, landing near a Russian village. At 2 1/2 miles, the capsule's parachute also opened, and Vostok landed undamaged as well.
A human being had survived take-off, weightlessness, re-entry, and all the other unknown dangers of space-flight, and had proved that humanity could leave the planet where it was born. The Soviet Union, now that it knew the mission was a success, released the news to the world. Yuri Gagarin was a national hero.
In the United States, people, again, were both excited and disappointed. A human being had gone into space and humanity had taken the next step out into the great universe--but it was a Russian cosmonaut, not an American astronaut, who had ventured into the unknown.
A human being could go into orbit, but what was next? Who could be first to "walk" in space, or dock with another space craft, or orbit the Moon, or even land on the Moon? The "space race" between the great superpowers was well underway, and for the next ten years the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would expend tremendous effort and enormous amounts of money on the competition.
Go on to Part 4: Outside the Capsule: The "Space Walks"
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This page last modified on August 15, 2002
