Who Was the First Person in Space?

just five ft two inches tall. That's one point six meters and slightly shorter than I am, which is impressive, but in the lore of space exploration, Gagarin casts an enormously long shadow. In both life and death, he left a legacy brimming with both outstanding achievements and unanswered questions. Born in nineteen thirty four near Moscow, Gagarin was the son of a carpenter and a milkmaid. When he was still a child, Nazi forces invaded the USSR and occupied

the town. Everyone suffered. Two of his siblings wound up in labor camp, but survived the war. Later, Gagarin attended various technical schools, but it was a flying club that really grabbed his attention. Once he had his first taste of flight, he embraced his new passion and used his weekends learning to fly. He joined the Soviet Air Force and became a full fledged fighter pilot. In the meantime, he married Valentino Gryacheva, with whom he had two daughters.

In nineteen sixty, Soviet authorities chose twenty men to take part in the country's fledgling space program. The commission specified that the men be between twenty five and thirty years old and less than five feet seven inches tall that's one point seven ms. Gagarin checked both boxes, and he was one of the lucky candidates selected for further training.

It started with rigorous physical training, which included dozens of parachute jumps, over water, oxygen starvation tests, and isolation chamber procedures meant to weed out anyone who might melt down psychologically in space. Though the process was competitive, Gagarin stood out for both his physical skills and his exceptional personality. He was competent and simply likable, in part because of the ever present smile on his face. His positive aro was such a large part of why he was ultimately

chosen for the mission. Just one week before launch, the Soviets knew that there soon to be famous Cosnaught would need to look good in front of a camera for propaganda purposes. Gagarins beaming smile fit the bill. On April twelfth of nineteen sixty one, the rocket lifted off from the cosmod Realme Just minutes later. The former farm boy was the first human in space. We spoke with Howard McCarty, as space policy expert and public affairs professor at American University.

He said Gagaren was very charismatic and well liked within the Cosmonaut Corps. He was apparently fearless. While the chief space flight engineer was popping tranquilizers, Gagarin was sitting calmly in capsule in nine six one. Very little was known about space flight and what would happen to a human who was waitless for longer than a few seconds, So there was a lot riding on this. Gagar In orbited our planet just a single time, for a hundred and

eight minutes. He reached a maximum height of two hundred three miles or three seven kilometers. During the flight, he ate, drank and monitored the onboard systems. McCarty said Gagarin had no control over his spacecraft. According to sources at NASSA, flight controllers gave Gagarin a key to the controls for use in an emergency, which he did not use. Otherwise he was just a passenger on the spacecraft, and gagarans returned to Earth. Wasn't the tidy sort of splash down

that we're used to witnessing these days, McCarty said. Gagarin did not land with his space capsule. He jumped out of it and parachuted to the ground, sort of a hair raising way to land. Even before he landed, the Soviets were trumpeting the trailblazing space flight, his safe return guaranteed worldwide. Celebrity streets were named for him, and he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Some called him the modern day Christopher Columbus. He traveled the world living proof of the success of the Soviet space program. The celebrity Cosnat visited dozens of countries in celebration of his incredible space flight, but he was barred from entering the United States. President John F. Kennedy wanted no part of celebrating the Soviet Union's accomplishment, which cast the US as being behind in the space race. Once

his publicity tour ended, Gagarin slowly returned to flying. The Air Force promoted him multiple times, in large part to keep him out of airplanes and safely on the ground. No one wanted their international superstar to die young, yet his bout with fame was unsettling. Gagarin took to drinking heavily, which concerned his superiors. Still, he trained for space and was named a backup for the so Use one mission,

and it was a lucky thing for him too. The nineteen sixty seven mission failed catastrophically when the landing module's parachute failed to open, ending with the first in flight spacecraft fatality. Gagarin gave up drinking. The next year, he recommitted himself to flying and even participated in aerospace engineering in hopes of helping to create a reusable spacecraft. In nineteen sixty eight, the famed pilot and cosmonaut took off

on a routine training flight. Shortly thereafter, the plane crashed near town just outside Moscow. Both Gagaran and the flight

instructor perished. Gagarin was just thirty two years old. Immediately, the Soviets rushed to gloss over the incident, covering up details for decades lacking convincing explanations, conspiracy theories abounded, but none of them stuck in New evidence emerged thanks to the investigative work of Alexei Leonov, former cosmonaut who was troubled by the death of his friend and fellow space traveler. His unconfirmed explanation for the crash an error and air

traffic control during the fateful flight. A Soviet plane much larger than the training flight model could have violated Gagarin's airspace. The turbulence could have caused Gagaran to lose control and ultimately plunged to his death, And perhaps the embarrassment of losing a national icon to such a simple error was too much to admit publicly, Or maybe, as Leonov speculated, the authorities didn't want to make public that there was a lapse so close to Moscow. We may never know

for sure. What we do know is that Ggarans first and only space mission left an indelible mark on our world. But we also spoke via email with Amy Foster, assistant history professor at the University of Central Florida. She said people had been dreaming of flying in the air from millennia before the right Brothers achieved that in nineteen o three, the idea of humans flying in space was even more lofty.

While both the United States and the Soviet Union had successfully launched living creatures by the time of Gagarans flight, there were still questions about how the mission would affect a human so Ggarans flight made flying in space not only achievable, but also a realistic endeavor. Today's episode was written by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other far flung topics, visit housemufworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio.

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