At the BaikonourCosmodrome in what is now Kazakhstan, an R-7 booster towered almost100 feet (30 meters) above its launch pad. After arriving at the pad alongwith his backup, cosmonautGherman Titov, Gagarin said goodbye to the engineers and officialsin attendance and rode an elevator to the tip of the rocket where a spacecraftcalled Vostok (the Russian word for "east") was perched. Vostok consistedof a spherical descent module containing the crew cabin, which was attachedto a conical instrument module that housed the crafts retrorocket. Duringlaunch, the spacecraft was concealed within an aerodynamic shroud thatwould separate as the vehicle entered the vacuum of space. If all wentwell, Gagarin would ride Vostok once around Earth, then reenter the atmospherefor a landing perhaps a few hundred miles (kilometers) from where he started.Total flight time: Under two hours.The preparations for thisswift voyage, however, had taken decades. Spaceflight had begun to movetoward reality after the Second World War, when rocket specialists in theU.S.S.R. and the United States began developing giant, liquid-fueled rocketsto launch nuclear weapons. These so-called Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles(ICBMs) represented a terrible advance in warfare -- but they also promiseda means of lofting a human being into orbit. Still, the U.S. governmenthad relatively little interest in human spaceflight, and to much of theAmerican public, talk of space voyages seemed like so much Buck Rogerscraziness.
That is, untilSputnik. When the Soviets launched the worlds first artificial satellitein 1957, using their R-7 ICBM, they dealt a crushing blow to U.S. prestige.Suddenly, space became the major arena of the Cold War. When John Kennedytook office in 1961, he was aware that the U.S. could not afford to beleft behind in the "space race" with the Soviets. By that time, seven U.S.astronauts and eight Soviet cosmonauts were already preparing for whatthey each hoped would be the worlds first space voyages. But there weredelays in testing the U.S. Mercury spacecraft and its Redstone booster,and as Gagarin climbed into Vostoks cabin NASA was still weeks away fromeven attempting a piloted space mission.
7:50 a.m.
Gagarin lay on his back ina special ejection seat inside Vostoks cabin while outside a team of techniciansbegan installing the spacecrafts hatch. For almost an hour they laboredto seal the hatch properly using 30 screws. During the wait, cosmonautPavel Popovich joked with Gagarin by radio, saying, "Youre not gettingbored there, are you?"
Although Gagarin was notbored -- he was full of anticipation for the adventure about to begin --he would have relatively little to do during the flight. Vostok was programmedto operate automatically, or by commands from mission control. That wasbecause no one could be sure how Gagarin would respond to the effects ofprolonged weightlessness. Only in an emergency would Gagarin himself beallowed to take control -- and then only after he had punched a three-digitcode number into a special locking device on the instrument panel.
With five minutes to go untillaunch, Gagarin closed the visor to his space helmet as the launch towerwas rolled away from the R-7. In the control center, Sergei Korolev --the chief architect of the Soviet space program -- was so nervous he hadtaken a tranquilizer. Gagarin, who had slept soundly the night before,now felt his heart quicken. With seconds to go until launch, his pulsereached 157 beats per minute.
9:07 a.m.
Fire erupted from the R-7s20 kerosene-fueled engines, and after building up to 880,000 pounds ofthrust, the great rocket rose from the pad with an earthshaking roar. Upin the cabin of Vostok, Gagarin felt an upward surge and said over theradio, "Lets go!"
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