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 |  | Russia Cosmonaut Gherman Titov Dies
By Anatoly Zak
Staff Writer
posted: 03:00 pm ET
21 September 2000
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Gherman Stepanovich Titov, the second man to orbit Earth and a legend of the early Space Age, died Wednesday in Moscow at the age of 65.
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Titov's body was discovered in the sauna of his apartment on Khovanskaya Street in Moscow, and initial media reports asserted that carbon monoxide poisoning was the cause of death. The latest information from Russia, however, indicated that Titov's sauna was electrically operated and cardiac arrest caused the death. Titov was known to have heart problems.
Titov was born on September 11, 1935 in the village of Verkhnie Zhilino in the Altai Region. He graduated from the Stalingrad Military Aviation School and was selected in the first group of cosmonauts in 1960.
In May 1961, after the historic Gagarin flight, the first group of the Soviet cosmonauts vacationed in the Crimean resort of Sochi. The chief-designer of the Vostok spacecraft, Sergey Korolev, and his wife stayed nearby in their residence Yaveinaya. This shot was made at Yaveinaya and appears to be the only photo showing the entire original group of the Soviet cosmonauts except V. Bondarenko who was killed in a ground-training accident in March 1961, as well as A. Kartashov and V. Varlamov who were dismissed from the group for medical reasons. In the first row, left to right: P. Popovich, V. Gorbatko, E. Khrunov, U. Gagarin, S. Korolev, N. Koroleva with Popovich's daughter Natasha, the chief of the original cosmonaut group E.A. Karpov, parachute coach N.K. Nikitin, physician E.A. Fedorov. In the second row: A. Leonov, A. Nikolaev, M. Rafikov, D. Zaikin, B. Volunov, G. Titov, G. Nelubov, V. Bukovskiy, G. Shonin. In the third row: V. Filatiev, I. Anikeev, P. Belayev.
On August 6, 1961, Titov blasted into space aboard a one-person Vostok 2 spacecraft, some four months after Yuri Gagarin made the first piloted journey into space and three months after Alan Shepard became the first American in space. Unlike Gagarin, who completed a single orbit of Earth, Titov circled the planet for a day, greatly pushing that era's limits of human experience in space.
During his 17-orbit mission, Titov attempted many activities that were soon to become routine in human space exploration, such as exercising, sleeping, eating and using an on-board toilet. He also suffered from the syndrome analogous to seasickness that would plague space travelers for decades to come.
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Titov also used a movie camera to document his journey and shoot some images of Earth floating below his spacecraft.
As Russian space officials were known to say: "If Gagarin [was] first [to have] flown in space, Titov was the first to live there."
There are numerous legends on how Soviet space officials choose Gagarin over Titov for the first orbital flight. Both men were considered favorites for the first space mission among 20 members of the original group of cosmonauts.
The Vostok 1, above, carried Gagarin to space. Titov flew in a similar craft, the Vostok 2.
According to the Russian sources, the final decision to make Gagarin a prime candidate and Titov his backup was made by the Air Force commanders, who managed the cosmonaut training, only hours before the launch of Vostok 1, the first piloted spacecraft, on April 12, 1961. Apparently, Gagarin's peasant roots in contrast to Titov's "intelligentsia" background played at least some role in the decision. Titov came from a teacher's family.
Boris Chertok, one of the pioneers of the Soviet space program, revealed in his recently published memoirs that Titov landed dangerously close to a railway line where a train was running at the time. As a result of the incident, representatives of the Soviet railway authorities were included in the State Commissions overseeing piloted launches, the author wrote.
The Soviet Union presented Titov's mission as another victory in its propaganda war with the United States. At the time of his flight, U.S. astronauts had completed two suborbital missions aboard Mercury capsules. John Glenn made his successful three-orbit flight in February 1962, however, NASA would not log a daylong mission until 1963.
Titov never returned to space. After his retirement from the group of cosmonauts in 1970, he worked for the Soviet Ministry of Defense and Soviet Space Forces. Titov also was elected to the Russian Duma (parliament) in 1995.
A memorial service for Titov is set for 7 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (23:00 GMT, 11 a.m. Moscow Time) on September 25 in the cultural center of the Russian Armed Forces at 2 Suvorovskaya Square in Moscow, radio station Ekho Moskvy reported. Titov will be buried at the Novodevichie Cemetery in Moscow.
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