How much space was Gagarin and was there at all?

How much in space was Gagarin, the first person to have visited extraterrestrial space? Was he really the first? And did they actually fly?

12 April 1961

This date forever divided the consciousness of earthlings to "before" and "after". Until this day, people never left Earth, did not see it from space, and many did not think it would be possible. But Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, the first cosmonaut in the history of mankind, in fact proved the opposite.

On the ship "Vostok-1" he flew around the Earth forty thousand two hundred kilometers, landing on a parachute from a height of seven kilometers. While flying up, he was in the rank of a senior lieutenant, but after the flight he was promoted immediately to the major. How much space was Gagarin, having done on Earth such a dizzying career? The flight did not last long, but entered the world history, making the first cosmonaut famous.

All subsequent flights were also events of world significance, but no such resonance was received.

Vostok-1

The first spacecraft of earthlings with a man on board was called the "East". He did not let anybody down, and the first cosmonaut returned to Earth alive and unharmed. The ship was almost two and a half meters in diameter, about four and a half meters in length (therefore, the candidates for cosmonauts were not selected above one hundred and seventy centimeters), weighed 4.37 tons and had the possibility of manual control.

Up to that short period of time, as Gagarin spent in space, Vostok had several predecessors. Seven vehicles called "Sputnik" were tested in the most severe mode. Some of them were wrecked, because of which the possibility of finding a person in space remained in question.

But in the end all obstacles were overcome, and Gagarin's time in space came.

April 12, 1961 at 9:07 from the cosmodrome "Baikonur" the ship "Vostok" started.

Flight

The first flight of a person around the Earth can not be called completely perfect. It was recently announced that during this time eleven contingencies were recorded.

One of them occurred when you returned to the planet. Before entering the atmosphere, there were some problems that the astronaut himself called "an abnormal situation", so as not to frighten the Queen. In fact, the ship spun for as long as ten minutes, as the necessary compartment did not disconnect. This happened already in the layers of the atmosphere, and Gagarin saw how the metal melted behind the window glass (the temperature there reached from three to five thousand degrees). But thanks to the courage of the future Hero of the Soviet Union, everything was overcome, and he arrived on Earth.

As long as there was Gagarin in space, all cosmonauts will spend more than once in the future. But he was the first. And what will be there, how man behaves, at that moment no one knew. However, Yuri Alekseevich coped with the task, and on Earth he was honored and famous for the planetary scale.

How much space was Gagarin? What happened to him after the flight?

How long Gagarin stayed in space - this is known. At the age of twenty-seven, he made the first manned flight into space, lasting only one hundred and eight minutes.

How was his life "after"? He became the Hero of the Soviet Union and received the Order of Lenin. He visited many countries where he was impatiently awaited, made an honorary member of various societies and rewarded. He began to lead an active social life, but, despite the glory and universal love, once again sought to return to the flights.

Yury Alekseevich Gagarin was killed in the air, on a fighter plane along with his instructor Vladimir Sergeevich Seregin, on March 27, 1968, two years after the death of the legendary Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. In the pocket of his jacket among other things was a picture of the designer. Gagarin was only 34 years old.

Rumors of flights "before" and "after"

While in the Soviet Union was admired by the first person to conquer the cosmos, information appeared in Western media that before Gagarin in space there were already people who, apparently, were killed.

In 1957, 1958 and 1959, attempts were made to launch a man into space, but they ended tragically. In 1960, with another attempt, the capsule with the man allegedly flew to the cosmic abyss. And in early 1961, one Soviet satellite broadcast a human heartbeat, which stopped.

Rumors also circulated that in the autumn of 1961 a group flight with a tragic outcome was committed. At the end of 1962, Italian radio operators caught the signals, they said, of a perishing ship.

About Gagarin said that he did not really fly over the Earth. For him it was made a few days earlier by another astronaut who looked so bad after the flight that it was decided not to show it to the world. So they took a cheerful guy and staged the flight.

Disclaimer

However, cosmonaut Grechko completely refuted rumors about human casualties not reported to the press. Prior to Gagarin, mannequins were sent into space, two of which were equipped with tape recorders with recordings of words. Tape recorders during the flight included, and radio amateurs, catching, as they thought, conversations, made their conclusions. There were no official reports at that time, and rumors began to circulate.