by Jamie Doran
As for Yuri: he will always retain his rightful place in history, regardless of anything we have written. He may only be as popular as Captain Kirk for now, but his true importance in the story of our species is still evolving. Probably it will be best appreciated by men and women not yet born: the people of a space-faring civilisation, scattered far and wide among the infinite opportunities of the cosmos.
Jamie Doran & Piers Bizony, November 2010
CHAPTER REFERENCES AND NOTES
1: Farmboy
1 TASS, Soviet Man in Space, Moscow: TASS/Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, p. 7. See also: Burchett, Wilfred & Purdy, Anthony, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, London: Anthony Gibbs & Phillips, 1961, pp. 87–99.
2 Quoted in Golovanov, Yaroslav, Our Gagarin, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978, p. 37.
3 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 89.
4 Ibid., p. 90.
5 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 42.
6 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 91.
7 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 43.
8 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, pp. 92–3
9 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 263–4.
10 Ibid., p. 265.
2: Recruitment
1 Gagarin, The Road to the Stars, quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 53–4.
2 Hooper, Gordon R., The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Lowestoft: second edition, GRH Publications, 1990, Vol. II, ‘Cosmonaut Biographies’, pp. 299–301.
3 Ibid., pp. 161–6.
4 Oberg, James, Red Star in Orbit, New York: Random House, 1981, p. 97. Oberg’s highly entertaining book was the first popular Western account of the Soviet space programme.
5 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 103.
6 Quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 60–61.
7 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 104.
8 Ibid., p. 104.
3: The Chief Designer
1 For an excellent account of the Chief Designer’s life and work, see Harford, James, Korolev, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
2 McCauley, Martin, Who’s Who in Russia Since 1900, London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 212–13.
3 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 25.
4 Khrushchev, Nikita, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, Boston: Little, Brown, 1970, p. 46.
5 Gatland, Kenneth, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Space Technology, London: second edition, Salamander, 1989. Gatland’s book is a reliable general guide to spacecraft designs, launch dates and missions.
6 Interview with Oleg Ivanovsky. The silver cladding around the ‘ball’ was just a thin layer of reflective foil designed to protect the cabin against harsh solar radiation. The atmospheric heat-shield underneath comprised a much thicker and heavier layer of resin and fibre.
7 Quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 89.
8 Quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 265.
4: Preparation
1 For a description of Baikonur’s construction, see Harvey, Brian, The New Russian Space Programme, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996, pp. 19–20, Kapustin Yar, pp. 141–3, Plesetsk, pp. 143–40.
2 Daily Telegraph, May 6, 1960, p. 1.
3 Secret US space projects are outlined in Trento, Joseph, Prescription for Disaster, London: Harrap, 1987, pp. 122–49.
4 Oberg, James, ‘Disaster at the Cosmodrome’, Air & Space Magazine, December 1990, pp. 74–7. For some years Western analysts were confused about the identity of the rocket that blew up. The Nedelin disaster happened to coincide with the early R-7 Mars probe failures, but Nedelin’s R-16 was definitely a military missile, not a space launcher. See also: Joint Publications Research Service-UMA-89-015, June 15, 1989, pp. 34–50.
5 Heppenheimer, T.A., Countdown, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997, pp. 188–9. See also: Harford, Korolev, p. 242, and Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. 1: ‘Background Sections’, pp. 172–3. For a general analysis of Soviet cosmonaut fatalities and hidden rocket failures, see Oberg, James, Uncovering Soviet Disasters, London: Robert Hale, 1988, pp. 156–97.
6 Harford, Korolev, pp. 163–4.
7 Ibid., pp. 167–8.
8 A full account of the Mercury programme can be found in Swenson, Loyd, Grimwood, James & Alexander, Charles, This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, NASA SP-4201, 1966.
9 On March 16, 1996, Sotheby’s auction house in New York held its second sale of Russian space hardware and memorabilia. Lot 25 consisted of ‘Ivan Ivanovich’s’ capsule, stripped of most of its interior equipment but still clearly recognizable as a Vostok prototype. The catalogue’s explanatory notes, prepared with the help of OKB-1 engineer-cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov, with additional material by James Oberg and various Russian historical experts, described Ivan’s adventures in full. See Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue 6753, Russian Space History, New York: March 16, 1996.
10 Popescu, Julian, Russian Space Exploration, London: Gothard, 1979, p. 16.
5: Pre-Flight
1 Interview with Gai Severin, quoted in Harford, Korolev, p. 162.
2 Cameraman Vladimir Suvorov’s account of his work can be found in Suvorov, Vladimir & Sabelnikov, Alexander, The First Manned Spaceflight, Commack, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 1997, pp. 61–75.
3 Kamanin diaries, April 7, 1961.
4 Suvorov & Sabelnikov, The First Manned Spaceflight, p. 58.
5 Harvey, The New Russian Space Programme, p. 54.
6 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 124.
7 Interview with Gagarin’s hairdresser Igor Khoklov.
8 Murray, Charles & Bly Cox, Catherine, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, London: Secker & Warburg, 1989, p. 76.
9 Gagarin, The Road to the Stars, quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 125.
10 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 123.
11 Suvorov & Sabelnikov, The First Manned Spaceflight, p. 62.
12 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 25.
13 Suvorov & Sabelnikov, The First Manned Spaceflight, pp. 64–5
14 Interview with Oleg Ivanovsky. See also: Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. II, pp. 198–9; Oberg, Uncovering Soviet Disasters, pp. 157–9.
6: 108 Minutes
1 Quotes taken from original tapes of ground-to-capsule dialogue, quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 127–8, 131–42.
2 A full account of the flight, including extensive quotes from Gagarin himself, can be found in Belyanov, V., et al., ‘Tomorrow is Space Programme Day: the Classified Documents on Gagarin’s Spaceflight’, Rabochaya Tribuna, April 11, 1991, pp. 124–8. For an English translation, see Joint Publications Research Service-USP-91–004, September 20, 1991, pp. 71–7. Further details of the flight can be found in ‘Yuri Gagarin’s Immortal Day’, Spaceflight magazine, April 1991, pp. 124–8. See also: Baker, David, The History of Manned Spaceflight, London: New Cavendish, 1981, pp. 70–73; and Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, pp. 110–17 for a highly censored account of the flight.
3 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, p. 143.
4 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 146–7.
5 Ibid., pp. 146–7.
6 Ibid., pp. 149–50.
7 Joint Publications Research Service-USP-91–004, September 20, 1991, pp. 71–7; Belyanov, ‘Tomorrow . . .’ See also: Broad, William J., ‘The Untold Perils of the First Manned Spaceflight’, The New York Times, March 5, 1996.
8 The Vostok flight plan and ejection sequence are described in Newkirk, Dennis, Almanac of Soviet Manned Spaceflight, Houston: Gulf, 1990, pp. 7–21.
9 Murray & Cox, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, p. 76.
10 Shepard, Alan & Slayton, Deke, Moonshot, London: Virgin, 1995, pp. 105–6. See also: The Times, April 13, 1961, p. 12, ‘We Are Asleep’.
11 Swenson, Grimwood & Alexander, This New Ocean, p. 335. See also: ‘Ups and downs in Space as US gets set to launch man’, Life magazine, May 5, 1961.
7: Coming Home
1 Quoted in Golovanov, Ou
r Gagarin, p. 150.
2 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 150–51.
3 An English-language report, prepared for the International Aeronautics Federation and signed by Gagarin, Borisenko and other officials, featured as Lot 39 in Sotheby’s auction of March 16, 1996. Full details of the document can be found in the reference for Lot 39, Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue 6753, Russian Space History, March 16, 1996.
4 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 151.
5 The conversation between Gagarin and Khrushchev was widely reported in the press. A full transcript appeared in the 1961 TASS pamphlet Soviet Man in Space, p. 24.
6 Quoted at length in The Times obituary for Gagarin, March 29, 1968.
7 Conversation with the historian Phillip Clark.
8 Gagarin, The Road to the Stars, quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 187–8.
9 BBC archive footage, originally from a live broadcast on April 14, 1961 – the first live Western television broadcast from within the USSR – clearly shows the flapping shoelace.
10 See Lynch, Michael, Stalin and Khrushchev: The USSR, 1924–64, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996, pp. 96–102.
11 Golovanov, Our Gagarin, pp. 191–2.
12 Burchett & Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, pp. 118–23.
13 Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, p. 55.
14 Isvestia, August 28, 1961.
8: The Space Race
1 Murray & Cox, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, pp. 77–8.
2 Young, Hugo, Journey to Tranquillity: The History of Man’s Assault on the Moon, London: Jonathan Cape, 1969, p. 110. In addition, Kennedy’s original memo is reproduced as a photograph in the picture section following p. 136.
3 See Trento, Prescription for Disaster, pp. 12–13, for a description of Lyndon Johnson’s involvement in the creation of NASA in 1958. See also: Lambright, Henry W., Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, pp. 95–6, 132–5;Archives of Dr John Logsdon, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University, Washington, DC, ref: RG 220, NASC files, Box 17, Defence 1961, Webb-McNamara Report, 5-8-1961.
4 Trento, Prescription for Disaster, pp. 48–9.
5 Young, Journey to Tranquillity, pp. 108–9.
6 Ibid., p. 113.
7 Harford, Korolev, p. 178.
8 Ibid. p. 151.
9 Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. II, pp. 296–9.
9: The Foros Incident
1 Kamanin’s diary entries, September 14–October 3, 1961.
2 Kamanin’s diary suggests that Gagarin went out in a motor boat and ‘experimented with sharp and dangerous turns’. Anna Rumanseyeva and others remember him going out in a rowing boat, which would explain why he could not easily get back to shore.
3 Kamanin’s diaries.
4 A wall chart at Star City commemorates the dates and destinations of all Gagarin’s trips. All countries are named, except for the US. Gagarin made a very brief visit to New York on October 16, 1963, but the wall chart refers instead to the ‘United Nations’. Gagarin was a guest speaker in the UN complex, and was not formally invited by the US itself.
5 Venyamin Russayev agreed to be interviewed when Valentina Gagarina suggested he should do so. Valentina no longer gives interviews herself.
10: Back to Work
1 Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. I, pp. 33–6.
2 Kamanin’s diaries, June 22, 1962.
3 Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. II, pp. 75–6. See also: Harford, Korolev, pp. 165–6.
4 Details of Gagarin’s diploma work are derived from extensive interviews with Sergei Belotserkovsky, his tutor at the Zhukovsky Academy.
5 A detailed account of the Voskhod II mission can be found in Harvey, The New Russian Space Programme, pp. 82–8. See also: Newkirk, Almanac of Soviet Manned Spaceflight, pp. 35–7.
6 Harford, Korolev, pp. 49–63.
7 Conversation with James Oberg.
11: Falling to Earth
1 For a valuable account of Mishin’s troubles, see Sagdeev, Roald, The Making of a Soviet Scientist, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994, pp. 123–4, 179–81.
2 The Apollo I fire exposed some scandalous business relationships and incompetencies associated with the NASA moon project. For an eye-opening account, see Young, Journey to Tranquillity, pp. 212–48.
3 Archives of Dr John Logsdon, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University, Washington, DC, National Intelligence Estimate Number 11-1-67, March 2, 1967, ‘The Soviet Space Programme’, p. 18.
4 Quoted in Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, pp. 90–91.
5 Yevsikov, Victor, Re-entry Technology and the Soviet Space Programme: Some Personal Observations, Reston, VA: Delphic Associates, 1982, quoted in Oberg, Uncovering Soviet Disasters, p. 171.
6 Details of Gagarin’s involvement in the Soyuz technical assessment are confirmed by ex-KGB officer Venyamin Russayev, at the specific request of Valentina Gagarina.
7 Detailed technical accounts of the possible sequence of failures during Komarov’s flight can be found in Newkirk, Dennis, Almanac of Soviet Manned Spaceflight, pp. 58–64. See also: Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. II, pp. 133–6; Harvey, The New Russian Space Programme, pp. 107–10;Gatland, Kenneth, ‘The Soviet Space Programme After Soyuz 1’, Spaceflight magazine, Vol. 9, No. 9, 1967, pp. 298–9; Shepard & Slayton, Moonshot, pp. 250–53.
8 The interview, under the headline ‘US Electronic Espionage: a Memoir’, was published in the left-leaning American journal Ramparts, which went out of business in 1980. According to a senior source in the US State Department, the National Security Agency (NSA) considered prosecuting Fellwock. He could have been imprisoned, but the case was dropped because the NSA did not want to admit in open court to their radio monitoring of Soviet space communications.
12: Wreckage
1 Hooper, The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. I, p. 144.
2 Quoted in Golovanov, Our Gagarin, p. 214.
3 Ibid., p. 270. Incidentally, this is the only paragraph in a 300-page book to suggest that Gagarin’s professional circumstances were sometimes painful for him.
4 Leskov, Sergei, ‘The Mystery of Gagarin’s Death’, Izvestia, March 28, 1996.
5 Ibid.
6 Transcripted quotes from original commission reports from the papers of Sergei Belotserkovsky.
7 Ibid.
8 Letter from Igor Kacharovsky, July 3, 1986, from the papers of Sergei Belotserkovsky.
9 The authors are grateful to the Martin Baker company for advice on ejection-seat procedures.
10 Julin, Alexander, ‘Gagarin & Serugin – The Last Flight’, Moscow News, No. 3, week of January 28–February 4, 1996.
11 Interview with Koloshov, Argumenti i Facti, No. 12, week of April 2–April 9, 1995.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, David, The History of Manned Spaceflight, London: New Cavendish, 1981.
Burchett, Wilfred & Purdy, Anthony, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, London: Anthony Gibbs & Phillips, 1961.
Gatland, Kenneth, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Space Technology, London: second edition, Salamander, 1989.
Golovanov, Yaroslav, Our Gagarin, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978.
Harford, James, Korolev, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
Harvey, Brian, The New Russian Space Programme, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
Heppenheimer, T.A., Countdown, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
Hooper, Gordon R., The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. I ‘Background Sections’, Lowestoft: second edition, GRH Publications, 1990.
Hooper, Gordon R., The Soviet Cosmonaut Team, Vol. II ‘Cosmonaut Biographies’, Lowestoft: second edition, GRH Publications, 1990.
Khrushchev, Nikita, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, Boston: Little, Brown, 1970.
Lambright, Henry W., Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Launius, Roger, NASA: A History of the US Civil Space Program, Malabar, Florida: Krieger, 1994.
Lynch, Michael, Stalin and Khrushchev: The USSR, 1924–64, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.
McCauley, Martin, Who’s Who in Russia Since 1900, London: Routledge, 1997.
Murray, Charles & Bly Cox, Catherine, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, London: Secker & Warburg, 1989.
Newkirk, Dennis, Almanac of Soviet Manned Spaceflight, Houston: Gulf, 1990.
Oberg, James, Red Star in Orbit, New York: Random House, 1981.
Oberg, James, Uncovering Soviet Disasters, London: Robert Hale, 1988.
Popescu, Julian, Russian Space Exploration, London: Gothard, 1979.
Sagdeev, Roald, The Making of a Soviet Scientist, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994.
Shepard, Alan & Slayton, Deke, Moonshot, London: Virgin, 1995.
Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue 6753, Russian Space History, New York: March 16, 1996.
Suvorov, Vladimir & Sabelnikov, Alexander, The First Manned Spaceflight, Commack, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 1997.
Swenson, Loyd, Grimwood, James & Alexander, Charles, This New Ocean: a History of Project Mercury, Washington, DC: GPO, NASA SP-4201, 1966.
TASS, Soviet Man in Space, Moscow: TASS/Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961.
Trento, Joseph, Prescription for Disaster, London: Harrap, 1987.
Yevsikov, Victor, Re-entry Technology and the Soviet Space Programme: Some Personal Observations, Reston, VA: Delphic Associates, 1982.
Young, Hugo, Journey to Tranquillity: The History of Man’s Assault on the Moon, London: Jonathan Cape, 1969.
Picture Acknowledgements
Two great rivals: Gherman Titov (left) and Gagarin
(Baker/Planet), A view through the Vostok capsule’s
hatch (Baker), A Vostok on display showing the
troublesome electrical connector (Baker/Planet),
A Vostok ejection seat and space suit (Baker), Gagarin
and his political champion, Nikita Khruschev, celebrating
