YURI GAGARIN: The first human in space
Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968)
From war-torn countryside to fighter jet cockpit
Long before he became the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin was simply a village boy born to working-class parents on a collective farm in the Soviet countryside.
Unfortunately, this simple childhood was brutally interrupted during World War II when Nazi forces occupied his village, halting his schooling and forcing his family to endure severe hardship.
After the war, Gagarin resumed his education, first training as a metal caster and later moving to the Saratov Industrial Technical School to continue his technical studies.
In 1954, at Saratov, he joined the local aeroclub, learned to fly, and completed his first solo flight. Driven by this ambition, he entered the Chkalov First Military Aviation Pilot School in Orenburg, graduating with honors. During those years he married Valentina Goryacheva, before being assigned as a MiG-15 fighter pilot to a naval aviation unit stationed in the freezing climate of the Murmansk region.
The selection of the first cosmonaut
In 1960, the Soviet Union launched a secret search across the military to find its first cosmonauts, evaluating nearly 3,000 fighter pilots through rigorous screenings.
Gagarin successfully passed each stage, earning a spot among the twenty finalists sent to Star City for specialized training.
There, the candidates were pushed to their physical and psychological limits. They spent hours inside human centrifuges to withstand crushing gravitational forces, endured days of total sensory deprivation in sealed isolation chambers, and performed disorienting parabolic flights to experience weightlessness. They were also subjected to extreme heat chambers, high-altitude oxygen-depletion tests, and intensive skydiving drills over land and water to master emergency ejections.
When the final decision approached, medical reports consistently highlighted Gagarin's sharp intellect, outstanding memory, and remarkable composure under extreme pressure. His physical build also proved decisive: standing just 1.57 meters tall, he fit comfortably inside the tight confines of the Vostok capsule.
Yet his biggest advantage lay in his character. In an anonymous peer poll where the trainees were asked who among them should fly first, almost every candidate wrote down Gagarin’s name, respecting his natural leadership and unshakeable calm.
Soviet authorities, led by Chief Designer Sergei Korolev and Premier Nikita Khrushchev, agreed with the pilots. Beyond his flawless test marks, Gagarin embodied the Soviet ideal.
Born to peasant farmers on a collective farm, he represented the rise of the common working class, and his warm, radiant smile gave the Soviet Union the perfect diplomatic face to present to the world.
The first human orbit and a fierce reentry
On the morning of April 12, 1961, at 09:07 Moscow time, the engines of Vostok 1 ignited at Baikonur Cosmodrome, lifting the rocket off the pad as Gagarin’s voice crackled over the radio with his famous shout: « Poyekhali! » (Let's go!).
Within minutes, the rocket breached the atmosphere, placing him into low Earth orbit and making him the first human in space!
For 108 minutes, Gagarin, completed a full orbit around Earth.
Because Soviet engineers did not know how zero gravity would affect the human mind, the spacecraft was piloted entirely by automated systems from the ground.
Gagarin spent his time in orbit monitoring the instrument panels, taking notes on a notepad that briefly floated away, testing whether a human could swallow food and water in space, and describing the view through the craft's portholes.
The most perilous phase began during reentry. As the retro-rockets fired to slow the craft down, the service module failed to detach cleanly from the spherical descent capsule, leaving the two sections bound together by a thick bundle of wires.
The craft tumbled wildly through the upper atmosphere until atmospheric friction burned through the cables, freeing the capsule to right its heat shield against temperatures reaching several thousand degrees.
Once the descent slowed through the thick air, at roughly 7,000 meters above the Saratov region, the hatch blew open. Gagarin was catapulted into the freezing sky and parachuted separately into a farmer's field, a landing method the Soviet Union kept hidden for years to secure international certification of the flight.
An irreplaceable symbol: forbidden from flying beyond earth
This flight transformed the twenty-seven-year-old pilot into a national hero.
After this missions, Gagarin traveled the world on extensive diplomatic tours, presenting a friendly face for Soviet propaganda across dozens of countries.
Back home, he assumed major political and technical duties: he was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, graduated with an aeronautical engineering degree, and became deputy training director at the Cosmonaut Training Center, where he actively supported lunar projects and the inclusion of the first female cosmonauts. However, his legendary status came with a heavy cost.
Unfortunately for him, as he had become an irreplaceable political symbol, Soviet authorities barred him from ever flying into space again.
After his friend Vladimir Komarov died during the Soyuz 1 crash in 1967, a mission where Gagarin had served as backup, officials placed severe restrictions even on his routine airplane flights.
A hero lost: The legend that transcended borders
Desperate to regain his flight status despite these strict bans, Gagarin finally obtained permission to resume regular aviation training.
However, his return to the cockpit did not last long…
On March 27, 1968, Gagarin took off on a two-seat MiG-15UTI jet with instructor Vladimir Seregin for a routine training flight, but the flight ended tragically: their plane crashed near the town of Kirzhach, killing both men instantly.
The news devastated the country, which had just lost its greatest hero at only thirty-four, and in response, the Soviet Union declared a period of national mourning, interring his ashes with full state honors in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
In the years that followed, his legacy only grew: his hometown of Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin, the cosmonaut training center in Star City took his name, and the launch pad at Baikonur became known as Gagarin's Start.
Even across the Iron Curtain, his pioneering courage transcended the Cold War: when the Apollo 11 crew landed on the Moon in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left behind commemorative medals bearing Yuri Gagarin's name to honor the first man who dared to venture into the cosmos.