News 60th anniversary of Gagarin's flight and 40th anniversary of STS-1

Sbb1413

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On this day, 60 years ago, Yuri Gagarin flew to space with his Vostok 1 spacecraft. After completing one orbit, he became the first man to go to space. Today is the 60th anniversary of his daring flight, and Russia is proud of him.

There are several places named after Yuri Gagarin. Quoting @SiberianTiger, they are:
  • A town in Smolensk region, formerly Gzhatsk;
  • A crater on the Moon;
  • Asteroid #1772;
  • A space mission support ship (now already scrapped);
  • one rocket launch pad;
  • one spacemen training centre;
  • one Air Force Academy;
  • Streets and districts in most of major ex-USSR cities;
  • The general education school I studied in; :)
  • ... and everything else I don't recall. ;)
The worst luck is with space shuttles: perhaps, if the Buran project had survived, one would exist.
Edit: STS-1, the first Space Shuttle mission, flew exactly twenty years after Vostok 1.
 
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4throck

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Sbb1413

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One thing I would like to say that unlike modern space capsules, Vostok 1 did not land with the cosmonaut. Yuri ejected from the spacecraft after re-entry. This is one of the truths of Soviet space program that was hidden from us for three decades. It was 1991 when we came to know about these truths.
 

MaxBuzz

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I've been trying to find a clean recording of Yuri's transmissions.
I have the transcript, a translation, and an online video with the full audio but with added music.
Supposedly the audio is (was ? ) available on an CD ( http://rgantd.ru/gag70_cd/data/audio.htm ) issued by the Russian archives.
This page (as far as I can tell) has some links to it (last item) http://www.cosmoworld.ru/spaceencyclopedia/gagarin/index.shtml?index_g.html
Can any of the Russian speaking forum members help ?
transcript of negotiations on two communication channels
video

the link you provided is Yuri Gagarin's speech before the start
 

malcontent

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One thing I would like to say that unlike modern space capsules, Vostok 1 did not land with the cosmonaut. Yuri ejected from the spacecraft after re-entry. This is one of the truths of Soviet space program that was hidden from us for three decades. It was 1991 when we came to know about these truths.

Honestly the fact that he had to jump out makes it more awesome. The spacecraft was tumbling after a rough separation, he hit 8gs on a wobbly reentry and got fired out the back. Sounds like a wild ride.
 
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MaxBuzz

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Gagarin might not have ejected, which he told foreign journalists at a press conference (speaking of secrecy)
scale_1200.jpgscale_1200.jpg
 
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Sbb1413

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Gagarin might not have ejected, which he told foreign journalists at a press conference (speaking of secrecy)
View attachment 24814View attachment 24815
Again, we came to know about Yuri's ejection in 1991, and he had to say some lies to the press to keep this secret. As I said in my "communism, socialism and secrecy" thread, the Soviets publicised their successes and hid their failures till 1991, when all the hidden failures were declassified as part of Vladimir Gorbachev's "glasnost" policy.
 
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MaxBuzz

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Soviets publicised their successes and hid their failures
on the other hand, about the fire at the Little Rock military base (USA) August 9, 1965 where 53 people died and the Titan 2 intercantinental ballistic missile nearly exploded you can only find a small newspaper article written 15 years later
 
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4throck

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You have to remember that the Soviets didn't separate civilian from military. High secrecy applied to all their operations.
Although you can't really compare, US status reports and documentaries of that period make little or no mention of failures and mishaps.
For example, Elliot See and Charles Bassett just disappear from footage in early 1966.

But back to Gagarin, ejection was debated internationally back in 1961.
It was not a secret because of Titov's flight a few months after Gagarin.

"This led to a special meeting of the delegates to the FAI to reexamine Titov’s spaceflight records.
The conclusion of the delegates was to rework the parameters of human spaceflight to recognize that the great technological accomplishment of spaceflight was the launch, orbiting and safe return of the human, not the manner in which he or she landed"

 

Sbb1413

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The conclusion of the delegates was to rework the parameters of human spaceflight to recognize that the great technological accomplishment of spaceflight was the launch, orbiting and safe return of the human, not the manner in which he or she landed
Yeah, it is true. But I wanted to say that Vostok 1 was technologically inferior to the Mercury capsule, where John Glenn landed with the capsule after an orbital flight. Returning while remaining inside the capsule is obviously safer than returning while remaining outside the capsule.
 
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