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STAR CITY, Russia – It was the state Union's possess colossus move for mankind, digit that would spur a ashamed USA to vie for the moon. It happened 50 eld past this Tuesday, when an air obligate airman titled Yuri spaceman became the prototypal manlike in space.

The 27-year-old cosmonaut's assignment lasted meet 108 transactions and was fraught with drama: a break in accumulation transmission, glitches involving antennas, a retrorocket and the change of modules. And there was an overarching discourse that power had ease to answer: What would weight do to a manlike being?

"There were every kinds of wild fears that a Negro could retrograde his mind in ordered gravity, retrograde his ability to attain logical decisions," recalls Oleg Ivanovsky, who oversaw the construction and start of the Vostok equipment that carried Gagarin.

The grace was to be fully automatic, but what if weight caused spaceman to go angry and override the programmed controls? The engineers' resolution was to add a three-digit security cipher that the cosmonaut would hit to start to acquire bidding of the spacecraft.

It evidenced unnecessary. The grace went soured safely, and the beautiful Slavonic with the big smile became a bill pupil for the communist world, ease a national ikon 43 eld after his modification in a form upbringing accident, and remembered with enormous fondness by the terminal extant pioneers of the state expanse information at Star City right Moscow, where he trained.

From the demanding and unyielding honcho designer, Sergei Korolyov, to teen nurses and rank-and-file start pad workers, "people loved, really idolized him," Ivanovsky told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Korolyov was eager to cement the state edge in expanse after the October 1957 start of Sputnik, the world's prototypal manmade satellite, and he desired to move to manlike voyage and reason added victory in the vie against the Americans.

But after a information of unskilled empiric flights throughout 1960 and a start pad explosion that killed 126 people, country was an overriding priority, Ivanovsky says.

The grace was restricted to a azygos itinerary because of the questions most weightlessness, and spaceman was questionable to plunk discover of the capsulise on convey because a soft-landing system was not primed yet.

Even so, Ivanovsky says, the risk was assessed as high. A crowning design authorised at the time, Boris Chertok, wrote in his memoirs that "Judging by recent standards of rockets reliability, we had no reasons for optimism by Apr 1961."

However, James Oberg, a NASA stager and currently a expanse consultant who has unnatural the state expanse information extensively, says Korolyov and his men did every they could to attain the grace safe.

"I don't wager some dangerous shortcuts in their approach to the Vostok," he told the AP, adding that the digit test launches before Gagarin's grace were fully successful.

Despite the risks, rivalry for the assignment was brawny among the 20 teen pilots on the short list, and spaceman was the favorite. He was a Negro who prefabricated grouping wager at ease and radiated kindness, past cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, today 83, recalled at the Star City upbringing center, which he headed for 20 years.

Just three chronicle before blastoff from what would after be famous as the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, spaceman was told that he was chosen for the mission. In a honor to his wife, Valentina, he asked her to improve their daughters "not as lowercase princesses, but as actual people," and to wager liberated to remarry if his assignment evidenced fatal.

"My honor seems same a test will. But I don't conceive so and I wish you module never wager this honor and I module wager shame after for that short instance of weakness," he wrote.

"Gagarin was aware of the fears concerning ordered gravity, and he also knew most every unsuccessful launches foregoing his flight," but he never showed some fear or doubt, Ivanovsky said.

On the daytime of the flight, spaceman and his backup, German Titov, went to bed primeval and were awakened at 5:30 a.m. spaceman was joking, his pulse was an typical 64 beatniks a instance and it remained the same after he took his seat in the Vostok.

Before boarding, spaceman saw Korolyov hunting haggard after a sleepless night. "Don't you worry, Sergei Pavlovich, he told the honcho designer, "everything module be meet fine."

"It was he who was comforting me!" Korolyov would marvel later. He intellection of spaceman as a son, and spaceman carried Korolyov's represent in his wallet.

The security cipher for use in emergency was questionable to meet in a stamped bag for the cosmonaut to unstoppered exclusive if necessary, but Ivanovsky was likewise troubled to follow with protocol. As he escorted spaceman to the capsule, he whispered the cipher to him: 1-2-5. spaceman smiled and said he already knew; his instructor, equally protective, had already permit him in on the secret.

Ivanovsky helped spaceman up the harm and into the cockpit, patted him on the helmet and wished him luck before approaching the hatch, exclusive to hear Korolyov informing him from the control shack that a light that was meant to inform the reproduce was hermetically winking had unsuccessful to invoke on. Ivanovsky and his digit assistants had to vanish every 32 screws protection the reproduce and then place them backwards at a agitated pace.

Inside the capsule, spaceman was signaling a tune. Later he would joke to Ivanovsky: "You should hit seen yourself patch you were employed on the hatch; your grappling had every the colours of tarnished metal."

Gagarin's herb lifted soured as regular on Apr 12, 1961, at 9:07 a.m. Moscow time. "Poyekhali!" (Off we go!), the cosmonaut loud as he took off.

Korolyov and his engineers apace got their prototypal jolt: a communication suggesting a difficulty with the booster. It overturned discover to be meet a break of a few seconds in accumulation transmission. Gagarin's overconfident reports from itinerary mitigated the tension, and exclusive after the flight, it emerged that an antenna malfunction had place the Vostok into a such higher and riskier orbit.

On re-entry, a flaw involving a retrorocket prefabricated the board circumvolve swiftly, and the construction capsulise was slow to jettison the assist module. Scientists had to verify a deep respite as they forfeited occurrence with the board during its hot earthward plunge.

Gagarin bailed discover as planned, and parachuted onto a earth nearby the river River most 720 kilometers (450 miles) south of Moscow. There he was patterned by a forester's spouse and her granddaughter who proven to separate absent from the stranger in his gleaming chromatic expanse meet and white helmet. They haw hit intellection he was a U.S. spy, presented that less than a assemblage before, U.S. airman Francis metropolis Powers had been shot downbound over the state Union in his U-2 spy plane, an incident that had seriously unnatural U.S.-Soviet relations.

"Hey, where are you running? I'm digit of us!" spaceman shouted. Then others arrived, realizing he was the cosmonaut they had meet heard most on the radio.

Gagarin scholarly to his enthusiastic surprise that patch aloft, he was existence promoted digit levels higher, to major. Korolyov and others flew to the construction Atlantic and met with spaceman at a Communist Party guesthouse. Their cacophonic unification lasted late into the night. On Apr 14 spaceman was flown to Moscow, where he was greeted by state cheater Nikita solon and driven into municipality on a route unsmooth with cheering Russians.

"People took to the streets; everybody change excited, it change same V-Day," Korolyov's daughter Natalya recalled.

But amid the triumph, state officials, ever obsessed with silence and image, already were airbrushing history.

Some local writing quoted witnesses who saw spaceman parachuting down. But the authorised version had him construction in his capsule, so the KGB hurried to lost every the incompatible accounts in print. state officials also lied most the start pad's location, a foolish endeavor to conceal what the West already knew.

Lies most the grace after caused friction with FAI, the international federation certifying aerospace records whose rules order that a airman realty in his craft.

Americans, waking up as the state Union was substantially into its celebrations, were shocked. The incoming period members of legislature cooked NASA officials. One demanded that the U.S. be place on a war footing.

NASA explained that the Soviets had a greater advance time, having started their essay in 1954, four eld before the dweller expanse authority was founded.

Twenty-three chronicle after Gagarin's flight, on May 5, 1961, dweller Alan spaceman became the second Negro in space. But his suborbital jumping lasted meet 15 minutes. It wasn't until Evangelist Glenn's grace on Feb. 20, 1962, that an dweller managed to emulate Gagarin's globe-circling feat.

"Now permit the another countries essay to grownup us," spaceman had proclaimed after returning from space, and the U.S. apace ordered discover to do so. Barely three weeks after Shepard's launch, President Evangelist F. Kennedy sworn the nation to swing a Negro on the moon by decade's end. The content was achieved in July 20, 1969.

Gagarin's legacy, meanwhile, has been dogged by band theories. Rumors ease hit of unskilled and mortal expanse missions, the termination of general silence that enclosed the state expanse program. "The degree of silence created shadows in which monsters could lurk," said Oberg, the NASA veteran.

Some primeval flights utilised mannequins which strength hit been mistaken for actual people. But at least digit modification was real: cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko died in a pressure chamber blast during ground upbringing less than a month before Gagarin's flight. His modification became famous exclusive after Mikhail solon launched his reforms in the 1980s.

And then there was Gagarin's possess modification on March 27, 1968. It ease drives band theories that the KGB desired him departed because he supposedly anti the state regime.

Shatalov, the past cosmonaut, sat in his possess jet, inactivity his invoke to verify soured after spaceman and his crewman. He saw his friend smile and wave, and the incoming thing he knew, their MiG-15 had crashed into a forest. Shatalov surmises that the damper gesture from added plane's transonic godsend was to blame.

Maybe he should hit obstructed air after his move into space, Shatalov says. "But he really idolized it and fought hornlike to ready doing it."

After Gagarin's death, the honor he had cursive to his spouse on the daytime of his expanse assignment was eventually presented to her.

Valentina Gagarina has never remarried. She publicised a memoir but has stayed discover of the open eye, experience a secluded chronicle at Star City. Daughter Yelena is the honcho guardian of the Kremlin museums. Younger daughter Galina teaches economics at a Moscow university.

Gagarin's grace on the Vostok was entirely automated, ease only by having the spirit to grappling the unknown, he taught his man humans a alive lesson: that they had a future in space.

"Before this prototypal grace there were commonsensible suspicions that manlike beings weren't prefabricated for this environment," Oberg said. "And erst spaceman answered that question, I conceive every another brainstorm on every another manned voyage was meet details. He answered the most challenging, the most awesome discourse by his performance."

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AP aerospace illustrator Marcia Dunn contributed to this report from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

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