by Von Hardesty
Atop the R-7, Gagarin waited anxiously for the liftoff. T minus five minutes. T minus one minute. Lift off came at exactly 9:06 hours, 59.7 seconds (Moscow time).36 Gagarin’s pulse had reached 157 beats per second just before the engines of the R-7 roared to life. As he ascended into the sky, Gagarin yelled, “We’re off!”
At 09:09 hours: Korolev spoke to his cosmonaut.
Korolev: “T plus 100 [seconds]. How do you feel?”
Gagarin: “I feel fine. How about you?”
The rocket gained momentum as the seconds passed, pushing Gagarin into the thin upper atmosphere. He felt initially the pressure of five g’s. The muscles on his face were strained. He reported that he encountered increased difficulty in talking normally. As scheduled, the nose fairing on the rocket separated. The main core stage and strap-on rockets then detached and fell away. Once free, the upper stage of the R-7 rocket ignited and propelled Gagarin into orbit.
The communications with Korolev resumed at 09:10 hours.
Korolev: “…How do you feel?”
Gagarin: “…nose fairing jettisoned…. I see the Earth. The g-load is increasing somewhat. I feel excellent, in a good mood.”
Korolev: “Good boy! Excellent! Everything is going well.”
Gagarin: “I see the clouds. The landing site…it is beautiful. What beauty! How do you read me?”
Korolev: “We read you well, continue the flight!”
Once Gagarin reached orbit, he traveled at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour. He looked out on a remarkable scene, a celestial view of Earth from the stupendous height of over 100 miles; the Vostok orbit ranged from a low point of 108.5 miles to 187.2 miles. “The Earth,” Gagarin recalled, “began to pass to the left and up, then to the right and down…. I could see the horizon, the stars…. The sky was completely black, black. The magnitude of the stars and their brightness were a little clearer against the black background…. At the very surface of the Earth, a delicate light blue gradually darkens and changes into a violet hue that steadily changes to black.”37
Gagarin reported to mission control on some of the more mundane details inside the capsule. He discovered that he could eat and drink. (He was the first human to have a meal in orbit.) He was amazed with the altered state of weightlessness. His tablet and pencil floated freely in the cramped interior of the spacecraft. His pencil moved slowly out of reach. He reported no negative consequences or unpleasant sensations. “Here,” Gagarin observed, “you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps.”38
The Russian cosmonaut maintained contact with Earth through high-frequency radio and by using a telegraph link. The American CIA and the National Security Agency, using an electronic intelligence station in Alaska, were able to intercept the Vostok’s radio and television transmissions. The TV images confirmed that there was a man on board, not a dummy.39 The Soviet news agency TASS did not report the Gagarin flight for an hour, a belated confirmation of the launch with a passing reference to the cosmonaut on board: “The pilot-cosmonaut of the spaceship satellite Vostok is a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Major of Aviation Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin.”40
The flight plan called for just one orbit, which precluded any elaborate experiments in a short time frame of 108 minutes. At this point in space exploration, no extensive data on the effects of prolonged weightlessness on humans had been recorded; consequently, the Soviet medical team remained concerned about the effect of zero gravity on Gagarin’s body and psyche. Given all these uncertainties, Korolev had designed the Vostok as a highly automated vehicle, with only a minimal role for the pilot. Gagarin was a guinea pig in this formative moment in the space age, but he did have on board a special envelope with the key code to unlock the spacecraft’s controls in an extreme emergency.
The descent to Earth presented unforeseen perils for Gagarin. When the retro-rockets in his instrument module fired for 40 seconds, a precise maneuver to slow the spacecraft for reentry, the craft experienced a sharp jolt, prompting the Vostok to enter a spin at high speed. The g-loads increased, as did the heat generated by the reentry. The instrument module had been programmed to separate at 10 seconds after retrofire, but this critical maneuver was delayed momentarily. When this malfunction occurred, the Vostok was over Africa. Caught in the violent spin, Gagarin gazed anxiously out the porthole as the African continent filled the window, then Earth’s horizon, and then the black void of space. “Suddenly a bright purple light,” Gagarin later reported, “appeared at the blind edges…. I felt oscillations of the spaceship and burning of the coating [thermal protection layers]…. I heard crackling sounds…. By the time the load factor reached its peak, the spaceship oscillations reduced to 15 degrees. At that moment I felt that the load factor reached about 10 g’s. There was a moment for about two or three seconds, when the instrument readings became blurred. My vision became somewhat grayish. I strained myself again. This worked, and everything assumed their proper places.”41
Finally, the Vostok righted itself, entering a descent into the upper atmosphere at a proper angle. Throughout the dangerous passage Gagarin had kept his cool, reporting regularly on his condition and the status of the spacecraft. When the spacecraft descended to an altitude of 23,000 feet, the main parachute opened, breaking the fall to Earth. In seconds, the Vostok’s hatch blew open. Gagarin was thrust outward: “I’m sitting there thinking that wasn’t me that was ejected, was it? Then I calmly turned my head upward, and at that moment, the firing occurred, and I was ejected. It happened quickly, and went…without a hitch. I did not hit anything…. I flew out in the seat.”42
He opened his own parachute around 13,000 feet, making a soft landing in a field near a ravine outside the city of Saratov near the Volga River. Once disentangled from his parachute harness, Gagarin climbed a small hill, where he encountered a woman and a small girl. He rushed forward, waving his hands and shouting, “I’m a friend, I’m Soviet!” Learning of the spaceman’s urgent desire to contact his controllers, the woman invited him to use the telephone in the nearby field camp. Gagarin later observed: “I told the woman not to let anyone touch my parachute while I was going to the camp. As we approached the parachutes, we saw a group of men, about six all in all—tractor drivers and mechanics from the field camp. I got acquainted with them. I told them who I was. They said that news of the spaceflight was being transmitted at that moment over the radio.”43
Pravda, the official news organ of the Communist Party, gave the Gagarin feat banner headlines on April 13, announcing the flight as a “Great Event in the History of Humanity.” The news was tinged with an explicit political spin, proclaiming that the “space first” had been achieved under the “Banner of Lenin.” The headlines were addressed “To the Communist Party” and “To All Progressive Humanity.” Two days after the launch Yuri Gagarin arrived in Moscow in a military transport escorted by seven fighter jets. Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed that Gagarin’s feat had made him “immortal,” awarding him the Gold Star medal, “Hero of the Soviet Union,” the highest honor for bravery. The young cosmonaut became the object of intense media attention and popular enthusiasm. Boris Chertok in his memoirs compared this outpouring of patriotism to Victory Day at the end of World War II.44
The mysterious Chief Designer had scored another dramatic victory over the United States.
JOHN F. KENNEDY OFFERS A CHALLENGE
The specter of another Soviet space triumph haunted Kennedy and his advisers. The new president had received regular intelligence reports that the Soviets might attempt to launch the first man in space. The reports became serious enough that presidential press secretary Pierre Salinger and his press colleagues at the Defense and State Departments began drafting a presidential statement for use if the Soviets succeeded. On the night of April 11, after the president had tentatively signed off on the statement, his science adviser, Jerome Wiesner, stopped by the Oval Office to tell Kennedy that American intelligence felt there was a strong chance the Soviet spacefli
ght would take place that night. Later, Major General Chester Clifton, the president’s military aide, checked in with the president for the final time that day. “Do you want to be waked up?” he asked. “No, give me the news in the morning,” Kennedy replied. Just hours later, American intelligence received the first intercepts indicating that Yuri Gagarin had launched off the pad at Baikonur and headed for orbit. The president was not disturbed and only learned about the flight the next morning.45
The Soviets posed Kennedy with a major new challenge, ironically in the aftermath of a presidential election where he had repeatedly asserted the need for America to do more in space. He had not placed space at the top of his priorities in the opening months of his presidency. For example, in March, James Webb, his new NASA administrator, had asked for additional funding for both the Saturn rocket and the nascent Apollo project, which at the time had as its long-term goal men flying around the moon rather than landing on it. Webb proposed to greatly accelerate and expand the Apollo project to land men on the lunar surface by the end of the decade. Kennedy considered the proposal, which was strongly opposed by his budget bureau director on grounds of its high cost, and rejected it. Instead, the president agreed to more funding for the Saturn only.46
After the orbital flight of Gagarin, the space race moved to the forefront of the president’s agenda. On April 14, Kennedy summoned key officials of his new government to the White House to discuss the public perception that America was losing the space race. At the time, White House correspondent Sidey was working on a story on the American lag in the space race, and the Gagarin flight suddenly gave his story great relevance. To Sidey’s delight and surprise, presidential aide Ted Sorensen invited him to sit in on Kennedy’s meeting, providing a unique window on the president’s thinking at this crucial juncture for his administration. Others attending the session in the cabinet room included Webb and his deputy, Hugh Dryden, budget director David Bell, and science advisor Wiesner. Despite the presence of the reporter, frank and revealing comments were offered as the president asked the men for their thoughts on what the United States should do in response to the latest Russian space triumph. After listening to his experts, the president frowned and observed, “We may never catch up.” A moment later, he asked, “Is there any place where we can catch them? What can we do? Can we go around the moon before them? Can we put a man on the moon before them?…Can we leapfrog?”47
Dryden commented that only an effort on the scale of the Manhattan Project could get the U.S. to the moon, an effort that might cost 40 billion dollars. Even with that effort, he added, they had only a 50 percent chance of beating the Soviets there. “The cost, that’s what gets me,” Kennedy said, looking over at Bell, who responded that the cost of scientific ventures rose in geometric proportions. Following some additional comments by other participants, the president summed up his feelings with astonishing candor, and even desperation, considering that a reporter was present: “When we know more, I can decide if it’s worth it or not. If somebody can just tell me how to catch up. Let’s find somebody—anybody. I don’t care if it’s the janitor over there, if he knows how.” After a searching look at the faces around him, the president added, “There’s nothing more important.”48 In a 1971 recounting of the meeting, Sidey provided additional details: “Kennedy was very anguished during the meeting. He…slumped down in his chair…. He kept running his hands through his hair, tapping his front teeth with his fingernails, a familiar nervous gesture.” An interesting postscript to Sidey’s account of the meeting was contained in a 1979 article he wrote on the 10th anniversary of the successful Apollo 11 moon landing. Sidey added a detail not mentioned in his earlier articles or his book on Kennedy: After the meeting was over, Sorensen went back and talked briefly with the president. Sorensen then emerged to tell Sidey, “We are going to the moon.”49
On April 17, exactly a week after Gagarin’s flight, a second major setback for the administration would play a critical role in pushing Kennedy toward a decisive commitment to land Americans on the moon. On that date a group of Cuban refugees stormed ashore at the Bay of Pigs on the Caribbean island in an American-sponsored attempt to foment a popular revolution against Communist leader Fidel Castro. Denied promised U.S. air support, and finding little support from the Cuban people, the invasion was a fiasco from the start. U.S. backing of the invasion greatly embarrassed Kennedy and his administration and damaged relations with other nations. While the debacle was not cited explicitly as a reason for the eventual Apollo go-ahead, Kennedy clearly sought a new initiative to help restore the nation’s tattered prestige.50
Several days after the cabinet room meeting, Kennedy asked Vice President Johnson for his suggestions on the next steps for America’s space program. Johnson chaired the National Aeronautics and Space Council, an entity originally established in the legislation creating NASA. The council operated as part of the executive office of the president, and its members included, in addition to the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, and the NASA administrator.51 Johnson suggested that the council should consider the issue and recommend a space program that would be supported by Congress and the public.
Although Johnson had shown little interest in space exploration before Sputnik 1 was orbited, he quickly seized upon the issue. Three months later, he said in a speech that “control of space means control of the world…[t]hat is the ultimate position, the position of total control over the Earth that lies somewhere in outer space.”52 After Johnson became vice president, he remained a staunch advocate of space exploration and the massive appropriations required to sustain it.
The next day, April 20, 1961, Kennedy sent Johnson a memorandum asking, “Do we have any chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man. Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?”53
Now animated with a sense of urgency, Kennedy asked that a Space Council report be given to him “at the earliest possible moment.” While awaiting the response, Kennedy made a public comment that clearly reflected his thinking at the time. “If we can get to the moon before the Russians, then we should,” he told a news conference on April 21, also mentioning his request to Johnson to review U.S. space options. The president said nothing further in public about sending Americans to the moon before he announced Project Apollo five weeks later.54
As the Space Council began considering the options available, it reviewed NASA’s original proposal for a manned circumlunar flight by 1966-1968 and a manned lunar landing sometime after 1970. Both goals were included in NASA’s 10-year plan, developed at the request of Congress. Eisenhower, always ambivalent about spending huge sums on what he saw as a pointless space race with the Soviets, had refused to sign off on what he regarded as an overreaching plan to send men to the moon. At one point, he commented that he had no intention of hocking the family jewels “like Isabella” did for Columbus’ voyage to the New World, in order to finance a U.S. manned lunar mission. Regardless of the president’s views, NASA under Glennan had continued to develop plans for a manned space program. In July 1960, 1,300 government, aerospace industry, and academic institution representatives attended a NASA-sponsored conference in Washington to discuss advanced manned spaceflight programs, including circumlunar voyages and eventual manned lunar landings. That same month, the name “Apollo” was approved for the advanced manned flight program.55 Once again, preparatory work done by the former administration provided a strong base for the expansion of NASA in the early 1960s.
On April 28, in a six-page interim report to President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson observed, “The U.S. can, if it will, firm up its objectives and employ its resources with a reasonable chance of attaining world leadership in space during this decade.” He went on to discuss the practical requirements: “This will be difficult but can be made probable even recognizing the h
ead start of the Soviets and the likelihood that they will continue to move forward with impressive successes…. If we do not make the strong effort now, the time will soon be reached when the margin of control over space and over men’s minds through space accomplishments will have swung so far over to the Russian side that we will not be able to catch up, let alone assume leadership….” He urged Kennedy to assume the initiative, to appreciate the propaganda value of spaceflight, and to pave the way for the United States to forge ahead with a “manned exploration of the moon.”56
Kennedy’s ultimate decision to commit the United States to a lunar mission must be viewed through the prism of the rivalry between the two superpowers. The intense competition engendered a strongly felt American need to respond to Soviet space triumphs by showing that America was at least as capable as the Soviets in this area. As a strong advocate of a manned lunar mission, Vice President Johnson encouraged others on the Space Council to follow suit. One result of his efforts was a top-secret memo signed by Defense Secretary McNamara and NASA administrator James Webb in May 1961. “Major [space] successes,” they argued, “such as orbiting a man as the Soviets have just done, lend national prestige even though the scientific, commercial or military value of the undertaking may by ordinary standards be marginal or even economically unjustified.” But, they asserted, in the case of going to the moon: “Our [space] attainments are a major element in the international competition between the Soviet system and our own. The non-military, non-commercial, non-scientific but ‘civilian’ projects such as lunar and planetary exploration are, in this sense, part of the battle along the fluid front of the Cold War.”57